We have a lot to congratulate ourselves about here at Tufts, and we often do. One statistic that is often ignored, however, and that requires more introspection, is our alumni giving rate. US News and World Report, which provides statistics for various colleges and universities across the country, reveals that the alumni giving rate at Tufts is 23 percent. For private institutions of higher learning, particularly among Tufts' peers, this number falls short. In comparison, Brown's alumni giving rate is 40 percent, University of Pennsylvania's is 38 percent and Dartmouth's is 53 percent. Tufts considers these schools its "peer" institutions in terms of academic rigor and types of applicants, yet they significantly outperform us in terms of alumni giving rates. Why are their alumni so much more willing to give back to their school than those from Tufts?
Clearly, statistics should be taken with a grain of salt. High alumni giving rates reflect not only how many alumni are willing to give back of their own accord, but how aggressively schools reach out to their alumni pool for donations. Alumni giving rates aren't the only measure of student satisfaction, but it is safe to say that they are at least one criterion, particularly at private institutions, which rely more upon donations than do public institutions. And because, at least from my experience, there are students at Tufts who would hasten to agree that a cohesive sense of school spirit is lacking at our university, low alumni giving rates provide a talking point as to whether students graduate from Tufts feeling dissatisfied, and what can be done to change these sentiments.
As a soon-to-be Tufts alumna, I don't know that I am or ever will be prepared to donate to my school. It's not that I didn't have a fantastic experience here, didn't feel intellectually challenged by my peers and professors or wasn't provided with the learning opportunities I had hoped for; it's that I don't know how much the administration cares about my donation. Alumni donate to the Tufts endowment, and theoretically, this means that a large share of the endowment belongs to the alumni community. But Tufts doesn't seem to agree with my logic. At a Board of Trustees lunch held on Feb. 6, Peter Dolan, vice chair of the Board of Trustees, openly opposed the inclusion of alumni on the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, according to a Feb. 9 article in the Daily entitled "Trustees approve expenditures, renovations." The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility is a committee currently composed of just three undergraduates who are supposed to advise the Board of Trustees (which oversees our endowment) on shareholder issues. If alumni donations comprise a significant part of the endowment, why does Mr. Dolan oppose their input? Because, as he stated in the article, "The trustees by and large are alumni. We already have quite significant representation from alumni as we think about some of these issues."
Agreed: many of the trustees are alumni. Also agreed: much of the endowment is made up of very large donations from very wealthy alumni. But to say that these type of alumni "represent" alumni like me, who are just beginning their professional careers and don't have thousands of dollars to donate but might still love their school, to me blatantly says that Tufts only cares about its alumni who have a lot of money to spend.
Of course, money talks. I'm not so idealistic as to think that small donations from recent graduates are singlehandedly propping up our approximately $1 billion endowment. But recent graduates spend time developing their professional careers; if Tufts has taught us well, we rise through the ranks and we become successful. And when we consider who we want to give back to, we're not going to give back to communities that didn't support us when we had less capital to bargain with.
US News and World Report calculates alumni giving rates by dividing the number of donors for that year by the number of alumni on record. Therefore, a school can meet its fundraising goals by only reaching out to a small number of alumni with deep pockets, which seems to be the case at Tufts. This comes from a school that claims in its vision statement that it wants to "foster an attitude of 'giving back,' an understanding that active citizen participation is essential to freedom and democracy." Tufts' attitude toward alumni fundraising may meet our financial needs, but as an institution of higher learning, Tufts has a responsibility not just to profit maximization, but to community values.
It's up to the Tufts administration to prove that it cares about every member of its community, regardless of his or her monetary worth. We aren't walking dollar signs; we're individuals who are motivated, engaged and brilliant regardless of how much money we have to give. The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility is a fantastic opportunity for the Tufts administration to engage in a two-way dialogue with its students, many of whom feel that their voices and concerns are going unheard. And it's not just students who are feeling increasingly dissatisfied -- alumni have begun to mobilize as well. The Tufts Progressive Alumni Network was founded in 2004 partly in response to alumni concerns that the administration wasn't representing their interests.
In my experience with Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility (STIR), Tufts students do care about their school, which is precisely why they want to share their input on matters that affect them. When something goes wrong, as in the case of our $20 million loss to Bernie Madoff, students don't necessarily hold the administration responsible. But they do value transparency and want to know how the administration has learned from its mistakes. Students understand that Tufts is a partial owner in the companies we've invested our endowment in, and they want Tufts to use that power responsibly.
This isn't about pulling our money out of big corporations haphazardly and compromising Tufts' financial security in the name of carefree optimism. This is about the administration proving to its students -- particularly those who are almost out the door and unsure about whether they ever want to look back -- that they really do value our input on matters that directly concern us.
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Nadia Eghbal is a senior majoring in political science and environmental studies. She is a founding member of STIR.
