Editor,

I’m told this issue of TSL will contain an ad congratulating the senior class for its "Class Gift." I would like each reader of TSL to imagine for a minute that he or she had $4,500 to be donated in any way he or she deemed fit.

$4,500 could purchase thousands of meals, maybe preventing a few of the deaths that occur in every day due to starvation (see Oxfam International).

Right here in the United States, it could have provided more than 150 poor children with new clothes or shoes (Shoes That Fit). If the environment is your cause, you could pay to preserve an acre or two of rainforest (Greenpeace, or the Ecology Fund).

Perhaps you want your donation to go to education, specifically. Well, $4,500 could finance the primary school educations of nearly 500 children in Zimbabwe.

Or, you could hand your money to the administrators of a private, profit-generating institution that caters to young adults, mostly wealthy and from the United States (Pomona College). Then, if the administration applied your gift directly to helping only the students of the college, and did not direct a single dollar elsewhere, you could expect to reduce the tuition of each student by $2.91, a savings of a little less than 0.0001%.

I hope that each person on the Class Gift list, especially, remembers these numbers when the Alumni Office calls every few months looking for more donations. I hope that each person on the Class Gift Committee does a little more Perception and Analysis in the future, and realizes that Pomona College is not a charity.

Sincerely,

Michael A. Dickerson ’01