Senior Council plans class gift

Larissa Pahomov Contributing Editor

The senior class gift is one of the most talked-about issues among the graduating students of the College. Ideas and opinions about what the selected gift should be are numerous, and along with that comes an equal amount of rumors and confusion.

This year, the Senior Class Council has been working to change all that. “We don’t want anybody to feel excluded,” said Class President Vivek Mahapatra ’05.

Since the beginning of the year, the Senior Class Council—an organization open to any interested senior—has been fielding ideas for what the gift should be and has had open meetings as well as tabled in the College Center to make it easy for seniors to participate.

The deadline for submitting new ideas passed on Oct. 8 and all of the suggestions given were responded to by members of the Class Council, mainly through the co-chairs of the senior class gift John Delap ’05 and Lauren Forbes ’05.

Few students who made suggestions were previously aware of the criteria that a potential gift has to meet in order to be considered feasible. Any construction which involves breaking ground is generally out of price range, in addition to altering any landmarks or doing anything “disruptive to the aesthetic appeal,” said Forbes.

Because of this, plenty of potential ideas, such as building an Olympic-sized pool in the THs, a marble fountain, a bowling alley, or a brewery—all suggestions made by students this year—are not likely to make the cut. Choosing an idea also involves extensive work with the Office of Development, a collaboration of which few students are aware.

“The process is pretty long, and can’t be on a whim,” said Assistant Director of Reunion and Class-Giving Susan Sheehan.

While the senior class gift has been a tradition since the 1940s, in recent years the Office of Development has been intimately involved in planning it. Starting in 2001, they have had a “challenge gift” system in place, bringing the total amount raised into the tens of thousands and making gifts like Matthew’s Bean in the library—a project for which two-thirds of the $30,000 price tag came from a single alumnus—a reality.

While the initial idea sometimes comes from Development, the office alone does not make the decision. According to Sheehan, the office participates in a “conversation” with the Senior Class Council to come up with the best project.

Delap, Forbes, Mahapatra, and Sheehan deferred from sharing what ideas are being considered by the committee, since they felt it was premature to suggest preference before all ideas have been fully researched.

However, Delap emphasized that the process is not held behind closed doors, and anyone interested can hear about the current ideas at the Class Council meeting, generally held every other Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Main MPR.

The final decision will be made by the end of the semester, with the fundraising campaign beginning after winter break.

The Class of 2004’s gift, completing the wireless network in the library, was an idea that Development brought to last year’s Committee and is often referred to as being not visible enough or simply boring.

Sheehan acknowledges a sentiment of disappointment in the lack of grandeur of senior gifts from the graduating classes, but does not share it. “We had complaints with that gift, but anyone I’ve talked to this year is so glad that ended up being the gift,” Sheehan said. “[The project] is supposed to be a selfless gift that future classes benefit from.”