Brandon Moyse | Being grateful for all giving

The recent death of Leonore Annenberg was a blow to the Penn community. While the University is not lacking in sugar daddies, Leonore and her husband Walter were different from other major donors - they gave to further a highly specific mission with a sense of purpose.

Annenberg Public Policy Center director Kathleen Jamieson explained that "both Walter and Leonore believed that education was the cornerstone of democracy and that if you could create educational opportunities, you could protect democracy."

From endowed professorships to funding high-school initiatives to the Annenberg School for Communication and Public Policy Center, the couple walked the walk, thoughtfully giving away hundreds of millions of dollars that will continue to benefit students and scholars in perpetuity.

Besides the Annenbergs, though, the names of other donors dot the University's landscape: Wynn, Perelman, Fisher and Pottruck, among others. It can feel as if their donations have been more self-serving than anything - spread haphazardly across campus simply for the sole purpose of putting one's name on as many buildings and programs as possible. In reality, their goals, while less focused than the Annenbergs', are just as honorable: the betterment of Penn in any way possible.

Last summer, though, the distrust of big-money donors reached a boiling point when the University announced that Ron Perelman was exercising his right to rename Logan Hall (a right he earned with a $20 million donation in 1995) for his deceased ex-wife, Claudia Cohen. Professors, students and alumni alike decried Penn for allowing the name of a 102-year-old building to be bought, claiming it was selling its history - to a gossip columnist and corporate raider, no less.

What most people overlooked was the fact that Perelman's $20 million wasn't the price for which the University was selling the naming rights to Logan Hall - it was Perelman's contribution (one of the largest in Penn history) to the construction of what is now the Perelman Quad. As part of the deal, he earned the right to rename one of the buildings that constitute it.

But that wasn't the first time that Penn renamed an historic building amid controversy for someone who opened their fat wallet: In 2002, Jerome Fisher and Alan Hassenfeld each pledged $5.75 million for renovations to Woodland College House, which was subsequently renamed Fisher-Hassenfeld. And in 2004, Spruce College House was renamed Riepe after Board of Trustees chairman James Riepe and his wife pledged $10 million to improve the House.

Not all benefactors may be as focused on a cause as the Annenbergs, but that doesn't mean they mindlessly write and mail $10-million checks whenever they feel like it.

"Usually, the bigger the gift, the more specific the purpose the donor has in mind," said John Zeller, vice president of Development and Alumni Relations. "And it doesn't only have to go to one area. They give according to their interests and to what institutional priorities resonate with them. That process can take weeks, months, even years."

Oftentimes, in the case of naming existing buildings, that means helping to foot the bill for renovations. But donations run the gamut from paying for classroom equipment to funding research to helping break ground on new buildings, like the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine (named after Ron Perelman's parents). Moreover, those large donors are constantly helping out the University as new projects and initiatives arise - those who have given over $10 million in their lifetime to Penn have donated, on average, to eight different programs or areas of need.

Most students don't think twice about the names behind the buildings they pass through every day or what those names have done to improve their college experience. Leonore Annenberg's death (and the subsequent media coverage) has given us an opportunity to put a face to one of those names and understand what she and her late husband have done for the University.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not calling for anyone to send "Thank You" cards to Steve Wynn or take a moment of silence for Perelman. But accusing Penn of "selling out" and protesting every time a donation carries a moderately undesirable stipulation is despicably ungrateful.

Brandon Moyse is a College junior from Montreal. He is the former senior sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. What Aboot It, Eh? appears on Thursdays. His email address is moyse@dailypennsylvanian.com

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