Senior Gift Benefits Future Students

To the editors:

Sadly, Alex F. Rubalcava ’02 (Column, “Debunking the Senior Gift,” Feb. 27) has once again proposed the same old, tired reason that many undergraduates do not give to Senior Gift: some sort of complaint with the Harvard administration. For years, Senior Gift has been a victim of the argument that there are “better charities” more deserving of a Harvard undergraduate’s money (although, I must admit that Princeton is a new one to me).

These students, including Rubalcava, are missing the point. I prefer to view the Senior Gift as a way to say “thank you” to all of those Harvard alumni who made our education possible. The tuition that students pay doesn’t even come close to what it costs for a student to attend the University, and some students don’t pay at all.

Rubalcava refers to “a few outstanding professors, my peers...my extracurriculars and Eliot House” as the reasons why he loves Harvard. Would any of them have been possible without alumni support for professorship endowments, financial aid, student groups and the Houses? It comes from giving alumni who remember their college years with fondness and want the same for the students of today. These alumni aren’t giving to the administration—they are giving to the students.

You can be as (irrationally) angry with the administration as you like, but by denying those gifts, we aren’t hurting the administration—we’re hurting the students of tomorrow and insulting the already generous alumni of today.

Rachel L. Brown ’01

Feb. 27, 2002

The writer was a senior class marshal.