The Faculty Council on Wednesday approved the student body’s vote in a referendum two weeks ago to raise the optional Student Activities Fee to $75 from its current $35.

In its last meeting of the academic year, the Faculty Council unanimously supported a plan proposed by Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 to implement the fee hike over two years, with a $60 fee taking effect for the 2004-2005 school year and a $75 fee the year after.

Although the student referendum made no mention of a two-part increase, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 wrote in an e-mail yesterday that he had suggested that Mahan prepare a proposal for the Faculty Council that the body would find more amenable than an immediate $40 spike.

“ I...told him that I thought it was unlikely that the Council would approve an increase to $75 immediately,” Gross wrote. “We discussed some alternatives, and I suggested that the UC prepare a proposal that he was comfortable with.”

Mahan wrote in an e-mail to the Lowell House open e-mail list last night that one of the reasons he decided to recommend a two-stage increase was to make it palatable to the Faculty Council.

“If we went in demanding $75, lump-sum, all next year, I cannot assure that we would have gotten anything at all, so that was a decision I had to make,” Mahan wrote.

According to Gross, Mahan’s success in securing the Faculty Council’s approval was the final decision needed to implement the fee increase.

“As long as the fee was not mandatory, it did not have to be approved by the Corporation,” Gross wrote in an e-mail.

The Faculty granted the 18-professor Faculty Council authority to increase the fee in 2001, and then-Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 told the Faculty at the time that the Faculty Council’s new authority was intended to facilitate increases corresponding with inflation.

In a College-wide referendum from April 28 to May 1, students approved an increase to $75 by a 6-percent margin and rejected the proposal to make it mandatory by 11 percentage points.

Mahan’s proposal to phase in the fee hike, which was announced only the night before the Faculty Council meeting, immediately drew harsh criticism from Undergraduate Council representatives and put Mahan on the defensive.

Mahan did not discuss his proposal for a phased-in increase with the council as a whole, and some members were upset that they were not informed of the proposal prior to Mahan’s message to the e-mail lists.

“The failure in this instance to seek advice from the council or at the very least give us the heads up that you would be announcing it to our constituents is deeply unsettling,” Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06 wrote in an e-mail to the council’s open list.

Chadbourne—along with the other Lowell House representatives, Teo P. Nicolais ’06 and Polly W. Klyce ’06—also expressed his disappointment with Mahan’s methods in an e-mail to the Lowell House open list.

“The Lowell Delegation strongly disapproves of Matt’s failure to consult the elected representatives of Undergraduate Council, thereby allowing us to seek your input, before making such a policy change,” the trio wrote. “Though $60 may indeed be a more appropriate amount for the coming year, there has been no discussion of how the budget you voted on several weeks ago will be altered.”