Every month around 10 new student groups come before the Committee on College Life (CCL) seeking the approval that grants them access to space and money provided by the College.

Almost 20 new groups have been approved since February, and, with over 300 different recognized extracurricular activities at the College, many have begun to wonder why the numbers keep growing.

Students have taken advantage of the newly simplified process toward recognition—after filling out an online form, meeting with an administrator to make sure the group meets the College’s basic requirements, all that is left is the final stamp of approval from the CCL, which meets once each month.

The needs and objectives of the accepted groups vary widely—ranging from groups like Harvard Lovers of the Garden State to the Harvard International Review.

“Each student group serves a distinctly different purpose,” says Undergraduate Council Student Affairs Committee Chair Aaron D. Chadbourne ’05. “But in having all of those groups, we need to make sure that recognition actually does mean something. When you do have so many groups, resources are scarce.”

Last spring, Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd called for the formation of the Sub-Committee on Harvard Student Organizations to discuss the growing number of groups, The sub-committee met for the first time in September.

The College also hired an intern this summer to put together a report on student organizations at 15 peer institutions.

The report allowed administrators to compare the Harvard system to others across the country and concluded that, on average, the schools had a similar ratio of students to student groups at Harvard.

The difference was in the method of approval of student groups. Many schools have a more stratified approval process, where access to various school resources is based on the level of recognition granted to a student organization.

At Brown, for example, student groups are placed into one of three categories, and only those on the top level of recognition are able to use funding from certain administrative sources.

“I changed my mind that sheer numbers were a problem,” Kidd says. “Instead, it is the specific way these groups are organized.”

One of the roles of the subcommittee is to discuss the possibility of instituting a tiered system with different levels of recognition for different types of groups. But Kidd says she “can’t imagine having more than two tiers.”

Right now, groups that don’t fit the single set of qualifications for

recognition cannot receive any benefits from the College—including the ability to reserve rooms, publicize on campus, use the Harvard name with their organization, access Harvard Box Office ticketing, or apply for University grants.

But with different categories of recognition, some of these benefits may be accessible to groups without full administrative sponsorship.