Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 also said last spring that the number of new student groups is a concern for the College. “The proliferation of new student groups does harm existing groups,” he said.

Although University President Lawrence H. Summers said yesterday that the large number of groups indicated the range of undergraduates’ interests, he cautioned that some groups might have formed simply because students wanted better titles.

“The richness and variety of extracurrular life is a great strength of Harvard,” Summers said. “You know, I sometimes wonder whether there isn’t some fragmentation into multiple organizations caused by the desire many students have to be the leader of an activity. More clubs means more presidents.”

The report calls for more staff for the Student Activities office, noting that 80 percent of other colleges surveyed have at least five staff members in their equivalent offices. The report suggests hiring more interns who are studying higher education administration from the Graduate School of Education rather than hiring full-time employees because it is significantly cheaper to hire interns.

“Our experience last year with an intern was positive and our experience with our summer intern was amazing—we get a lot from them,” Kidd said.

Following one recommendation of the report, the committee is likely to examine a system that permits several different levels of recognition for student groups—a system that several other universities with high student group densities currently use.

—Staff writers Stephen M. Marks and Lauren A.E. Schuker contributed to the reporting of this story.

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