I didn’t mind the multiple emails, and I was only mildly annoyed by the half-dozen postcards stuffed in my mailbox. But when representatives from the Boston University Legacy Fund began calling my cell phone (during peak hours, no less) soliciting for donations last week, I began to consider filing a restraining order against my soon-to-be alma mater.
In their emails, postcards and phone calls, the solicitors have asked each senior to donate in the name of a professor or mentor who has had a positive effect on his or her college career with the donations funding research programs, scholarships and facility improvements.
While I can’t help but see the fund’s advantages, I simultaneously think these solicitors are wasting their stamps and phone calls. Ideally, with less than 90 days left in the semester, the senior class should consider giving something back to BU before we graduate. However, how can we be expected to part with money when we are just a few weeks away from entry-level jobs, or worse, unemployment? And for those seniors who do have jobs lined up, with the current economy and high unemployment rates, many will be lucky if their first year’s salaries are a fraction of the $140,000 they have borrowed or paid for BU over the last four years.
Moreover, while it is noble for BU to ask us to donate money in the name of our favorite professor or mentor, our donations will in no way directly benefit them. Instead of buying Professor X a new scanner for his office in the English Department, or purchasing a new DVD player for Professor Y, or changing the basement of the Psychology Department from screaming-ugly fluorescent orange to a more soothing taupe, the donations will go to help BU reach its $100 million dollar endowment increase goal for 2003.
Additionally, we haven’t even graduated yet and BU is already asking us seniors, as alumni, for money. An alumnus, as defined by Webster’s, is someone who is a ‘graduate or former student of a school, college or university.’ And sure, while at home I am used to my parents being interrupted on a daily basis during dinner by a alumni fundraising committees from one of the colleges or graduate schools they attended whether it be Boston College, Northeastern University, Babson College or Lesley College since I am still enrolled at Boston University and still a few months away from being an official alumnus, I, along with many of my friends, didn’t expect BU to begin asking for donations already.
Also, many of us have just finished (or our parents have just finished) paying for our last semester of college and a very expensive semester at that (despite four years of generous tuition increases). For those whose parents have footed the $140,000 bill, the ink on their final payment did not even dry before BU began asking for more money. And for those who have funded their ridiculously expensive education themselves via loans and grants, BU picked the less than appropriate time right before seniors must begin paying off all those student loans to ask for donations.
While I’m sure the Legacy Fund has the best intentions, for most seniors, I surmise that this isn’t the best time to be asking us for more money. Besides the stress of paying tuition and trying to find jobs in a tight job market, the senior class incurs all the additional costs of graduation themselves. If we want to rent caps and gowns for graduation, participate in any activities during graduation week and have our diplomas framed and sent home for our parents to hang in the living room, we must pay BU for it.
The Legacy Fund and all of the other alumni fundraisers should give the class of 2003 time to graduate and find employment before they start hitting us up for more money (although they won’t). Right now, many of us can’t afford to or don’t care to make donations. For me, all I can afford to give back is that Sports Pass I never used, the paper fee I never needed, and the 24 meals I never ate in Myles the second semester of my sophomore year. And the only legacy I could afford right now is my initials hastily scratched into the door of the CAS ladies room.