Letter from Boston
Fund-Raising Efforts
By MASAKO YAMADA
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卒業式で資金集め
雅子さんの通うボストン大学は、5月に卒業式を終えましたが、ハーバード大学やマサチューセッツ工科大学は、ちょうど今が卒業シーズンです。ボストンの町には新卒者の家族や友人ばかりでなく、大学の OB、OGが大勢集まります。大学側はこの時期に同窓会を開催し、卒業生から寄付金を募ります。
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The Boston University graduation ceremony was held in
May, at around the same time as most other colleges. MIT
and Harvard are known to have commencement later and
they send off their graduates in the beginning of June.
I've noticed increased pedestrian activity around
Harvard Square in the past few days. This is due to the
number of people visiting campus for commencement.
This flood of people does not consist solely of
the friends and families of new graduates. I must have
seen at least 10 people around Boston and Cambridge
carrying souvenir tote bags with the characters
"Harvard 1995" printed on them. Some of the people
carrying these bags made a bit of an effort to hide the
logo, but they were unmistakably Harvard alumni.
Commencement season is the season for official class
reunions. Students are free to plan their own reunions,
but many colleges plan formal reunions every five years
for graduates. The alumni visit their old schools during
commencement week and engage in activities planned by
university reunion committees.
These reunions offer a great opportunity for alumni to
catch up with old friends. However, it is not all fun
and games. It is no big secret that many people go to
these official reunions to do some serious networking.
The colleges don't plan these large events for the sole
purpose of making their alumni happy, either: Reunion
time is also time for the colleges to ask alumni to open
up their wallets.
Although the cost of a college education in a private
university is extraordinarily high in the States, it is
well known that most universities cannot rely on tuition
alone to balance their budgets. Even if all the
students could pay the full amount (many students can't,
so they get loans and scholarships) universities cannot
cover all expenses with that level of money.
The deficit must be covered by government and
corporate grants — and personal grants from
individuals. These grants tend to cover large purchases,
such as building labs, buying land or setting up new
computer systems.
Many large university projects are spearheaded by
wealthy alumni. The alumni don't have to be as rich and
famous as Bill Gates to make a difference, though. It is
well known around BU that the area in front of the chapel
had been getting a bit raggedy over the years, and
enough funds were col
lected from alumni to renovate the area this year.
A few enthusiastic individuals were responsible for
starting the campaign. Many non-wealthy alumni joined in
the fund because of this initial push. Now the plaza
is paved with beautiful marble tiles and the old
sculpture in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has
been refreshed.
The good thing about alumni donations is that they can
be collected quickly and earmarked for a very specific
purpose. I doubt that kind of money would have been
allocated so quickly by the university administration
for a non-emergency cause, especially if it had to dip
into tuition money. Parents work hard for their kids'
tuitions and I think they'd prefer to see their money go
to classroom facilities or to professor salaries.
Recently, I've been working with some fellow graduate
students to start a travel grant for graduate students at
BU. Many graduate students cannot afford to go to
academic conferences and this is a great disadvantage
to them, since conference attendance ultimately leads to
job offers.
This is also a disadvantage to the university, since
universities benefit when their students excel. We
wanted to see if there was any way we could offer
scholarships to these students.
The university administrators we talked to were not
thrilled with the idea of allocating this money out of
their own limited budgets. However, they agreed to help
us organize an alumni fund so that we could ask alumni
for donations. They have even agreed to help us write and
send letters to all the relevant alumni in their
database so we don't have to look up names or print out
envelopes.
Thousands of these letters will be sent out within
several months. I suppose I'll see firsthand how
effective this form of fund raising is when the responses
come in.
Shukan ST: June 23, 2000
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