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College’s Financial Struggles Exacerbated By Lack of Alumni Donations Emma Benardete Contributing Opinions Editor Over the course of this semester, I have been privy to a fair amount of discourse surrounding Oberlin’s financial situation. Specifically, I have heard students criticize the way the College is handling its finances, asking why it can’t tap more into the endowment, and protesting specific cost-cutting measures the administration takes in order to balance the budget. While this is a critical conversation to have as the College passes costs onto students and employees in the form of high fees and low pay, it is important to consider why the College is having financial trouble in the first place. It is possible that, as many students claim, mismanagement of the endowment is a contributing factor. However, a much clearer and potentially more important factor in the financial strain Oberlin is facing is a lack of donations from our alumni. From 2013 until 2019, Forbes released the Grateful Grad Index, a 100-point scale that considers the percentage of alumni that give to a school and the median alumni donation size. The magazine lists the top 200 private, nonprofit colleges by that measure. While the claim that the formula can really measure gratitude is debatable, it is a useful source of data on how alumni donation rates compare across colleges. According to the most recent iteration of the index, Oberlin ranks 43rd, with a seven-year median donation of $11,918 and a three-year alumni giving rate of 22 percent for a score of 90. While that may seem impressive, it puts us in 12th place out of our 16 peer institutions. One thing this metric fails to take into account is the opportunity for different types of non-monetary success. Many Obies make significantly less money than graduates of our peer institutions, typically opting to go into academia or public service over higher-paying jobs in the private sector. While this is a point of pride for the College — our slogan is, after all, “Think one person can change the world? So do we” — it also makes it difficult to remain financially stable without having to make dramatic changes to the budget. The Grateful Grads Index of a given institution is positively correlated with the median salary of that school’s alumni at 34 years old (about 12 years after graduation). In fact, adjusting for income, Oberlin moves up to sixth place among our peers. Yet while low alumni salaries play a role in our lack of donations, having a slew of extremely wealthy alumni is not the goal of our institution. The people who make the biggest difference in the world aren’t the ones who make millions. All this being said, Oberlin’s lowend alumni salary numbers don’t necessarily mean we are doomed to a lack of donations forever. There are plenty of factors not related to alumni wealth that the College can focus on. For alumni who do have means, the College can concentrate on standing out as a worthy recipient of donations. Where people donate their money is largely determined by which organizations they deem to be the worthiest
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of their gifts. “Oberlin is just one of 1.2 million nonprofit organizations in the U.S.,” the office of Vice President for Advancement Mike Grzesiak wrote in an email to the Review. “Across nonprofits the rate of participation in philanthropy has declined over the past few years. Today’s donors are pulled in countless directions (disaster relief, political campaigns, pandemic, social movements, etc.) and their philanthropy can vary from cause to cause.” If Oberlin is going to improve — or even sustain — our donation numbers, we will have to come up with better ways to highlight why donating is so important. “The best way to improve financial support for Oberlin, and any institution, for that matter, is to communicate the importance and impact of a donor’s gift,” Grzesiak wrote. “At Oberlin, we work to demonstrate how philanthropy makes a difference in students’ lives, whether in the classroom, in a time of emergency or financial need, or on the stage, field, or court.” The Oberlin website highlights that almost nine out of 10 unrestricted donor dollars go toward financial aid, which is a good first step, but it isn’t enough. Plenty of potential donors have withheld support because of what they see as inefficient use of funds, especially in the wake of the austerity measures taken during the pandemic. It becomes a vicious cycle: the institution doesn’t receive enough in donations to balance the budget, so it has to pare down spending and make difficult, and sometimes misguided, decisions about where to cut costs. Alumni hear about these changes and decide, rightly or not, that the College is taking poorly thought-out measures and being irresponsible with its finances. Because of this, they hold back a portion or all of their donation, putting even more financial strain on the institution, which then has to make more difficult decisions. Thus, the cycle continues. We can escape this rhythm, but it will require the administration to make more careful financial decisions. Alumni will also have to cut the administration a bit of slack and provide some of the funds to get the ball rolling in a better direction. Another important thing to keep in mind is that we have to demonstrate how donations to Oberlin impact the world outside of Oberlin. “With regard to inspiring alumni giving (and participation), we best serve the students and faculty of Oberlin when we are able to tell of their achievements, successes, and impact on the world and relate that to how philanthropy helps make those achievements and successes possible,” Grzesiak wrote. If we can find ways to tell meaningful stories of alumni who have used what they learned at Oberlin to become Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, professors, journalists, politicians, and diplomats, and we can articulate what Oberlin programs shaped them and helped them achieve what they did, we can inspire alumni to donate so that the College can contribute to the next generation of changemakers.
