Chairs of Senior Gift Committe Named

The annual Harvard rite of passage where seniors dig a bit deeper into their weary wallets to leave a gift to the University began last week, as the chairs of the Senior Gift Committee for the Class of 2001 were announced.

Matthew L. Getman '01 of Kirkland House and Vanessa I. Rosado '01 of Eliot House were announced last week as the Senior Gift Committee (SGC) chairs in a full-page Crimson advertisement.

Working with First Class Marshal Amma Ghartey-Tagoe '01 and the Harvard Development Office, they will coordinate members of the senior gift committee in each of the Houses who solicit contributions.

Getman and Rosado have not set a monetary goal, but have set a participation target of 65 percent, above the 1990s' average rate of approximately 60 percent.

An alternative senior gift fund will also solicit donations from seniors this year for charity, according to David B. Orr '01, a Cabot House senior who is one of the fund's organizers.

Students may earmark their donations to the Senior Gift for either financial aid or the College Fund, an unrestricted fund administered by the dean of the College.

Rosado said the gift represents "an opportunity for the senior class to thank the University and a way for us to help the undergrads coming after us."

This year's Senior Gift will not specially target wealthy students, organizers said.

Past class agents have stirred some controversy by offering perks to large donors. In 1999, the Leadership Gift Committee, a subgroup of the Senior Gift Committee, offered donors who gave over $250 an invitation to a New York cocktail party, which was widely regarded as an entrance into the well-connected Harvard network.

Although this was extended to any student who gave over $250, the committee targeted students for solicitation based on family wealth, fame and other factors and actively approached them for larger donations.

This year, all seniors have been offered equal incentives--a reception at the House of Blues and a library bookplate for donors who give $250 or more.

This year's alternative senior gift, which offers no such amenities, aims to send a message to the University with their gift.

"The purpose of the alternative senior gift is twofold. It provides people with an opportunity to come together as a class to support important causes, and it sends a message to Harvard that it has to earn our financial support and that its current policies and initiatives do not warrant the kind of gift we are being asked to give," Orr wrote in an e-mail message.

The funds raised will be given to a yet-to-be-determined charity.

The alternate gift is a relatively recent tradition.

It began in 1997, when Megan L. Peimer '97 and Ezra W. Reese '97 asked seniors to withhold their gifts from the college and place them in a privately held escrow fund to protest the University's tenure policies. The several thousand dollars raised will only be given to the University when it meets criteria for tenuring of female professors.

After three years without an alternative fund, the idea was revived in 2000, when Joshua A. Edelman '00 and Greg A. Novak '00 began collecting money to make a contribution to a charity of the class' choice. Novak and Edelman's program did not ask seniors to shun the traditional senior gift.

This year's senior gift chairs said they did not regard their relationship with the alternative senior gift as adversarial.

Rosado said the alternative fund "shows people's awareness of charity." Getman said that "in the long run, it can only help," by keeping the class involved in charitable giving.

Class gifts in the 1990s have averaged $37,600, with a wide deviation. The Class of 1998 gave $23,573, while the Class of 1999, the first to earmark their gift for a scholarship, gave $68,036.

The university's growing $19 billion endowment dwarfs the senior classes' contribution, but Getman stresses the importance of instilling "the concept of giving back," and Rosado terms the gift "money that really does benefit the future undergraduate population."