Dear Miami University students and parents,
On behalf of the university, I’d like to thank you for your generous donations to Miami’s Capital Campaign. With your help, we are well on our way to hitting our $1 billion goal!
What’s that? You say that you didn’t make a contribution? Oh! but you have. Let me explain.
Since this campaign was launched, the university has announced grim budget deficits at the beginning of each year. Year after year. And then the university has finished each year with a budget surplus. Year after year, and it squirreled it away. Earlier this year, the Board of Trustees voted to move that fat piggy bank into the endowment and call it “fundraising!” How fat? About $150 million – that’s how fat.
Now, much of those annual surpluses come from your tuition payments, so by folding them into the endowment, you’ve become donors, and you didn’t even know it! You’re welcome.
Pardon? You’re asking why the university continues to claim that the budget is in the red? Well, that’s very rude of you – didn’t your parents teach you it is impolite to ask questions about money? And you want to know why the academic side of the university has been forced to cut programs, freeze faculty hiring and otherwise tighten its belt to make up an artificially created deficit? Now you just sound like ingrates.
Suffice it to say that you are sacrificing your education today so that we can have a great new basketball arena in the future. When I put it that way, don’t you feel better? Noble even?
Parents, if you want a letter acknowledging these donations for tax purposes, the Board of Trustees will be happy to provide one.
Steven Conn has been the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami since 2015.
At The Student, we are committed to engaging with our audience and listening to feedback. This includes publishing a diverse array of guest editorials. For more information on guidelines and processes, email Taylor Powers, The Student's opinion editor, at powerstj@miamioh.edu.
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