Students deserve more than vague plans for donations

Less than two days after Syracuse University closed its third annual Boost the ’Cuse fundraising initiative, the school debuted “Forever Orange: The Campaign for Syracuse University” — a $1.5 billion capital campaign, the largest in the university’s history. 

Donors, alumni and other members of the university community attended a reception in the Goldstein Auditorium Friday evening. They then followed a path of orange orbs to an “experiential dinner reception” that took place inside a heated tent structure crews spent a week assembling on the Quad. The event was invite-only and closed to press.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board appreciates the generosity of donors willing to part with considerable amounts of their savings for the good of their alma mater. The university has said that tuition covers only about 80% of the true cost of an SU education. Gifts help close that gap. 

But students, the supposed beneficiaries of these massive donations, deserve more than the university’s vague promises, alliteration and buzz words.

SU’s fundraising is not out of the ordinary for colleges and universities. It’s normal for schools to show their appreciation by naming a building, pathway or room after a donor. 

It’s also normal for these important financial decisions to appear exclusive — off limits to the sorts of students and alumni who weren’t invited to drink cocktails under a white canopy on the Quad. 

SU’s big donors often get to personally choose where their money will go, which makes sense given their commitment to the university, but SU has to find more effective ways to introduce student voice into that decision making. 

After SU’s annual budget spent years in the red, Chancellor Kent Syverud said the university’s newfound financial stability, three years of balanced budgets, will eliminate previous financial constraints. 

“Our narrative now is: We’re Syracuse, we can do this,” Syverud told Syracuse.com. 

It’s not clear what ‘this’ is, though. 

The Forever Orange donation page gives donors the option of contributing money to three areas: scholarships, area of your choice and Syracuse’s greatest need. It doesn’t say what “Syracuse’s greatest need” is or where a donation to that category might go.

SU’s “Forever Orange” landing page also lists “academic excellence,” “an unsurpassed student experience” and “unique learning opportunities” as examples of “what Orange can do,” imprecise and cliched taglines that might as well have been ripped out of virtually any college brochure that landed in a high school senior’s mailbox in the past six months. 

A $7 million donation from lifetime Board of Trustee member Bob Miron and his wife, for example, will go toward building a connection between the Carrier Dome and the Barnes Center as well as provide support to SU’s library system. SU said that the “enclosed pedestrian thruway” will “create a seamless navigational experience between the two highly visited spaces,” but it did not say what purpose the passageway might serve for students or fans. 

This is the type of spending students deserve to know more about. They should know who decided that a pedestrian walkway between two buildings was a productive use of donated money. And they deserve to see figures about how much fundraising money will go toward research, faculty and classroom resources in comparison. 

The capital campaign’s third goal — beyond the call for 125,000 individual donors and $1.5 billion in gifts — is to have one in five alumni actively engaged with SU. Matt Ter Molen, chief advancement officer and vice president, said “Forever Orange” should grow engagement in more ways than donations, including support of student internships, job opportunities and immersion trips. 

Putting resources, financial and otherwise, directly toward enhancing the way students learn needs to be SU’s priority. And SU must routinely and genuinely incorporate student voices into that vision in demonstrable ways. 

Students need 21st century facilities to thrive as academics at Syracuse. And donations by invested alumni are commendable and productive. But they cannot be confined to a world cordoned off to the broader SU community. University administration, wealthy donors and selected student liaisons in cocktail attire can’t just have dinner on a Friday night and call that representative. 

The Daily Orange Editorial Board recognizes the need for and value of donations and appreciates the generosity of those willing to make them. But SU must do more to show students and faculty that decisions are being made with precision and with their needs in mind. 

The Daily Orange Editorial Board serves as the voice of the organization and aims to contribute the perspectives of students to discussions that concern Syracuse University and the greater Syracuse community. The editorial board’s stances are determined by a majority of its members. You can read more about the editorial board here. Are you interested in pitching a topic for the editorial board to discuss? Email [email protected].