The Harvard Undergraduate Council continues to make grants of $100 or more that can be spent on alcohol at student parties despite a dean's order to stop funding alcohol purchases on in-dorm events, Bloomberg News reported Oct. 15.

The grant program began in 2003 as part of an initiative to improve student social activities that also included the opening of an on-campus pub. But new Harvard interim dean David Pilbeam recently announced a cutoff in funding for parties.

"It is quite apparent that the UC Party Grant program, in practice, has funded parties where the focus is on drinking," Pilbeam said in a letter to council leaders. "The UC Party Grant program is at odds with the message that students, parents, faculty and administrative leaders of this community should be sending about responsible and safe alcohol use."

"The fact that the school was actually paying for unsupervised drinking is simply stupid and shouldn't have been happening in the first place," said David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together and the chief investigator of the federally funded Youth Alcohol Prevention Center at Boston University's School of Public Health. "Kids have far too easy access to alcohol as it is, and they didn't need their university's help to get it."

But Harvard Undergraduate Council president Ryan Petersen said the panel would continue to make the grants. "That money is our money," Petersen said. "The allocation of funds is completely the decision of the Undergraduate Council."

The indictment of a pair of officials at Rider University in New Jersey stemming from a student's alcohol-related death has prompted greater concern about sanctioned drinking on college campuses. Rosenbloom said that more schools are moving toward a "total hands-off view toward student drinking."

The Party Grants are funded by a $75 optional activity fee charged to Harvard students; between $30,000 and $51,000 in grants for parties are awarded annually.