College officials said yesterday that they have repeatedly informed the Undergraduate Council that it had $40,000 extra in its University account, but as they debated how to spend it, council officials vigorously denied they ever knew of the money.

Council President Beth A. Stewart '00 announced the unexpected funds at Sunday night's council meeting. The money is the result of unused term-bill fees rolling over from year to year.

"The funds were available and [Council President] Beth Stewart was aware of them," Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III told The Crimson in an interview yesterday.

And according to Coordinator of Student Activities Susan T. Cooke, council treasurers are regularly "made aware of [their] balance" in addition to their annual term-bill revenues whenever they tap term-bill funds.

Council executives uniformly denied being told the total balance until this year.

"That is absolutely not true," Stewart said.

According to Stewart, the council did not receive a balance statement from the University until this year. In the past, she said, it had been notified of each year's term-bill revenues, but never of the amount remaining in their University account from previous years' term-bills.

Stewart said if she had known that the $40,000 existed, she would have used it.

"Last year I endured the horrible, horrible pain of having to retract a bid for a band" because of lack of funds, she said. "If there were any way to avoid that, we would have."

Last spring the council tried to bring the band Sister Hazel to Springfest, but Harvard was outbid by another college.

At the time, Stewart blamed the council's inability to secure the band on a "continuing and debilitating funding problem."

Cooke said that Stewart, who served as council treasurer until she was elected president in December of last year, had been notified of the balance whenever she drew funds from the University account.

"In her role as Treasurer of the UC last year, Beth frequented the office with check requests and learned of the balance of the

account, which had accumulated approximately $40,000 over and above the annual term bill distribution," Cooke wrote in an e-mail message.

According to Council Treasurer John A. Burton '01, the council makes check requests "after every major council allocation" such as those for the first-year formal and Thanksgiving shuttle buses.

And he remained adamant that Cooke had never told him about the forgotten $40,000.