Money and Protest

More student riots = fewer alumni gifts. () True () False

College fund raisers have been groping for the right answer all year. While private campuses have never been so in need of alumni cash, alumni have never been so angry at protesters. By last week, enough checks had come in so that fund raisers finally knew which box to check. At most campuses, the donation trend is surprisingly upward. There are fewer gifts, but the sums are bigger than ever.

Most alumni seem to feel that alma mater's crisis is a time for loyalty, not desertion. Even long-indifferent alumni have renewed their interest and their giving. Astute presidents foster this new involvement with frequent explanatory letters to alumni and parents. After a sit-in at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, President Gaylord Harn-well sent a communique stressing that the protesters had obeyed Penn's rules for demonstrations. Back came many letters of support and $5,000 in unsolicited contributions.

Vote of Confidence. Troubled Harvard is getting fewer gifts, but more money. A preliminary accounting showed that Harvard College had received a new high of $3.4 million--$87,-000 more than last year. Dartmouth's 50th-reunion class ('19) produced what is expected to be a record sum for the class. Fund Chairman Richard Lombard also reported a "financial vote of confidence" by some Dartmouth men who had refused to contribute for as long as five years. Denver University's Chan cellor Maurice Mitchell, who expelled 39 sit-in demonstrators last year, recently inspired a torrent of admiring letters--and donations--when he vowed to ignore further student threats. Denver's average alumni gift increased from $30 to $46.77, while overall donations rose by 133%.

There were gripes, too, some of them scrawled angrily on the pledge cards mailed out by hopeful fund raisers. Many postage-paid envelopes came back containing news pictures of the gun-toting black students at Cornell--and no checks. The kind of alumni ire once generated by losing football teams is now created by winning rioters. One grad wrote anonymously in answer to a plea from Temple: "Let the sit-ins pay; they run things." This was doubly wounding to Temple, where a one-day sit-in had won nothing.

Not all Penn alumni were impressed by President Harnwell's pitch. Still irked at the Penn sit-in, one man declared: "For the time being I am putting the university on probation and withholding my annual contribution." A Harvard graduate of 1944 was even more bitter. After the spring disorders in Cambridge, he wrote to his class-gift chairman demanding his money back.

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