But Athena L.M. Lao ’12, a member of the undergraduate education working group, said in an interview two weeks ago that the administrative silence regarding the status of the committee’s work made her worry that perhaps student involvement had been discarded altogether.

“I’m just very confused about what’s going on and what point we are at in terms of deciding things,” Lao said. “I just want to hear something from them.”

Today, the undergraduate education working group—one of the two College committees—will meet for the first time as a separate entity to begin tackling the budget problem.

A member of a College working group—who requested to not be named in order to preserve relations with the University—said that a problem the committees must confront is the lack of detailed budgetary information necessary for the thoughtful drafting of recommendations.

“You will want to know how much things cost if you’re going to talk about them in any context,” said the individual, adding that the College committees have received “nothing, no number, no benchmarks.”

NOW YOU ‘SEAS’ US, NOW YOU DON’T

According to the planning Web site, a preexisting governance committee within SEAS is meant to double as that school’s working group, but some members of the “C-9” said they did not know about this new responsibility.

“Frankly, I wasn’t aware of this as a specific charge of this existing committee,” said engineering professor and C-9 member Robert D. Howe, who is listed as a SEAS working group member online.

Former interim SEAS Dean Frans A. Spaepen, who also serves on the C-9, said that budget-cut discussions “have not been part of the C-9 business so far.” But Howe said it is “conceivable” that the C-9’s intermittent budget discussions at meetings could be part of the working group’s agenda.

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.