Largely through its Student Activities Fund (SAF), a $25,000 trust controlled by the Office of the Dean, the College has funneled thousands of dollars towards funding big-name acts like Bob Dylan, Busta Rhymes, and comedian Jim Breuer.

Under then-Harvard Concert Commission (HCC) chair Justin H. Haan ’05, who is also a Crimson editor, the Undergraduate Council (UC) sponsored a free Busta Rhymes concert last spring that cost the administration and the UC $20,000 each.

This spring, the College shelled out over $10,000 for Springfest and its Afterparty. The Afterparty, a new addition to the annual spring fair, along with Pub Nights marked a continuing shift toward financially supporting events with alcohol, since both had beer for of-age attendees.

The administration also plans to make the fall Activities Fair more enticing and social by featuring student bands and barbecue fare.

And in October 2004, the College created a new position expressly to expand campus-wide social opportunities when it appointed Zachary A Corker ’04 as special assistant to the dean for social programming.

Corker, who has worked to coordinate events including the Harvard-Yale tailgate, two dodgeball tournaments, and Pub Nights, will stay on at the Office of Student Activities (OSA) next year to oversee Pub Nights and help plan Loker’s conversion.

“It speaks to how interested the Dean’s Office is in improving campus life,” Corker says of tentative plans to construct a permanent pub.

Buoyed by Corker’s success this year, the College has made his role as “fun czar” a more permanent fixture in University Hall, with Haan filling the post next year.

“My department is right now the fastest growing one in the College, with the addition of two full-time staff members—Justin and Zac—for the next academic year,” Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd writes of the OSA in an e-mail.

The unprecedented administrative focus on social life this year has yielded a range of new events and an expanding staff to facilitate them. But these efforts, while well-intentioned, may be misdirected, both in the less-than-stellar success of many of the initiatives and in the continuing inattention to limitations on informal student-organized social activities.

PARTY PLANNING

The balance between supporting social life and actually creating it has proved difficult to achieve.

Many, including students and Corker, believe that the onus is on students to improve campus options for socializing.

“Social life is in the province of students,” Corker says. “We need to empower them more to get what they want.”

HCC Chair Jack P. McCambridge ’06 also says that students should ultimately be planning the events.