And Barro said that because the e-mail alerting students to the e-bill doesn’t specify that a paper bill would also be sent out, a good number of students would likely choose to pay online.

“Wherever a student might pay his termbill fee or wherever a student’s parents might pay the termbill fee, they should be clearly told that they have the option of opting out,” he said.

For Stephanie R. Camaglia ’07, the electronic termbill brought some confusion.

“I knew that one of the fees was optional, or thought it was, but since it didn’t say so on the bill, I assumed that either it was no longer optional or we weren’t charged that fee yet,” she said.

But Keaney later noted that the bill’s lack of information has not stopped many students from already opting out, many of whom acquired the requisite directions via House open lists.

“There were many e-mails to our office over the weekend from students requesting...to waive the [council] fee,” she wrote in an e-mail. “These students linked to us from the e-bill and all requests were honored.”

And while Mahan acknowledged that the council has “limited ability to tell [the billing office] how to construct their bill,” he said that the council would work to guarantee that the student activities fee be optional in practice.

Keaney added that the SRO would take measures to provide more clear instructions.

“In the future, when paper bills are no longer generated in conjunction with [electronic] bills, we will take care to make sure that students know how to waive the [council’s] fee,” she wrote.

Students can e-mail student_billing@harvard.edu or call the SRO to opt out of the council fee.

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