College Reimburses HoCos for Tailgate

After paying all the bills for last November’s Harvard-Yale tailgate, the Office of Student Activities has decided to reimburse each House Committee (HoCo) $200 out of its original $300 investment in the event, according to an e-mail from Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II.

Each HoCo was asked in November to contribute $450 to purchasing beer from Budweiser, although $150 could be paid out of each HoCo’s stein club budget, which the Undergraduate Council (UC) funds.

While the HoCo money was given to the Dean’s office through the UC, the administration has decided to reimburse the HoCos directly.

Eliot HoCo treasurer Peter J. Harbison’ 06, who is also a Crimson editor, said that the additional $200 will make a significant difference in Eliot HoCo’s ability to sponsor events this spring, even though it constitutes only slightly more than one percent of its spring budget.

According to McLoughlin’s e-mail to HoCo chairs, the Office of Student Activites paid $21,409 for the tailgate and the UC contributed $11,116. In November, the UC voted to allocate $9,400 to the event, which included $450 donations from all 12 HoCos, and a $2,000 contribution from the Yale Dean’s Office.

Since the UC donated $1,716 more than it originally allocated in November, members will propose a bill to cover the difference, former UC President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 said.

“With the numbers given to us at the time, we made the best estimates we could,” Mahan said. “But we’ll have to ask for a slight bump in the allocation.”

Both Mahan and McLoughlin attributed the additional expense of Harvard-Yale to the unexpected cost of carbon dioxide tanks needed to pressurize the kegs.

The sale of around 3,500 $10 tickets to tailgaters who were not current Harvard or Yale undergraduates offset the rest of the expenses.

The College estimated in November that 2,000 people would purchase tickets, and the unexpectedly high attendance greatly increased the cost of providing food for all the tailgaters, McLoughlin said. The total cost for the event was $71,425.53.

“Major expenses [were] the HUDS barbecue ($28,829) and alcohol service and set-up ($19,899),” McLoughlin wrote in an e-mail. “Cleaning Ohiri Field on Sunday morning cost $6,109, just to pick up trash and remove all broken glass and furniture.”

The costs of cleaning were also unexpectedly high, according to McLoughlin. Furniture had to be broken down and removed and the turf had to be replaced where broken glass had been crushed in. But the cost of repairing the fields was still significantly less the $50,000 spent in 2002 when the tailgates were at Cumnock Fields. The expense of replacing the grass after vehicles drove on the field in 2002 prompted this year’s prohibition of U-hauls and restriction on cars at the tailgate.

The College did not anticipated the difficulties associated with planning the 2004 festivities, according to McLoughlin, and so did not account for the cost of the tailgate in the annual budget. Instead, it allocated money out of the dean’s discretionary fund.

“The discretionary funds are not bottomless,” McLoughlin said. “In the future, we might try to hold this as a break-even event.”

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.