Student groups will soon no longer have to pack into basements, dining halls, and common rooms to hold their meetings—but members will have to trek to the Quad to attend them, according to administrators who briefed the Committee on College Life (CCL) yesterday.

Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II told the CCL that many student groups who currently have space in the Yard—as well as up to 50 groups with no official place to meet at all—will move into the renovated Hilles library next fall. The building will have enough space for about 100 student groups, he said.

McLoughlin will form a subcommittee to study student organization space next week, which will be charged with evaluating the needs of different groups and will eventually decide which ones will be sent to Hilles.

Though the renovations at Hilles have been in the works since the fall of 2003, momentum increased after the Office of University President Lawrence H. Summers announced that it will provide $6 to $7 million to fund social space renovations.

At the meeting, students stressed the importance of the administration making the new Hilles space an attractive one in order to overcome the inconvenience of the non-central location.

“I think the administration has to create a lot of incentive to make sure that students actually utilize the space,” said Undergraduate Council (UC) Student Affairs Committee Chair Tara Gadgil ’07. “The success of the project is going to rely on really listening to what student groups want.”

Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd wrote in an e-mail that she was confident students would use the space and cited the popularity of the Harvard Dance Center as an example of students’ ability to adjust to distance.

“I am optimistic that once studentorganizations are there and see the space...they too will be enthusiastic,” she wrote.

Administrators said they will work to improve transportation in hopes of pacifying potential complaints from River residents.

“We are aware of the challenges that Hilles creates by not being centrally located,” McLoughlin wrote in an e-mail. “We will continue to look at transportation to the Quad since more students will need to get to [it].”

But McLoughlin pointed to increased social space throughout campus—including the College Lamont Cafe, the New College Theater, and the new Dance Center—as evidence of a widening “center” of campus, which will encourage students to become more mobile.

The move to Hilles will also free up space in the basements of the freshman dormitories. The administrators on the CCL say they will renovate these areas in order to provide more social space for freshman, according to McLoughlin.

“I am excited that we can offer first year students with more social space like common rooms and other places to program and come together, outside of their rooms,” McLoughlin wrote.

The CCL also discussed the increasing need for campus-wide social activities. Student members discussed an upcoming proposal to revamp the criteria for giving grants from the Student Activities Fund (SAF), which is administered jointly by the UC and the Dean’s office and supports non-alcoholic social events.

At their next meeting, the CCL will discuss whether or not the $15,000 available should fund more larger-scale community-building events sponsored by multiple groups, rather than smaller student group gatherings.

“The primary focus is going to be how to make sure that student groups can come together and throw big events and have a substantial pot of money to draw from,” Gadgil said.

The CCL also said it will consider applications for recognition by new student groups three times a year instead of at every meeting, in order to create more time for other issues, according to Kidd.

Kidd also updated the CCL on the College’s decision to reaffirm its policy of reserving official recognition of student organizations to those that are open to all students.

She said the College is no longer considering the multi-tiered system of recognition for student groups proposed last spring. Such a system would have granted partial recognition to exclusive groups, such as final clubs. However, Kidd said the College will actively initiate an effort to reach out to final clubs.

“Because they are our students, I think men’s and women’s social clubs deserve our attention. However, I do not, at present, feel that recognition of social clubs is something the College should do,” Kidd wrote.

—Staff writer Liz C. Goodwin can be reached at goodwin@fas.harvard.edu
—Staff writer Nicole B. Urken can be reached at urken@fas.harvard.edu.