The Undergraduate Council last night tentatively agreed to sponsor a spring benefit concert at the Bright Hockey Center featuring the rock group R.E.M. The event would replace an earlier proposal to host the Grateful Dead, which was vetoed by College officials for safety and other logistical reasons.

Proceeds from the March 22 concert, which would be open to students from local colleges, would go to the American Cancer Society.

The council voted to sponsor the $18,000 event contingent upon raising at least $3000 in donations from local businesses.

Council officials said yesterday they expected sufficient donations to hold the performance.

According to Stephen W. Waters '85, chairman of the council's social committee. College officials have agreed to help organize the concert. The earlier plans for a Grateful Dead performance were scrapped in December, despite a student referendum endorsing it, when Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III said the large event would create insurmountable safety problems.

R.E.M. was named the "best new group" of 1983 by Rolling Stone Magazine.

In other business last night, the council approved its fiscal year 1984 budget of more than $77,000, including $13,654.18 in spring term grants and loans to 24 student organiztions. Thirty-two organizations had originally applied for spring funding.

The group also sent back to committee funding requests for four other organizations, and urged several others to reapply for emergency grants.

The grants ranged from $1525 to the Harvard International Development Forum to help fund an upcoming symposium on world hunger, to $65 to finance a Scottish dancing party.

The two-hour debate on the budget was marked by protests from several groups whose grant requests were denied.

A representative of the Leverett House Art Society, which had applied unsuccessfully for $4770 to purchase lighting equipment, last night criticized the council as "unprofessional," overly concerned with technicalities, and for failing to adequately consider the group's request "due to impatience" of the members.

By the final vote on the budget, only 40 of the council's 88 members remained in the room. He a quorum count been officially requested, the council's spring grant decisions would have been invalidated