Before becoming a much-reviled columnist, this writer had a previous life as a secretary at UCSD Student Affairs Development, serving a cheerful and capable man named Brian Daly, whose noble task was to seek out money for undergraduate scholarships. Being the secretary, my somewhat less glorious task was to push papers around, and in the process, I watched the names of the entities that sponsored undergraduate scholarships run by as stapled, collated and filed: defense companies, local business tycoons, biotech companies, anonymous donors — everyone, it seemed, but people who had attended UCSD (with the notable exception of alumnus Michael Robertson, who has managed to come up with a way to charge for open-source software). Now, maybe the money from alumni donors was ending up elsewhere, but a quick check of the U.S. News & World Report statistics shows that while UCSD is solidly in the top 50 of the magazine’s (albeit flawed) rankings, our alumni giving rank is an atrocious 191 — 8 percent of graduates.
The trite thing to write at this juncture would be: “Now, our donation rate is only low because we’re a 40-year-old university without a football team. That’s why it’s up to you to help fund undergraduate scholarships, nonscience research, and residential facilities — otherwise our university will fail, we’ll have no minority students, and John Muir and Revelle Colleges will collapse into the Pacific.”
This writer has no doubt that many of the alumni will be swayed with phone calls over the coming years with that theme (well, probably not with that level of hyperbole). UCSD Development probably has a tracking database that rivals the intelligence agencies of many small countries, and this writer can guarantee impending graduates that they will be hunted down. For those of us who think that a somewhat arbitrary chauvinistic attachment to any institution (such as a nation, religion or school) is somewhat silly, or those of us who are just far too bored at UCSD to have “school spirit,” what is a compelling argument for donating to UCSD after graduation? After all, what did this public school do for us? It served its purpose — the taxpayers of California, including our parents, funded our education, we were educated, and for many of us, not particularly thrilled during the process (although that will change during Sun God). It makes as much sense, it seems, as donating to the DMV after passing the driving test.
From a purely self-interested viewpoint at least, donating to your school potentially enhances the quality of your degree, if the institution gets any better as a result. The problem is a classic prisoner’s dilemma — your dollars (unless you get fabulously rich) are diluted by 20,000 undergraduates, and everyone who has a diploma benefits. The smart thing to do would be to convince your friends to donate with you, and then donate nothing yourself at the last minute. It seems, in any case, some degree of altruism is required for a rational decision to donate.
So why donate to UCSD? What about an orphanage in Tijuana? Or toward distribution of AIDS drugs in foreign countries? This writer asserts that for those of us lucky enough to have money to donate in the future, UCSD is a more valid cause because the alumni collectively understand it better than any other group, and each alumnus likely knows UCSD better than many other institutions or programs to which he or she could potentially donate. In other words, if one is going to give money to anyone, UCSD is a viable candidate. For those people who contend UCSD has been taken over by the corporate interests of science and engineering majors, sponsor a scholarship to attract an outstanding humanities major. Help an underfunded liberal media organization print its papers in the face of the deluge of California Reviews and Koalas, if you have rallied against “hate speech.” If you remember your department being housed in 30-year-old crumbling facilities, pitch in when they ask to build a new building.
Having gone through life at a public university, the soon-to-be-graduates are the best-placed to understand where the failings are, no doubt because undergraduates constantly feel they end up on the lesser side of a balance between research and education. Then again, those of us who only have $50, rather than $50,000, to contribute may find making a meaningful contribution to a specific cause somewhat difficult. Also, the Development office no doubt encourages and appreciates “unrestricted” money in large sums. There’s even a special parking permit for those who donate $1,500 in unrestricted funds every year so they can come visit UCSD, and not have to recall the nightmare of yellow-spaced parking or the Regents shuttle.
In the end, the most compelling reason is an emotion that cannot be distilled to either rationality or blind chauvinism, especially if one contributes to an unrestricted fund. A cynic might cite arrogant elitism or San Diego weather, but graduate students and professors often take a professional risk and a pay cut to work at a public university rather than working in industry or a private university. While there are students who go through this school muttering about the dearth of activities and intelligence among its populace, there are quite a few who actively try to make our lives more interesting — through student government, athletics teams, barbecues on Library Walk, or God forbid, writing in a school newspaper. There are students who bury their heads in their books, help out in school labs, or think critically about what they are studying for more than just the potential of material success, and contribute to the higher thought processes of others through alternatively humorous and intelligent conversation. In short, this writer feels a debt of gratitude to the people of this university. He would, in any case, urge those who think they owe the university nothing after it has set them on their course for life to reconsider their poor manners, despite whatever failings the school might have.
