Seniors Split Over Gift Plans

The debate surrounding divestment from PetroChina has taken some unusual turns this week among seniors.

Though most seniors can agree that they would like to protest the genocide in Darfur, and that they would like to support their class upon graduation, they now have three different campaigns to which they can donate—Senior Gift, Senior Gift Plus, and Senior Gift Plus Plus.

And the third option—a farcical site launched explicitly to satirize the divestment effort of two seniors—has sparked discontent among students in the Black Students Association (BSA) who claim that the site is implicitly racist and insensitive to the genocide in the Sudan.

These factors combined have spurred concern among seniors that the unusual rift over the traditional graduation gift to Harvard may prove divisive.

SENIOR SCHISM

The debate began almost two weeks ago when Matthew W. Mahan ’05 and Brandon M. Terry ’05 decided to take a stand against Harvard’s recently-increased investment in PetroChina—a Chinese oil company which has purchased the rights to drill in the southern Sudan and has ties to a Sudanese government linked to the genocide in Darfur—by taking aim at the Senior Gift campaign.

Mahan and Terry asked seniors in an open letter published in a Feb. 24 advertisement in The Crimson urging seniors to refrain from donating to the Senior Gift campaign, which raises funds for the Harvard College Fund or future undergraduate financial aid.

Their letter sparked immediate tension, with the officers of the Senior Gift Campaign saying that PetroChina and the Senior Gift were unrelated.

Mahan and Terry shortly thereafter switched their strategy. Instead of encouraging people not to donate, they asked seniors to contribute to an alternative campaign—Senior Gift Plus, via a website Mahan and Terry set up, seniorgiftplus.com.

Senior Gift Plus would place student donations in a separate account with Bank of America until Oct. 25, 2005.

If Harvard divests by then, the money will go to the College Fund, Mahan said.

Otherwise, Mahan and Terry said that they plan to donate those funds to the Kennedy School of Government’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

“We feel that giving to the Carr Center is an appropriate response to genocide, while still keeping the money in the Harvard community,” Mahan said.

None of the senior gift money is invested directly by the management company, but Terry said that donation to the Senior Gift Plus campaign will send a symbolic message to the Harvard Management Company (HMC), which invests Harvard’s endowment.

And Terry and Mahan insist that senior gifts can influence HMC decisions about adjustments to endowment payouts.

“The refusal to divest says that we care more about making the return on four million dollars than about genocide.” Terry said. “It’s all about money, and that’s offensive.”

Fourteen student organizations have endorsed the Senior Gift Plus campaign, according to seniorgiftplus.com, including the Harvard College Democrats, and the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA).

Another group that endorsed the Senior Gift Plus was the BSA, whose executive board voted this week on the matter.

“We thought it was an issue that we needed to address because it dealt specifically with black Africans,” BSA president Lawrence E. Adjah ’06 said.

THE RESPONSE

But not all students agreed with Mahan and Terry’s strategy for demanding divestment from PetroChina.

According to Senior Gift Spokeswoman Jessica E. Vascellaro ’05, who is also a Crimson editor, the senior gift is separate from the general endowment, and endowment payout decisions are not affected by the Senior Gift.

She added that the money in the fund is therefore not going to PetroChina.

Senior Gift chairs declined to comment on the situation, referring all requests to Vascellaro.

But a group of seniors not involved in the Senior Gift campaign, led by Daniel E. Kafie ’05, decided to mock Mahan and Terry’s strategies, setting up a parody website, seniorgiftplusplus.com, last weekend.

The website, which deliberately imitates the layout of the seniorgiftplus.com is openly critical of Mahan and Terry, and accuses them of trying to “hijack” the Senior Gift.

And the website offers seniors yet another avenue for donations—while it links to the original Senior Gift site, it also links to the donation page of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a charity that aids refugees worldwide.

In addition, seniorgiftplusplus.com sells T-shirts mocking the Senior Gift Plus campaign and pledges that profits from those sales will go to the IRC as well.

