Party Central

In an ongoing effort to make Harvard more like a state school, the Undergraduate Council’s (UC) party grant fund disburses $2,000 each week among 16 party-throwing recipients. The program is one of the UC’s great successes, which makes it all the more unfortunate that the Committee on House Life (CHL), a student-faculty committee that includes many House masters, recently discussed stripping the program from the UC and putting it into the hands of the House Committees (HoCos).

If the fund is going to continue to foster campus-wide social life, it should be left in the hands of the UC, which, as a centralized group, is far better positioned to distribute the funds equitably and effectively than the 12 separate house committees.

First, the consolidated nature of the program’s administration makes it easier to ensure that its benefits are accessible to all students—after all, it’s funded by money pooled from the whole student body. If HoCos provided the grants rather than the UC, the parties would likely become far more limited, instead of the campus-wide events they are intended to be. For example, the UC currently posts the locations of funded parties on the UC-general e-mail list, to which any Harvard student can subscribe. While fostering house community is also a worthy objective, HoCos already receive $4,500 each semester from the UC to do so.

Nevertheless, the equitability of the fund has been called into question by some, who argue that it is unfair that large Houses and those with spacious common rooms, like Quincy and Currier, receive a disproportionate number of grants. While this may be true, the party fund best serves the campus-wide community by ensuring that a roughly equal number of parties are thrown every weekend by students who are genuinely enthused about throwing them, not by trying to space parties evenly throughout the Houses.

Should HoCos take over the fund and end its randomization, as some advocate, they would be forced to make the fraught decision of who in their House is most deserving or most capable of throwing a “good” party. While HoCos would certainly be in a better position to make that assessment than the UC, it is a judgment that should not be made at all. As Avery A. Cavanah ’08, co-chair of Dunster HoCo pointed out, making HoCos into administrators and enforcers of a party fund would poison the social dynamic between HoCos and their House, leaving them open to accusations of partiality. The parties that have been funded through a randomized selection process have, by and large, been extremely successful; adding an element of biased judgment into the selection process would do little to improve the party fund.

Further, the discussion within CHL about moving the party fund into HoCo hands has been as much about regulation concerns as about actually improving social life. Some of the strongest proponents for the change have been the House masters, according to Alexander N. Li ’08, who is the chair of the UC’s Finance Committee, which currently oversees the party fund. HoCos, so the reasoning goes, would have some advantage over the UC in knowing the logistics of their house. They are more likely to know which rooms are or could be reasonably joined to make super-party suites and are more familiar with their individual House’s party registration rules.

The UC has, however, made an effort to accommodate House masters’ concerns. This semester, the UC moved the final day of the weekly application period from Thursday to Wednesday, in order to allow party grant recipients more time to adequately register their party, according to Li, who is also a Crimson editorial editor. Given the value of a centralized fund, it would be far better for the UC to work with House masters and adapt the fund accordingly than to decentralize it and make each HoCo responsible for enforcing its House’s rules—which is hardly a desirable task for HoCos to take on in any case.

The party grant fund should remain centralized and in the hands of the UC. Not only is a central fund more conducive to improving social life campus-wide, but placing the fund in the hands of HoCos would create many unnecessary logistical problems. The UC has proved itself competent at administering the party fund; leaving the fund in its hands is the best way to ensure that the party grant program continues to benefit the entire campus community.