Lisa Zhu | Making our money talk

It starts with an innocent e-mail at the end of junior year, encouraging us to consider the importance of fundraising.

And before we know it, we've graduated to become the recipients of nightly phone calls from chipper-voiced undergraduates soliciting us for hundreds of dollars' worth of donations.

Every year, the ritual of lifelong alumni contribution begins with the Senior Gift Drive, a school-wide fundraising campaign targeted towards the current graduating class. But although student donors are plied with free gifts, food, and rhetoric in return for their donations, they're granted very little power over where their money actually goes.

"People might feel more invested [in the Gift Drive] with their time and money if they had more input over where it was going," Wharton senior and Senior Gift Drive co-chairwoman Jessica Trief told me. "The more students are invested in the cause of what they're giving to, the more likely they are to give."

In other words, instead of distracting young contributors with glossy pamphlets, Penn should give students a say in where Senior Gift Drive funds go.

Essentially, all contributions made towards the Senior Gift Drive go directly into the Penn Fund, an unrestricted pool of cash that gets channeled into various initiatives on campus.

According to assistant director of Student Advancement Dvorit Mausner, "When you look at the overall university, the Penn Fund really is able to prioritize the University's most critical needs," such as student financial aid, residential experience and academic support.

These are all worthwhile and fabulous causes, to be sure. At the same time, however, Penn has made little effort to solicit feedback from its youngest donors on whether they agree with this set of priorities. Instead, Mausner told me, "It's important to trust the administration and trust the administration knows where to spend students' dollars."

I concede that the administration performs large amounts of statistical research and therefore possesses a more factual understanding of the University's needs; however, undergraduates literally live, breathe and eat Penn.

Therefore, having spent the past four years at this University, it seems sensible to say that seniors have a very intimate and unique understanding of how Penn can be improved. For instance, a student who is just moving out of the high rises would probably cite elevator replacement as a top priority, in contrast to a Class of 1950 alumnus who attended Penn before elevators even existed here.

"I would definitely participate if we had a say," said College senior Danielle Noel. "If money could go anywhere on campus, it would be helpful if student giving could go to things that are important to students."

In future Senior Gift Drives for example, staff members could ask students donors to answer a question about where they'd like their money to go.

Although this year's Senior Gift Drive Web site did have such a poll, it was by no means incorporated into the standard donation procedure. As a result, the question garnered a whopping fourteen responses. Even if the University chose to ignore the results in the actual allocation of Senior Gift Drive funds, such a survey would at least give administrators a better idea of what issues were most important to the student body.

Another possible way to engage students in the Senior Gift Drive spending process would be to create a specific senior project that would be funded through a small percentage of the money raised. In other words, although most of the donations would still go to issues like financial aid and residential life via the Penn Fund, seniors could at least rally around a tangible project that they implemented as a class.

Ultimately, regardless of the mechanism used, the importance of increased student input in spending students' dollars is undeniable. For four years, we've trust the University to know students' most critical needs.

With the Senior Gift Drive, Penn should trust that students know the University's most critical needs.

Lisa Zhu is a Wharton and College junior from Cherry Hill, N.J., United Minorities Council chairwoman and Undergraduate Assembly member. Her e-mail is zhu@dailypennsylvanian.com. Zhu-ology appears Fridays.

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