As part of a battery of changes that will increase oversight of student groups this fall, the College has created online sites for groups to register each year and to request event space.

Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin said that College officials opened the event-registration site—which will eliminate the need for paper applications—to students and House Masters on Sept. 5.

The application, which updates questions based on groups’ responses, will mean that each application is customized to the event that is being registered.

“If you are flyering in front of the Science Center, it is quick and easy,” McLoughlin said. “If you are having a campus-wide event with alcohol, it’s a little more complicated.”

The change, which will cost $11,000, was the result of student requests, Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd said.

The registration software automatically sends the application to anyone who needs to approve it, such as House Masters and the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD), McLoughlin said. In addition, he said that the software would inform users if their request complied with College regulations and estimate the cost of a HUPD detail or Beverage Authorization Team (BAT).

The change is the first of several to the way that the Office of Student Activities will conduct business this semester.

In November, all student groups will be required to re-register online, which will create a database containing contact information for officers and the group bylaws. While this has been the policy in the past, it has not always been strictly monitored by the College, McLoughlin said. In the past, he said, some student groups had lost copies of their bylaws and in some cases lost track of their bank account information.

The online registration program will make it easier for the Committee on College Life (CCL) to examine new proposals for student groups, McLoughlin said.

It will enable the College to determine which organizations have become “defunct,” in which case the College will contact the members and work to reform the group, McLoughlin said.

Kidd said that she and McLoughlin had inherited a “dysfunctional” system of monitoring student groups, which they will be working further to change this October, when a new committee will investigate how Harvard oversees student groups.

As a starting point, the committee will likely examine a baseline report on how colleges organize and support student groups, compiled by the Office of Student Activities during the summer.

The report, which examined 15 peer institutions, found that Harvard has more groups in proportion to its student body than most other private universities. Harvard has one student group for every 21 students, and that number counts “umbrella organizations,” such as the Phillips Brooks House Association, as one group.

The report suggests that Harvard may be approaching a “critical mass” of student groups.

“I think we are on the heavy side in terms of student groups,” Kidd said. “We have to look at what is critical mass so we don’t run out of student volunteers or staff.”