What does $20.07 mean to you? A pizza or two for a study group? A slow night’s bar tab? Two and a half dinners at Umphrey-Lee? Nope, $20.07 is the amount the school is asking us graduating seniors to give, every year, starting this year.
We’re reminded every day through spam in our overloaded inboxes that we’re almost dead last in terms of alumni support among our peer schools.
Scrolling through my inbox I can see the different tactics they have tried all year. Among the explanations of the secret $40 “graduation fee” I find appeals to our sense of school spirit and community, followed by attempted guilt trips that TCU alumni give at twice the rate we do, and finally outright bribes. If we give a gift this week we can be president for a day or win our very own commemorative pint glass! For a school that condones alcohol use among students, I’m glad to see Alumni are exempt. Maybe after I graduate I can enter to win a free iPod for every $100 I donate or my very own Peruna Shot Glass set.
Over the past year we have seen a few major gifts given to the university, including an amazing pair of $30,000,000 plus donations. One for the Meadows School of the Arts by the Meadows Foundation, which was lauded as the largest donation in school history by the Hunt Foundation; and a second, larger donation for Park Cities Plaza made earlier but quietly by Ray Hunt. It is with this in mind that many students roll their eyes when we get emails from the Young Alumni office begging us to give just a few dollars to poor old SMU.
We watch as our residence halls get turned into hospital look-a-likes, enormous nouveau-Georgian buildings are erected with minimal class space while Dedman College still packs students into night classes, and our tuition, fees and other charges continue to rise. Not to mention our campus police were seen last week puttering around on Segways. When SMU asks the students who are currently on campus to give money, we can see what our money is going to now. That doesn’t make us want to donate any money.
When I look around campus at previous class gifts, I see a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. The inspiring pillars on Hillcrest given by the class of 1918 are one of the big winners here. The eight inch tall cast-iron pony sitting in the lobby of Hughes-Trigg by the class of 1986 is a bit sad, and the several dozen or so trees sitting around campus with plaques underneath them win the minimal-effort award. But those are student-designated gifts. The school itself is lobbying for donations for the new Crum Basketball center, sure to be a big boon to all the members of the basketball teams while next year’s Political Science freshman will be sitting in Hyer Hall in plastic chairs with broken half-desks.
SMU is a great school and I will be proud to call it my Alma Mater. My professors were universally fantastic, staff likewise. My fellow students are certainly among the best in the world, of that I have no doubt. It’s just when we see a forest of construction cranes and new shrubs planted across campus and the university celebrating massive donations, we question just why we should give our own money, after paying over $100,000 for our four years here. So I ask myself the same question as SMU on its donation site. Why give?
About the writer:
Duncan Stanley is a senior political science major. He can be reached at [email protected].
