This year, Brown's Finance Committee distributed a whopping $686,406 collected from student fees, giving the Debating Union $9,440, the Ball Room Dancing Club $3,922, and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered Alliance $3,800.

At the same time, Yale's student-run Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC) distributed only $44,000 giving an unusually low limit of $1,000 per registered group.

Brown's annual distribution of $686,406, Cornell's $480,000, the University of Pennsylvania's (Penn) $474,900 and Columbia's $460,000 all seem to dwarf the Harvard Undergraduate Council's Finance Committee's $126,500 outlay. Princeton's midyear budget of $26,000 and Yale's $44,000 seems to pale in comparison.

William E. Conway, Undergraduate Assembly treasurer at Penn, could not imagine having a budget as low as Harvard's or Yale's.

"We don't have enough to spend with $400,000, so it surprises me that they operate with such small budgets," he said.

But the funds channeled through the student governments are only part of the picture. Yale groups can also get funds directly from academic departments, from college masters (similar to Harvard's House masters) and from the college president.

According to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, Harvard University spends about $1.2 million in unrestricted funds annually on student activities. Besides the council, major funding sources include the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and the Office for the Arts.

Many Mouths to Feed

Most student governments with larger budgets take responsibility for funding a wide variety of student activities. Brown's Finance Committee dishes out money to club sports, the band and Brown Television. Penn's Student Activities Committee spends money on politically active groups and publications. Columbia's Union of Student Organizations provides interest-free loans to student groups.

Yale's student government, with its $44,000 budget does not fund similar groups or provide loans.

Last spring, Harvard's Undergraduate Council distributed about $23,000 to 90 groups for the second semester, providing a maximum grant of $900 and a minimum of $23.50.

Never Enough

One problem that is omnipresent for budgets of all sizes is that the demand for funds always outnumbers funds available. The Student Union of Washington University in St. Louis has a huge budget of $740,000 for student groups, yet student body president Peter B. Steffen says annually initial group requests total eight times the available funds.

"You can't please everybody--that's the lesson of any budgetary process," Steffen said. "It's all about competing interests."

Ben S. Kornfiend, treasurer of the Columbia College Student Council (CCSC), says while the number of student groups at Columbia increases every year, funding from the student activities fee has remained at the same level for five years, necessitating some tough decisions to be made. According to Alejandra C. Montenegro, Columbia's CCSC president, the assembly finally voted to increase next year's fee from $114 to $140.

Harvard undergraduates currently have theoption to pay a $20 annual fee for studentservices.