"Okay, do I hear a motion to buy 15 kegs and charge three dollars for the dance Dartmouth weekend? Do I hear a second?" Winthrop House Committee Chairman Patty Davis '84 pauses to count heads. "Fifteen kegs it is then..."

In the more than 50 years since Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell. Class of 1877, instituted Harvard's House system, modeled after the residential college system at Oxford University, certain aspects of student life at Harvard have undergone more changes than others: Radcliffe and Harvard have merged, undergraduates have had numerous student governments, the Houses themselves have undergone renovations. The College's House Committees, however, have remained virtually the same.

While there has been little widespread satisfaction in recent years with undergraduate governments, whose effectiveness is often clogged by demands for their reform, the local entities of the House Committees percolate contentedly--organizing social events and volunteer works they have for years, often operating without a formal set of bylaws and so far safe from campus reformers.

House Committees have been the most successful form of student government to date, so much so that Associate Dean of the Faculty John E. Dowling '57's 1980 analysis of student government--which later served as the blueprint for the Undergraduate Council--suggested that House Committees be incorporated into the new government. In the end, that plan was abandoned in favor of the more grassroots approach of electing one representative for every 75 students in the House.

With on official representation on the council, now entering its second year, what will happen to the House Committees? For years, the committees had enjoyed advantages over other forms of College-wide government: House Committees were funded and had an automatic link to the College administration through the House Masters and members of the Senior Common Room--the hierarchy of senior tutors, tutors and affiliates to each House under the Lowell plan.

But the Undergraduate Council--the first student-funded government with representation on Faculty committees--has virtually overtaken the House Committees in influence and visibility. Student organizations now go to the council for funding as well as to the Houses for activity funding. Is there room for both structures and for the funding of both, or will the dominance of one cause the demise of the other by siphoning away student leaders and funding?

The matter of seniority is clear. Long before anyone had even heard of the Undergraduate Council. Masters say, the House Committees were conducting their business in much the same manner the do today.

According to the Lowell plan to break the College into manageable units, each House plans its own social events, and House Committees have played an active role in this enterprise from the start. Consisting of a social committee, officer and the House's student council representative, the early House Committees were largely supported by student dues.

"It takes money to make a house a home," said a 1933 student council report. "House dues--like the Army's company fund--are a fair levy."

By the 1950s, the House Committees had grown to the large-scale operations they are today. The typical committee made twice as much on dues as it did on concessions in 1959 and spent between $2000 and $4000 each year.

Grants from the Ford Foundation swelled House coffers in the '50s, with each House Committee determining how the money should be used. Dunster House set up a summer's travel in Europe for promising juniors, Eliot sponsored speakers' tables which invited the likes of then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Adams spawned such esoteric organizations as the Wine Tasters' Society, the Cheese Tasters' Society, the Billiards Society, and the Play Readers' Society.

"The second great novelty of Harvard was the move to the House," says Eliot Professor of Latin and Greek John H. Finley '25, then-Master of Eliot House.

Today, House Committees are financially independent, drawing upon concessions such as laundry machines and video games for funding. Most committee treasurers report their budget for the year in the $800 to $1000 range, and the contents of the House coffers are reinvested in House activities designed to net a profit--dances, casino nights, lotteries, mugs, and T-shirts.

Profits from dances and the like support the other House organizations, such as drama and film societies, intramural equipment and speakers' tables. This aid comes in the form of grants or loans. Dunster and Mather Houses, for example, are currently providing the capital to get House grills started. The rest of the profits are spent on happy hours, open houses, and sustenance for loyal committee members in the form of cookies and milk or beer and pretzels at weekly meetings.

Composed of one or two chairman, a secretary, treasurer, a social committee and representatives from the various House organizations and any where from half a dozen to 50 interested House residents. House Committees convene once a week to plan social events and allocate money for them and other House needs.