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In an age in which the President of the United States can sell time-shares in the White House, is nothing sacred?

No. And neither is the Crimson and Ivy Yard immune to this age of ribbon-cutting and commemorative plaques for large contributors.

Just in recent times, Harvard students have seen the sacred North House become Pho-Ho and their beloved butter-covered Union become the Barker Center for Humanities.

But what is the logical next step in this madness? Nothing short of renaming the University.

In an intensive 96-hour investigation, The Crimson has attempted to determine how much. How much money would it take to rename Harvard University?

How We Got Here

The best place to start in such hard-hitting analysis is with John Harvard's original donation.

According to University Archives, Harvard University was named for John Harvard in 1638, after he bequeathed half of his estate and a 400-volume library to the College.

At the time, the bequest was valued at 800 pounds by Mass. Gov. John Winthrop, according to University archives. How many cows that bought you, I am not sure. But consulting the British Consumer Price Index (a measure of the nation's inflation) from 1650 to 1990, we find that the gift is comparable to 200,000 pounds, or about $360,000. That's not a lot.

It may be more accurate, however, to look at what portion of the College's endowment Harvard donated. With an endowment of only 400 pounds at the time, Harvard's gift nearly tripled the College's net worth.

Doing little more than extrapolating to the current-day and applying an advanced econometric formula, we determine that tripling our $9.1 billion endowment would mean that adding another measly donation of $18.2 billion could get the University named after you. Interesting.

History, Myths and Legends

The Crimson Investigative Committee on Historical Perspective and Analysis (CICHPA) has uncovered information regarding the renaming of another university which cuts right to the heart of this serious matter.

In the winter of 1924, James B. Duke offered $6,000,000 to Trinity College if it would rename itself. Trinity accepted the offer, and we know it today as Duke University, which was ranked sixth by U.S. News and World Report in its annual ranking of colleges this year. Intriguing.

Legend states that Duke offered the gift to Princeton University if its trustees would agree to change the school's name. They refused this offer, but Trinity accepted.

How does this newly-revealed information help us solve our terrible conundrum?

Using the U.S. CPI, $6,000,000 in 1924 has the same purchasing power as $52,333,955.39 in 1995. We must note, however, that critics of the CPI argue that it overstates inflation. Considering the overwhelming importance of our calculations, we must understand the error that accompanies them.

Is $52 million enough? Certainly not. If Princeton turned it down, it is unlikely that Harvard would accept. According to the U.S. News rankings, Harvard is inferior to Princeton. Taking this into account, we maintain that although $52 million is certainly not enough, we might not demand as much as the Tigers.

Putting it in Perspective

To fully understand the issue, we must elucidate the large sums of money of which we speak.

To make this as clear as possible, the CICHPA has, of course, referenced these figures to the Gross Domestic Product of various small countries.

The total GDPs of Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia combine to yield little more than 75 percent of the current endowment.

The Barker Center for the Humanities was named for Robert Barker after a donation of $25 million. Fewer than 40 comparable buildings can be named using the entire GDP of Mozambique.

The endowment is a large sum of money. One must certainly account for the considerable wealth of the University when making such important judgments.

Another Crack At It

How much would the University lose by changing its name?

Harvard counts on its name-recognition when fundraising. Without the name, it is likely that many of these donations would soon dry up.

These donations are certainly not insignificant. Averaging almost $400 million in gifts each year, Harvard is one of the largest non-profit fund-raisers in the nation.

To change the University's name, the interest on a renaming gift must at least cover the loss in donations each year.

Assuming an average annual return of 5 percent, a gift of $8 billion should cover all losses in annual donations to the University.

But is this enough?

Altering the University's name will surely be accompanied by the loss of the value associated with the name "Harvard."

It is popularly accepted that Harvard has the second best brand name recognition in the world, according to University Campaign Consultant Philip J. Parsons.

The first is none other than Coca Cola.

"Coca Cola is the key," Parsons says, pondering the issue.

Indeed, Coke is it!

Although this connection is probably intuitively apparent, let us explain.

It may be difficult to calculate the value of the Harvard name, but it may be easier to extrapolate that value from Coca Cola.

Further exploring the link between this carbonated beverage company and our institution of higher learning, we find that while we are a global university, Coca Cola (Stock Symbol KO) is a global corporation.

Both certainly have global brand-name recognition.

Coca Cola's total market value is $131 billion, according to data from its annual report.

Assuming that name-recognized corporations which rank second are valued at 85 percent of the value of the first-ranked corporation, we invoke the never-seen-before 85 percent rule.

We therefore postulate that the value inherent in Harvard's name is $115 billion.

Using the aforementioned highly sophisticated (arbitrary) formulaic procedure, the total estimated value of a gift to rename the University, given the scarcity of previous calculations of this nature, would be the $8 billion due to loss of donations combined with the total value of $115 billion inherent in the Harvard name, yielding a grand total of:

$123 billion.

Now that's a lot of money.

Other Possibilities

Although we do not want to invalidate the above estimate, there have been several ideas on how the calculations could be altered.

For example, some of the $123 billion could be offset by selling to a third party the complete rights to the Harvard name.

The donor could sell these rights to another college which may be struggling with fund-raising.

But since the name might be too expensive for these fictitious struggling schools, it might be better to sell the name to the private sector, Parsons speculates.

Indeed, this is a valiant idea. An entire Harvard industry could be born.

Can it Happen?

Well, that depends on who you ask and who you believe.

"I don't believe the President and Fellows of Harvard College would approve of a name change for any amount of money," says outgoing Provost Albert Carnesale.

Carnesale says that protecting the Harvard name is of the utmost importance.

"[When I think of] the things that I've been able to do" as a Harvard professor, dean and provost, "passing that on would be more valuable than any pile of money," Carnesale says.

"There is not enough money," agrees Elizabeth C. "Beppie" Huidekoper, vice president of finance.

Huidekoper does, however, mention the possibility of renaming the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Former president Derek C. Bok says, however, that some things will always remain sacred.

"There are some things even in today's world, even if economists say you can put a price on everything, that I couldn't [put a price on]. I can only say that if there is a price to rename Harvard, I haven't thought of it," he says.

But other faculty and administrators aren't as sure about the lack of possibilities for renaming the University.

Some faculty think that nothing could change the marketability of Harvard University, even changing its name.

"If Bill Gates wanted to double the endowment in exchange for naming it Harvard-Gates University, I'd take it. It would be like taking money for nothing really," says outgoing Dean of Undergraduate Education David Pillbeam.

Bill Gates, a member of the class of 1977 and the richest person in the nation, did not respond to repeated e-mails and faxes.

Georgia N. Alexakis, Caitlin E. Anderson, Andrew S. Chang, Matthew W. Granade, Adam S. Hickey, Justin D. Lerer, Karen M. Paik and Elizabeth S. Zuckerman and all members of the CICHPA took time from working on real articles to contribute to the reporting of this "story."