House Masters Approve UC SIP

House Masters removed the final barrier to the Undergraduate Council’s Student Initiated Programs fund, voting last week in favor of the program that will provide students with grants for beer and wine at public parties.

The SIP marks the first time that the UC will fund alcohol since the dissolution of the party grants program in the fall of 2007.

At the time, administrators expressed concerns of liability with unsupervised student drinking. The UC has since designed the new fund after conversations with House Masters and the administration established a series of precautions that address the liability concerns.

The events will be limited to 100 attendees and will be held in House common spaces. Of the typical $400 SIP grant, $180 will be earmarked for a Beverage Authorization Team that will oversee distribution of alcohol at the event.

The SIP is part of the current UC’s priority to review and improve social life at Harvard. UC President Johnny F. Bowman ’11 said the fund will allow students who are not affiliated with specific student groups or House Councils to get involved in planning social events.

But even after two pilot events held last spring in Quincy and Pforzheimer,  SIP retains a low profile on campus.

In last spring’s UC student survey, nearly half of all respondents indicated that they had not heard of the program.

And even as SIP expands to all houses, the fund will start small. According to UC Student Initiatives Committee Chair David Gonzalez ’11, the committee hopes to provide funding for five events each semester, for a total of $4,000 in grants this academic year.

SIC will vote to allocate this sum from its budget this week, and the full council will consider the fund at the next general meeting on Sunday. Gonzalez said that he expects the grant application to go live by early next week.

Since last spring’s pilots, SIC has worked with College officials to fine-tune the SIP policies, including removing a $400 charge on the Houses to provide for a HUPD detail.

“The UC can now shoulder the entire financial burden on its own,” Gonzalez said. “That was instrumental in getting it past the House Masters.”

But because the program requires the use of House public spaces and affiliation with the hosting house, each House Master has the ultimate control over whether SIP events will occur in the house.

“I’m expecting that we’ll have some resistance,” UC Vice President Eric N. Hysen ’11 said. Hysen said that he hopes successful events will encourage more House Masters to host UC-funded parties.

But Hysen also expressed caution about the impact of the new fund.

“No one thinks this is the easy answer to social life,” he said.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu