College students nowadays protest with signs, sit-ins and social media campaigns. Alumni, meanwhile, have a different weapon at their disposal – their pocketbooks.
As “College Students Protest, Alumni’s Fondness Fades and Checks Shrink,” reports The New York Times.
A backlash from alumni is an unexpected aftershock of the campus disruptions of the last academic year. Although fund-raisers are still gauging the extent of the effect on philanthropy, some colleges — particularly small, elite liberal arts institutions — have reported a decline in donations, accompanied by a laundry list of complaints.
Alumni from a range of generations say they are baffled by today’s college culture. Among their laments: Students are too wrapped up in racial and identity politics. They are allowed to take too many frivolous courses. They have repudiated the heroes and traditions of the past by judging them by today’s standards rather than in the context of their times. Fraternities are being unfairly maligned, and men are being demonized by sexual assault investigations. And university administrations have been too meek in addressing protesters whose messages have seemed to fly in the face of free speech.
Underscoring the drop in donations, universities have seen other impacts from protests. This year, Harvard Business School researchers found “scandals with a high level of media coverage significantly reduce applications. … A scandal covered in a long-form news article leads to a ten percent drop in applications the following year. This is roughly the same as the impact on applications of dropping ten spots in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings,” according to the survey.
Over at the University of Missouri, for example, a decline in applications has been dubbed the “Melissa Click Effect.”
If these trends continues – and hopefully they do – it might force feckless administrators to rein in the absurdities so common on campuses today.
Even student activists might be realizing hyperbole hurts their causes. According to students at a free-speech conference this summer that followed a breakout year for campus activism, “protesters face the risk that they complain so often – and about such minor issues – that their peers tune out otherwise worthwhile causes.”