Senior Gift is Apolitical

WITH Commencement approaching, the spring of 1988 has once again introduced a senior class to the annual dispute created over contributions to its alma mater. As in past years, the Endowment for Divestiture, founded in 1983, has publicly fashioned itself as the proper alternative to the Senior Gift for Undergraduate Education. Why? E4D claims that the two funds are mutually exclusive, on account of what they perceive to be the political nature of the Class Gift.

As Jonathan Martin, the Co-Chairman of E4D, explains it, seniors who donate to the Class Gift are "implicitly benefiting the immorally invested endowment," because the money seniors give to the Class Gift obviates the necessity to withdraw such money from the endowment. Their argument would have it that anyone who contributes to the Class Gift is passively supporting University investment policies.

Nonsense. This reasoning is disingenuous, both in theory and practice. The operating budget of each of the schools within Harvard University is made up primarily of funds from the endowment's interest, government grants, tuition, and annual contributions. All these sources play a crucial role in maintaining the fiscal health of each school, and all are interconnected.

However, it is a logical fallacy to argue that support for one area implies tacit support for the others. Should someone who does not give to the Senior Gift be held culpable for a subsequent increase in tuition? I think not. On the contrary, a donation to the Class gift is an individual recognition of the necessity for annual giving and a pledge to further that cause.

THE Senior Gift for Undergraduate ate Education, none of which is invested in the endowment, was created so that seniors could contribute directly to the undergraduate budget. Seniors can target their gifts for scholarships--which directly benefit over 70 percent of undergraduates through loans, work/study, and especially grants, or for general use, which helps pay for other undergraduate expenses such as athletics, intramurals, faculty salaries, and maintenance of the House system and libraries. A donation to the Class Gift is a positive contribution to help ensure that future undergraduates have access to the same types of undergraduate programs and activities that we have enjoyed at Harvard-Radcliffe, regardless of their financial means. Unlike E4D's funds, donations to the Class Gift have an immediate and meaningful impact on undergraduate education.

E4D's logic would lead one to the conclusion that although the Class Gift itself is immoral, an effort to raise money for a Class of 1988 Bench would be apropos, since the money would not affect the College budget. But it is the very nature of the Senior Gift--the fact that the money goes directly into next year's operating budget to be spent on undergraduate programs--that makes its existence and our support for it so important.

Therefore, the so-called political nature of the Class Gift is not inherent but contrived, through the formation of E4D itself. E4D's assumption that one less dollar in the College operating fund corresponds to a like decrease in the endowment does not warrant the inverted conclusion that a senior's gift to the College is an explicit expression of approval for the endowment. Each senior's gift to Harvard-Radcliffe is important and valid in itself, as a direct contribution to the school, beyond the political concerns surrounding the endowment. This is the unifying quality of the Senior Gift.

FURTHERMORE, E4D's very supposition that decreased annual giving will automatically lead the administration to make up the difference through the endowment falls in the face of budgetary reality. Much as this scenario would excite any administrator, budgets simply do not work in this fashion. Each year the University determines the "payout"--that portion of the endowment's interest that will fund each school's budget. If the amount given to the College in a given year falls, it's not as if the endowment fairy is going to drop extra money on Dean Spence's desk to cover all the programs and activities on the undergraduate level. The endowment's principal is protected, and its interest is hardly unlimited.

Each of Harvard's different schools compete for the limited amount of endowment funds that are not tied up for specific purposes, such as funding professorships or book funds. Many programs that we consider integral party of undergraduate life are considered discretionary, and would not rank high among University priorities when compared to requests by the other schools. Contributing directly to undergraduate education ensures that the money to fund a 20 percent student participation rate in varsity athletics or professional dramatic productions will be available to the next generation of students. When the money's not there, it's the program, not the endowment, that suffers.

WHILE E4D's leaders are imploring seniors to give only to E4D, I cannot help but wonder what its agents are thinking. Suffice it to say that there are many members of the E4D staff who are also soliciting for the Class Gift. They correctly see no barrier to working for or donating to both funds; they perceive the Class Gift to be an apolitical gift, not an endorsement of the endowment. They reserve their political statements for donations to E4D.

The plain fact that there are representatives of E4D that are working on the Senior Gift Campaign ought to repudiate any claims that donating to the two organizations is theoretically inconsistent. In fact, E4D's own solicitation literature, written in its year of inception, instructs its agents that "if a senior insists on contributing to the Senior Gift, then suggest that he or she contribute to both funds." E4D leaders ought to get their story straight.

So, what of all of this? The point remains that giving to the Senior Gift was never a political statement and has not become one with the formation of E4D. This is not a choice between two funds with similar ends and different means. The ends themselves are different, and those seniors who are working on both campaigns recognize that the two are not mutually exclusive. As a Co-Chair of the Class Gift, I encourage all seniors who believe in divestment to donate to E4D. But I also encourage every member of the Class of 1988, regardless of political persuasion, to give to the Class Gift, and help future undergraduate live and afford the undergraduate experience that we have shared here at Harvard-Radcliffe.

Thomas D. Warren '88, is Co-chair of the 1988 Senior Gift for Undergraduate Education and an affiliate of Lowell House.