“Dean Kidd will look at the relation between the College and student activities, to see if it’s the right level of distance, and whether we should have as much faculty oversight,” Gross said last week.

Currently, officially recognized extracurriculars must have two formal faculty advisers, according to the Harvard College Handbook: Student Organizations.

Mahan also said that the committee may focus on asking existing groups or new ones that form to combine with extracurriculars that serve overlapping purposes.

“We should be very vigilant about groups that are overlapping in what they do,” Mahan said. “The only place we’re really going to be able to make substantive reforms is in terms of pushing them to get together with other students doing the same thing.”

Groups that have very similar missions already are not recognized by the Committee on College Life, McLoughlin said.

“We have always looked at duplicity and if there are existing student organizations with similar missions, we would not approve the group,” McLoughlin said. “We wouldn’t approve 14 Latino groups if their missions were similar, and they’d just be social groups.”

Single-sex organizations are not recognized by the College and Kidd said there was “no possibility” of that rule changing.

In recent years, the participation in single-sex social groups on campus such as sororities and finals clubs has increased.

“There’s a growing proliferation of sororities and fraternities and other groups that do not have official recognition of the College and are using College space,” Kidd said.

McLoughlin said he did not know whether any new rules determined by the committee will apply retroactively to existing student groups, or only to newly formed organizations.

Kidd said she thinks the committee will meet at least several times.

In addition to reviewing the rules governing extracurricular organizations, College administrators may look to improve the quality of leadership within the organizations.

McLoughlin said administrators are planning a two-day retreat for the College’s largest and most influential extracurricular groups’ leaders. These students will likely discuss conflict mediation and cooperation between groups, he said.

—Staff writer Katharine A. Kaplan can be reached at kkaplan@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.