“Uncensored” Unofficial Oberlin Facebook Group Incites Bullying, Censorship Melissa Landa, OC ’86 Marta Braiterman Tanenbaum, OC ’72 Frieda Fuchs On Sept. 21, 2018, The Oberlin Review published a piece called “Alumni Claim Censorship on Facebook.” The article discussed the formation of an alternative Facebook group, the Uncensored Unofficial Oberlin Alumni Discussion Group, created by Oberlin alumnus Robert Hayes, and others, after several alumni had been censored and banned from the Alumni Association’s digital community group. Hayes was quoted as saying, “It is my hope that the unofficial group we are building, where governance is transparent and open discussions are encouraged, will become a place for … necessary conversations.” Unfortunately, as we have discovered, the unofficial group has become a site for online bullying, defamation, and censorship. After joining the Oberlin Committee for Justice for Mahallati’s Victims, the three of us — all Jewish — began posting articles about Professor of Religion and Nancy Schrom Dye Chair in Middle East and North African Studies Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. We posted Amnesty International’s report that identifies him as covering up crimes against humanity. We posted accounts from the family members of those killed in the 1988 prison massacres, and we brought attention to the protest against Mahallati’s crimes that was approaching on Nov. 2. We were met with great hostility, including an accusation that we were agents of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee only concerned about Mahallati’s anti-Israel statements and using the families’ human rights campaign for our own purposes and an accusation that we were lying about the families’ involvement in the protest. On another occasion, a hostile alumnus referenced “allegations and unsupported statements of Melissa Simone Landa and the groups/individuals she invokes” and then proceeded to state that he could find no support for those allegations. Two weeks later, on Nov. 2, Landa spoke as an alumni representative at the protest against Mahallati, which was organized by the Oberlin Committee for Justice for Mahallati’s Victims. Hours later, Rica Mendes, the administrator of the Facebook group, muted Landa, rendering her unable to post or comment in the group. Referring to the group rule about transparency, Frieda Fuchs asked Mendes for an explanation for Landa’s removal and was soon joined by several others, prompting several members of the group to make insulting comments about their demands. In one instance, alumna Lily Manshel commented, “Lmao, why are there 5 different posts complaining about one annoying person being muted,” to which Mendes replied, “nailed it.” Several days later, Mendes finally responded to Fuchs and others by presenting a litany of accusations against Landa and a notice that Landa was now permanently banned from the group. The accusations were presented without evidence and dated back several years, curiously emerging now, as Landa had become a spokesperson for the Iranian families. Fuchs was later notified by Mendes
that she was banned as well, with the ruling that she had “harassed” the moderators with her repeated demands. Tanenbaum, who had been censored as well and was limited to one comment per hour, pointed out that Mendes has a personal history with Landa and was not able to objectively moderate. In response, an individual with the screen name Luty Hayes launched into a tirade against Tanenbaum and “every single member of Melissa’s coterie,” writing, “None of you have contributed anything of notable value. Nothing. … Not all of you have lied or misrepresented or broken rules; some of you are just torpedoes for the people who do.” Shortly after Tanenbaum’s comment was posted, Mendes muted her entirely. The Uncensored Unofficial Oberlin Alumni Discussion Group has silenced the voices of the three Oberlin Committee members working for Mahallati’s dismissal, in effect aligning themselves with the efforts of the Oberlin administration to protect him. The group has also shown that its claims of unbiased moderation, transparency, and open discussion are empty ones. Moderation is arbitrary and vindictive, rules are optional, and hostility abounds. We three were active members of this “uncensored” group — members who followed the rules and relied on group participation to voice our concerns about the deteriorating values of Oberlin College. In the past, we had written about the antisemitism of Professor Joy Karega and the administration’s refusal to take action against it and the discrimination against Jewish students who support Israel. This time, we were posting articles about the war crimes, antisemitism, and anti-Baha’i proclamations of Professor Mahallati. The official Oberlin alumni Facebook group had already banned our posts and articles for being “critical of the College.” Now this alternative, “unofficial” alumni group with 2,500 members permitted the “moderators” to silence comments by banning the three of us. If people think alumni should weigh in on Jewish life on campus, how does this extreme degree of conformity allow any free speech among alumni regarding Israel, the rights of Zionist Jewish students, or faculty bias? Why was it so threatening to the official and unofficial alumni pages to post alumni-authored articles about campus antisemitism? It’s time for the “uncensored” discussion group to reevaluate its mission and its administration and welcome us back. If it does not, its members need to decide whether to remain associated with a group that treats some of its members with such animosity and disdain. They also need to weigh the value of an Oberlin group that does not welcome discussion of an Oberlin faculty member who has been identified by Amnesty International as covering up crimes against humanity and found, by The Oberlin Review, to have “irrefutable” evidence against him. The group’s members who have watched our mistreatment in silence need to consider the words of Booker T. Washington: “A lie doesn’t become truth, wrong doesn’t become right, and evil doesn’t become good, just because it’s accepted by a majority.”
