The Senior Gift Blows

All right, the senior gift. Again. We thank Doug Bernstein and Patrick Jones for their admirable defense of the senior gift, and for donating to Pomona College in general. However, we would like to emphasize that we are not “unoriginal” or “childish” just because we question the fundamental assumptions under which these two gentleman operate: that Pomona’s $1.1 billion endowment would be imperiled if the members of the senior class withheld their paltry twenty dollar donations, and that giving money to Pomona as an ideological state apparatus (which, it must be conceded, Pomona most certainly is) is without question a worthwhile expenditure.

Allowing our “classmates to attend Pomona, regardless of their family backgrounds” does not strike Jones as “wealth polarization.” Well, Mr. Jones, let’s explore the issue with some depth. It is quite accurate and laudable that Pomona has a need-blind admissions policy—few schools admit high-caliber students based solely on merit and without regard to ability to pay. We readily concede that there are members on the editorial board who would not have been able to attend Pomona without its generous aid packages. This, however, is far from a progressive reaction to wealth polarization—the meritocracy that is firmly established at the American high school level (which is what an undergraduate institution is left with when it adopts a “need-blind” policy) has its polarizing qualities as well; a certain form of undeniable privelige confers the time and family support required for a student to maintain a 4.0 GPA in high school while devoting considerable time to excellence in a variety of extracurricular activities, which is what it takes to get here. Even adjusting for race, class and gender (the most obviously relevant subjectivities, toward which the current meritocracy has proven unable to function without polarizing bias), Mr. Poch’s committee is still charged with admitting the most privileged of our nation’s youth. Admittedly, the American meritocracy system is preferable to the “old boy network” that we are so used to rallying against, but any rational person must admit that this system too advantages some at the expense of others. Think back to your own high school experiences, especially if you went to a public institution. If you went to a private institution, well then, our point should be fairly obvious to you already.

Moreover, regardless of the background of matriculating first-years, everyone here who manages to graduate is automatically a member of the most elite fraction of American society, simply by virtue of a Pomona degree. Therefore, this institution is one that accepts students from various backgrounds (while, all the same, from not-too-various backgrounds) and graduates them as the most wealth-capable of our society. The $61,000 per annum that Bernstein sites as the cost of molding us into elites could be much more efficiently allocated to something along the lines of, say, an AIDS charity, if one’s ultimate goal is to combat wealth polarization and to make our world a more just, equitable and hospitable place in which to be born. This is a simple opportunity cost argument that we are convinced the senior gift committee and Annual Giving will be able to understand.

We agree with Bernstein’s sentiment that “we realize our own importance and accountability as seniors at one of the finest institutions in the country” through “showing an appreciation and an awareness of the added riches that we take as departing alumni.” We, however, part ways with Bernstein when he suggests that a senior gift reinvested in the college is the most effective way that we as a class could do this. We are not “cynical,” we are not “childish,” and we are certainly not “naive.” We most certainly realize the grave position that we as the privileged few find ourselves in our increasingly barbaric and cruel world. Further, we openly question whose interests the senior gift committee is serving: our class, our world at-large, or (more likely) our Office of Annual Giving? The AIDS virus has killed more people now than the bubonic plague, earning the disease its infamous position as the most deadly pandemic in history. Thirty-nine percent of the population of Botswana is currently infected with AIDS. If Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Jones continue to tell us that Pomona College is a more worthy recipient of our charity as a class, then we submit that it is they who are “cynical,” “childish,” “naive,” as well as ghoulish.

We therefore urge the senior gift committee to donate the Class of 2003’s gift to an appropriate AIDS charity. If so, they will wholeheartedly receive both our admiration and our cash.