UC Extends Condom Coverage to Freshmen

The Undergraduate Council (UC) passed a bill supporting the placement of condom dispensers in freshman dormitories and voted to form a student committee to add student input to the search for a new Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) during yesterday’s Council meeting.

Matthew L. Sundquist ’09, a co-sponsor of the bill to place free condoms in freshman dorms, said Harvard’s Community Health Initiative (CHI) is willing to install, fund, and continually stock the condom dispensers and that Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67 supports the idea.

“It’s important that we passed this [bill] because it helps us gain momentum as we continue to attempt to install condom boxes in freshman dorms,” Sundquist said after the meeting.

He said he will now continue to work with college administrators and CHI to bring protection to the Yard.

UC President John S. Haddock ’07 expressed his support for the bill after the meeting.

“I think it’s really important that we finally address what was an obvious inequality between freshmen and upperclassmen,” he said.

Haddock was a co-sponsor of the bill to create an ad hoc student advisory committee to aid the search for a new FAS dean.

“This is really important that students have a say in the process,” Haddock said while presenting the bill, which was passed by the Council unanimously.

The UC’s Student Affairs Committee (SAC) will appoint seven members to the new advisory committee using a campus-wide application process. No more than two members of the SAC will be on the new committee.

The first grants package of the spring semester also passed at the meeting, though some representatives were concerned that the package awarded too much money and gave out larger-than-average grants.

Former UC Treasurer Matthew R. Greenfield ’08 asked the council to send back or “recommit” to the Finance Committee (FiCom) for reconsideration several grants over $1,000. After the meeting, he said he had done so in order to “raise the awareness of the implications of our financial irresponsibility.”

He said he was concerned that if the Council awarded large grant packages early in the semester there might not be enough money to fund student groups adequately later on.

Only one grant was recommitted after Council members learned that the supported event might have been a fundraiser, contrary to Council practice.

“There’s really nothing abnormal or unusual about the grants package we passed,” FiCom chair Lori M. Adelman ’08 said after the meeting. She said that because this was the first grants package to be considered since Reading Period, there were more grants submitted than usual. Adelman also mentioned that the Council had yet to solicit unclaimed checks from student groups and that doing so would bring additional money–up to $10,000 in past years–to the UC’s budget.

In other business, the UC passed a resolution to increase the funding of the Quad Library in order to improve its reserves, hours, and ambiance. An act recommending that the University create an application process for office space in Harvard Yard basements similar to the Hilles office space allocation process also passed.

A bill introduced at the end of the meeting stating that the UC had confidence in University President Lawrence H. Summers and did not think he should leave did not receive enough votes to be considered last night.

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.