College To Review Student Activities

The College will convene a committee to examine undergraduate extracurricular regulations and practices this fall that may limit the number of officially recognized student groups on campus.

While the College trumpets the “limitless extracurricular opportunities” on the admissions office’s website, the proposed committee might restrict these opportunities as it reviews the approval process of student groups and encourages organizations that serve similar purposes to combine.

“The primary focus is on, ‘are we doing the right thing of doing blanket recognition of over 300 student groups,’” Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd said. “We’ll be looking at what the topics are.”

As an interim step, Kidd and Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin met last Friday to revise the handbook for student organizations that will be released this fall. In the past, the handbook has included specific governing rules that explain the use of College buildings, election procedures and fund-raising methods.

College administrators say that the proposed committee will begin a necessary review of outdated policies, as well as examine how to meet increasing group demand for the College’s limited student grants and space.

“When these rules were made, there were 80 or 90 organizations, now there are more than 250,” Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said.

McLoughlin said that the 305 student groups on campus this year “is the largest number that I’ve seen on the books for the last seven years, once the records started being kept.”

This year, the Committee on College Life approved about 40 new extracurricular groups, which has been the standard number for the past four years, McLoughlin said.

“Certainly resources are thinned when we have that many groups,” said McLoughlin,

He said that the College may not be able to support an ever-increasing number of student groups.

Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 also said that the number of new student groups is a concern for the College.

“The proliferation of new student groups does harm existing groups,” said Mahan.

“We need to also really commit some energy to enhancing the extracurricular experience and making sure there are resources for student groups,” Mahan added.

The committee, which will probably be composed of administrators, students and faculty members, will assess other schools’ extracurricular programs in considering how to revise Harvard’s. It will also examine the possibility of distinguishing between official recognition and registration of student groups.

Further, the committee will discuss where the appropriate relationship between the College and student organizations lies, Gross wrote in an e-mail.

“Dean Kidd will look at the relation between the College and student activities, to see if it’s the right level of distance, and whether we should have as much faculty oversight,” Gross said last week.

Currently, officially recognized extracurriculars must have two formal faculty advisers, according to the Harvard College Handbook: Student Organizations.

Mahan also said that the committee may focus on asking existing groups or new ones that form to combine with extracurriculars that serve overlapping purposes.

“We should be very vigilant about groups that are overlapping in what they do,” Mahan said. “The only place we’re really going to be able to make substantive reforms is in terms of pushing them to get together with other students doing the same thing.”

Groups that have very similar missions already are not recognized by the Committee on College Life, McLoughlin said.

“We have always looked at duplicity and if there are existing student organizations with similar missions, we would not approve the group,” McLoughlin said. “We wouldn’t approve 14 Latino groups if their missions were similar, and they’d just be social groups.”

Single-sex organizations are not recognized by the College and Kidd said there was “no possibility” of that rule changing.

In recent years, the participation in single-sex social groups on campus such as sororities and finals clubs has increased.

“There’s a growing proliferation of sororities and fraternities and other groups that do not have official recognition of the College and are using College space,” Kidd said.

McLoughlin said he did not know whether any new rules determined by the committee will apply retroactively to existing student groups, or only to newly formed organizations.

Kidd said she thinks the committee will meet at least several times.

In addition to reviewing the rules governing extracurricular organizations, College administrators may look to improve the quality of leadership within the organizations.

McLoughlin said administrators are planning a two-day retreat for the College’s largest and most influential extracurricular groups’ leaders. These students will likely discuss conflict mediation and cooperation between groups, he said.

—Staff writer Katharine A. Kaplan can be reached at kkaplan@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.