But although the breakout sessions are the only events on the agenda that focus on tangible student-life topics, they took up only three hours of the three-day conference.

And the minutes from the sessions suggest that Harvard's participation is often half-hearted.

Although participants are supposed to submit reports to the Ivy Council on the topic of each breakout session they attend, Harvard's delegates last semester submitted no written report for half of the eight breakout sessions they attended.

Many of the reports they neglected to prepare were on topics that the Undergraduate Council has identified are problem areas at Harvard.

For instance, while the council has made a point of lobbying to reform University Health Services, Harvard's Ivy Council delegates gave no report to the breakout group about health services on this campus.

This partial participation was typical of schools at the conference. If every Ivy League college had submitted a report at each of the eight breakout sessions, there would be 64 reports in total. But delegates actually submitted just 42 reports.

And with only a handful of colleges issuing reports on any one issue, the conference book suggests it may have been difficult for some of the breakout groups to be as productive as they hoped. For instance, the breakout group dealing with sexual harassment only saw three of the eight colleges issue reports, and the delegates' discussions in the session produced little more than one page of notes.

Few Tangible Benefits