Kafie emphasized that by setting up seniorgiftplusplus.com, he intended to mock Mahan and Terry’s strategy for protesting PetroChina and the genocide in Darfur but not their humanitarian aims.

“At the end of the day, it’s a very serious message we’re trying to get across,” Kafie said. “We’re trying to show how Senior Gift Plus and the Mahan/Terry campaign has oversimplified something as complex and hard as genocide and divestment.”

While Kafie said that the Senior Gift Plus Plus is entirely separate from the Senior Gift campaign, he said that the space to host the website had been purchased from a Senior Gift Associates Chair, Nicholas F.M. Josefowitz ’05, who is also a Crimson editor.

But Kafie said that neither Josefowitz nor any other officers of the Senior Gift campaign were involved in the planning of the website. “He sold me the webspace because I needed some, but he has no involvement,” Kafie said.

THE FARCE OFFENDS

Included in the parody site was a quotation from an email BSA Publicity Chair Nneke C. Eze ’07 sent to Kafie. Underneath, Kafie posted a response, which included a statement that Eze seemed “brainwashed,”

Eze, who is a member of the executive board of BSA, said that the quotation was lifted from a personal e-mail to Kafie asking him to take down seniorgiftplusplus.com, and that the content of her e-mail had been altered to make her writing seem ungrammatical.

And Adjah said last night that many other members of the BSA had been offended by the callous tone and remarks on the Senior Gift Plus Plus website.

In particular, Adjah said students were offended by Section 18 of the causes page, which reads: “18. Demand that the war on grade inflation is halted and reparations are paid to the student body.”

Adjah wrote in an e-mail that this section referenced both the remarks of Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, which linked grade inflation at Harvard in part to an increase in minority recruiting, and to reparation payments made to freed African-Americans after the Civil War, and was implicitly racist.

Furthermore, Adjah said that the entire website demeaned the suffering of the Darfur refugees. “Many people believed that elements of the site had a number of racist undertones as evidenced in examples such as causes #18,” Adjah wrote in an e-mail.

But Kafie said that he thought that Adjah and Eze were overanalyzing the site.

“That is utterly ridiculous. The word ‘reparations’ is a common English word used to indicate payment for a wrong,” Kafie wrote in an e-mail. “It can be and has been used in many contexts—including ours—that have nothing to do with race.”

Adjah added that he thought seniorgiftplusplus.com was insincere in its goals of supporting Darfur refugees.

“The sad truth is that if [Senior Gift Plus] did not exist, these same members would not have dedicated even a minute fraction of the amount of energy to create a site or do anything related to those black Africans dying in Darfur—parody is not a buffer for insult,” Adjah wrote in an e-mail.

A CLASS DIVIDED?

With or without the BSA’s complaints, students have voiced concerns that the Senior Gift, Senior Gift Plus, and now Senior Gift Plus Plus campaigns are dividing the senior class.

Karin C. Shieh ’05, Adams House Representative on the Senior Class Committee said that she feels that the Senior Gift Plus campaign detracts from the work of the Senior Gift house representatives, which includes promoting class spirit.

“I feel like divestment is a great cause to work towards, but I feel that senior gift is not the right target for it. These are two separate issues,” Shieh said.

But Mahan said that Senior Gift Plus does not diminish class spirit, and he said that he thinks it will not affect long term giving rates of the Class of 2005.

“We are supporters of Harvard, and we will be lifelong supporters,” Mahan said.

“They want to train seniors for a culture of giving, while we want to train seniors in critical thinking about giving to institutions,” he added.

Vascellaro mentioned that last year an alternative senior gift was proposed, but the campaign was much less organized than Mahan and Terry’s.

“They’ve used our structure to some degree and that distinguishes them from past alternative campaigns,” she said.

But Vascellaro is doubtful that there will be any long-term effect of this year’s Senior Gift Plus campaign. By the time of the kickoff dinner, the campaign had already raised $11,000 and some houses had already exceeded a 10 percent participation rate.

“I don’t think it will hurt our class in the long run,” Vascellaro said.

—Staff writer Joshua P. Rogers can be reached at jprogers@fas.harvard.edu.