Say Anything | Must be the money

Seniors for the Penn Fund, or S4TPF for the abbreviation-inclined, is the part of the Penn Fund devoted to fundraising among the current senior class.

Is fundraising important for Penn? Absolutely. Should students in the class of 2011 be solicited for donations? Absolutely not.

Stop asking seniors to donate to S4TPF. We already give money to Penn: $40,000 a year. When we’re actually making money, go ahead and call us until our phones explode. But for now, seniors and our barely-there bank accounts should be left alone.

Asking current students to donate money to Penn is just patently ridiculous. I’m not paying $20.11 for a T-shirt. I don’t care how cute the gimmick is. (And props to the S4TPF kids. 2011 is a tough number to work with, and “drink a highba’11” is pretty damn cute.)

But, first of all, the shirts are green, and if I wanted to rock the shamrock shade, I would have gone to Dartmouth. Secondly, as well-intentioned as this organization is, the effort is misplaced.

Students have enough of an economic burden without the added pressure to dole out more than the aforementioned forty grand. We’re all in varying stages of financial independence, from seniors who are on their own for tuition, rent and beyond to those whose parents are still footing every last bar bill. To suggest that most seniors are in a fiscal position to donate spare funds to the Penn Fund implies, well, that we’ve all got funds to spare. In what alternate universe do most college seniors have extra cash just lying around?

Engineering senior and S4TPF Participation Co-Chair Deepak Prabhakar said, “[S4TPF] exists in order to get future alumni used to the idea of giving back to Penn. We ask for no more than a token gift, and any amount is greatly appreciated. It is really just about class unity.”

Brittany Bell, College senior and vice chairwoman of Penn Traditions, echoed Prabhakar’s sentiments. “We are sending the message to our class that although we may be graduating this year, Penn is not simply for four years. Penn is for life. We hope to encourage seniors to want to give back to Penn for all that it has given us over the past four years.”

I wholeheartedly agree with the intent. Penn is more than four years. But before more years comes those first four years. Senior year is, in fact, one of the four.

As Prabhakar also pointed out, the money raised by seniors is generally a “token” amount; should the senior class manage to raise tens of thousands of dollars, that number will be dwarfed by the millions of dollars in donations the Penn Fund receives each year. Why bother undergrads when the money that seniors raise is barely a drop in what is apparently a very, very big bucket?

While I appreciate the goal of inspiring student support, I find the notion that support has to translate so directly into cold, hard cash to be uninspired and shallow. There’s more than one way to demonstrate support for Penn, and plenty of those ways have nothing to do with money.

Students who attend athletic events and a cappella performances, who go to poetry readings at the Kelly Writers House, who serve the community through the Civic House and who tutor all support this school. Aren’t these displays of support just as significant as financial donations? And, perhaps more importantly, those activities are equally possible for every student no matter what his or her financial limitations may be.

Someday, when I’m (hopefully) gainfully employed, I will be happy — I will be honored — to donate to this institution, a place which, as Prabhakar said, “I consider to be my second home.” But that day is in the future, not the present.

Jessica Goldstein is a College senior from Berkeley Heights, N.J. Her e-mail address is goldstein@theDP.com. Say Anything appears on alternate Wednesdays.

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