“I’m not concerned that the larger budget will cause the UC to grind to a new halt,” he said. “I’m concerned that the UC will be no wiser with the new money than they are now.”

Baldwin and Barro both resigned from their posts as council members after the hike passed.

‘BELIEVE IN A BETTER HARVARD’

Council members pushing for the fee increase posted signs this spring asking students whether they “believe.”

And if the outcome of the student referendum is any indication, students do.

With “Believe in a Better Harvard,” the slogan used by proponents of the termbill hike, the council scored a minor victory by a 6 percent margin.  

Of the 2,235 students, or 35 percent of the campus who voted, 53.2 percent approved the increase, whereas 46.8 percent voted against it. But students rejected a proposal to change the fee from optional to mandatory, with 44.4 percent favoring the measure and 55.6 percent opposing it.

While some council members expressed concern with student turnout, council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 said he remains unfazed.  

“If you look at past referendums at Harvard, the turnout and margin are unprecedented. I think that students who felt strongly—well over two thousand—turned out to vote and those who were more indifferent didn’t, but that’s the way democracy works,” he wrote in an e-mail.

A similar referendum held in 1999 asking students to double the then-$20 fee attracted only 369 students or 5.9 percent to the polls.

But Oliveri said the low participation rate was cause for concern.  

“The low turnout associated with the referendum reflected the voice of the students most involved in campus politics, not the voice of the students as a whole who would be the most affected,” he said.

And though the proposal to make the fee mandatory was voted down, Mahan still characterized the outcome as favorable.  

“This is the beginning of a new era in campus life at Harvard,” Mahan said in a statement last month. “These types of increases never pass, anywhere. This shows that students are tired of the status-quo.”

But in a recent e-mail, he said that having the fee remain voluntary has its setbacks.