Harvard Senior Gift Adds to Video Frenzy

Harvard students just can’t get enough of that Old Spice commercial these days. Not only has Dunster spoofed it for their Housing Day vid, the senior gift video brigade also turned it into one of three clips urging seniors to each donate $10 to the annual senior gift fund.

Thankfully, Harvard takes a less manic (and emotionally scarring) approach to their senior gift videos than Yale did. A group of friendly-looking seniors rattle off some of the things we'd lose without the senior gift fund—did you know senior donations help fund financial aid, energy conservation research, free WiFi, study abroad programs, exercise machines with TVs at the MAC, the New College Theatre, and many wonderful features of the Queen’s Head Pub (like 25-cent wings)? Well, now you do.

The Old Spice parody mini-video features former Crimson President Maxwell L. Child ’10 standing in the Crimson Sanctum, telling fellow seniors that they have the power to make their wallets like his by giving a $10 donation. The only thing missing from Child’s monologue is a horse—check out the promo here.

For the more musically inclined, Samir J. Paul ’10 will serenade you with a beat-boxing performance, recorded in front of the Queen’s Head Pub. Look out for the continued wing motif in this one—the first word out of Paul’s mouth is “wing,” and there is a 25-cent wings sign adorning the wall behind him. Talk about product placement!

On the Harvard Senior Gift 2010 Facebook page, one other form of media was enlisted to generate enthusiasm: word clouds. Seniors were encouraged to use Wordle (its Web site calls it “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide") to create nostalgia-inducing Wordle representations of why they chose to give to the fund.

The final video features On Harvard Time founder and former anchor Derek M. Flanzraich ’10 chilling in a theatre on his laptop, convincingly arguing that if seniors give ten bucks they’ll get free internet. Good deal, right? While he mentions that the two might not be causally related, giving a ten is still the ethical thing to do: if you “don’t give ten bucks you’ll probably still get free internet…but you might feel guilty about it.”  Sound logic, indeed.

Photo courtesy of Harvard Class of 2010.