UC Votes Down $9,600 For Student Dinners and Advising Outings

The Undergraduate Council voted against establishing two programs at its Sunday meeting, one which would have funded dinners in Harvard Square to help sophomores decide on a concentration, and the other which would have funded student-led advising trips to Boston.

Each initiative would have taken $4,800 from the Student Life Committee’s budget.

The first program proposed providing 40 groups of six students each — four sophomores considering a concentration and two upperclassmen already enrolled in that concentration — with money to eat at a restaurant of their choice in Harvard Square.

Sixteen representatives voted in favor of the measure, while 27 voted against, and one abstained.

The other program would have funded 20 outings into Boston for groups of freshmen and seniors. The trips would have been designed to allow seniors to provide “formal” and “informal” advising for the freshmen, as well as to give seniors the opportunity to reflect on their time at Harvard. The final tally was 18 votes in favor, 21 against, and two abstaining.

Some representatives questioned the merits of the advising initiative, saying it was not an efficient or equitable way to offer mentorship and reflection programs.

Dunster House Representative Victor C. Agbafe ’19 said he preferred the Council support existing student groups focused on advising, arguing the UC program could pose a “logistical nightmare” to organize effectively.

“I don’t know if the UC in this situation is the best angle to provide mentorship,” he said. “Let’s work with different student groups because people have common bonds through those groups.”

Adams House Representative K. Yu-Mi Kim ’20 agreed the proposed initiative would not prove to be a useful allocation of student funds.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think this addresses advising and this is mostly just redistributing money into students’ pockets,” she said. “Basically, the $60 dollars that students pay, we’re just giving it back to them and giving them less freedom.”

Finance committee leaders also announced at the meeting that for the second consecutive week, they had not imposed an across-the-board cut to their weekly grants to student groups, a welcome development after a rocky spring semester which saw the Council tap into its “emergency fund” to shore up the committee's finances.

The committee is operating with a roughly 15 percent higher budget than the spring, partly a result of the 150 percent increase to the student activities fee this year, an optional sum Harvard undergraduates pay as part of enrollment costs.

— Staff writer Jonah S. Berger can be reached at jonah.berger@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonahberger98.

Staff writer Alexandra A. Chaidez contributed reporting.