After intense debate this school year, students will face a $25 increase in the optional fee they pay for student activities this fall.

Initial talks of a Student Activities Fee hike drew a small but vocal opposition on the Undergraduate Council (UC), launching over a month of heated discussion that some council members say forced them to reconsider the structure and role of the student government. The hike’s successful passage in a student referendum led two council members to resign their positions.

“In the short-term, it made the semester a little hectic,” said Russell M. Anello ’04, one of the co-sponsors of the proposal. “In the long-term, it gave the UC more legitimacy.”

The change marks the third time the optional termbill fee has risen since its 1981 inception. It jumped from $10 to $25 in 1988 and increased to its current $35 level in 2001. It will rise to $60 next year, and to $75 the following year.

BILL BATTLE

The referendum bill, which allowed students to vote on whether they supported the hike and whether the fee should be made mandatory, underwent heavy amendment, including a measure that reduced the originally proposed $100 fee to $75.

Proponents of the hike argued that the money would facilitate improved services—such as more movie nights and larger, better-produced concerts—and more opportunities within student groups because of more funding for grant requests. These social opportunities would, they said, help improve student life at Harvard.

A larger budget, Anello said, would also allow for “new ideas.”  

But Anello recognized that the issue could be a potentially contentious one.

“We understand it’s not a simple sell because people’s gut reaction is ‘I don’t want to pay any more money,’” Anello said in late April.

But according to council data, Harvard’s Undergraduate Council fee falls well below the norm. Stanford University, Northeastern University and Boston College all have annual fees around the $100 mark, while Dartmouth College and Boston University have fees of $450 and $414 respectively.

Joseph R. Oliveri ’05, who opposed the hike, contended that “a lot of the statistics [supporters of the hike] showed were very misleading,” saying that other schools include other services within their student activities fees.

And Andrew C.W. Baldwin ’05, a former council representative, noted that some schools, like Yale, do not even include a student activities fee.

Joshua A. Barro ’05, who led the opposition, compared the fee increase to a tax hike and took issue with the council’s ability to handle an expanded budget, as well as its ability to accurately assess student needs.

For his part, Barro’s apprehensions about the council still remain.

“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.

“An optional fee hurts students because it allows for free-riding and is ineligible for financial aid coverage, but the student body voted to retain that choice and I’ll stand by that decision,” Mahan wrote. “I think that time will prove that a mandatory fee makes more sense for everyone.”

This year, 92 percent of students paid the voluntary $35 fee.

POWER PLAY

After the referendum, the fee increase required the support of the Faculty Council, which advises Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby and the full Faculty.

In its final meeting last month, the Faculty Council unanimously approved a plan proposed by Mahan, which recommended implementing the fee hike over two years, with a $60 fee set for the 2004-2005 academic year and a $75 fee to follow a year later.

While the student referendum made no mention of a phase-in, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 said that he recommended that Mahan draw up a proposal that had a greater chance of garnering the Faculty Council’s approval.  

“I...told him that I thought it was unlikely that the Council would approve an increase to $75 immediately,” Gross wrote in an e-mail.

Mahan characterized such a move as the “most responsible approach.”

“After speaking with many students, considering the potential structural changes that we may want to undertake, and taking into account political feasibility of asking for a one-time, lump-sum increase, I felt it was most prudent to personally recommend a two-year phase in,” he wrote.

But his proposal for a phase-in drew fire from council representatives, as he announced his intentions only a night before the Faculty Council meeting and did not discuss the change with the council as a whole.

The Lowell delegation of council members—comprised of Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06, Polly W. Klyce ’06 and Teo P. Nicolais ’06—expressed their disapproval in an e-mail to the Lowell House open list.

And while council members generally supported the phase-in recommendation, some said they found fault with Mahan’s handling of the situation.  

“I don’t agree with the way it was approached,” Nicolais says, “[But] the idea was right.”

But council representative P.K. Agarwalla ’04 said he thought the phase-in approach did not reflect the wishes of the student body.

“Students didn’t vote for a $60 dollar phase-in, they voted for a $75 increase [and] there was no consultation with the council,” Agarwalla said.  

—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.