It will take a whole lot more than $25,000, but the Undergraduate Council says at least that's a start.

When the council voted earlier this month to allocate that much of the infamous $40,000 budget surplus, council members said they were one step closer to building the mecca of meeting places that every student group dreams of.

But the College doesn't share the same vision. While Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III long ago drafted plans for a "College Hall"--a student center following in the tradition of the Freshman Union-other College administrators have said they are less willing to allocate space and money to build an undergraduate complex. Student centers like the ones at Duke and Brown universities and the University of Pennsylvania are unlikely to be duplicated in Cambridge.

Student group leaders may simply have to grow comfortable in their cramped quarters in the basements of Holworthy and Thayer halls.

Checkbook Diplomacy

Student offices, performance venues and plush armchairs. This is the vision of the council, which has been strongly pushing the idea of a student center since November.

The council threw their weight behind this vision early this month by allocating $25,000 to the proposed student center--the largest single allocation of funds in council history. The money was not given without strings attached. In order to receive it, the University has one year to hire an architect, create a planning committee that includes students and make a timetable for the building process.

Samuel C. Cohen '00, who chairs the council's student center working group, says the money can make a difference.

"I would like to think it will have a big impact. It definitely is a shot or a gamble," Cohen said. "In my opinion, it's a gamble the council needs to take."

If successful, Cohen and council President Noah Z. Seton '00 hope to centralize student group offices, create common social space, performance and rehearsal space and offer smaller conveniences such as a mail depot and a copy center.

"Offices are spread around campus, mostly in the basements of Yard dorms," Seton said. "By locating all of the student group offices in one place, we'll move toward a sense of community."

Ideally the council hopes to build a student center similar to Brown University's Faunce House complex.

According to Brown's Associate Dean of Student Life David Inman, Faunce House hosts office space for 40 student organizations, including several publications, Brown's student TV and radio stations, theater groups and the Undergraduate Council of Students (UCS).

"Where we do share spaces, we group clubs together whose schedules do not rub elbows," Inman says. "We also try to group similar types of clubs in the same space."

Faunce House also contains a computer center often utilized by campus publications, a licensed pub--for Brown students only--a post office, a hair stylist, the Campus Market, an eatery and a darkroom.