Alumni should give back to university, departments

OUR VIEW: Students should donate back to MSU after graduation to ensure the success of their predecessors.

A running theme on campus among students lately is concern over a lack of funds for respective departments. Students of one department might complain that their technology is severely outdated, while others complain about a crumbling infrastructure.

One topic seems to escape grumbling know-it-all students–the money has to come from somewhere. It is not simply created out of thin air.

According to Steve Shipp, director of university development, MSU has raised $272, 201 of its $300,000 annual fund goal. The MSU phonathon looked to raise $50,000 and has already reached $48,001 with just under five months left in the fiscal year.

Impressively, it appears that the university will easily meet its goal, as other donors have already made pledges to both funds.

At the same time, 1,082 of the 1,200 donors this fiscal year were graduates of MSU.

In that case, it makes sense to say that much of what we are provided with on campus, aside from student tuitions, is largely attributed to the gifts of alumni.

Many students feel as though they might never make enough money to justify handing over their hard-earned cash to the university that helped them succeed.

However, the importance of giving back to your university after graduation cannot be denied–we are responsible for helping our predecessors at MSU to have the best that we and the university can provide them.

When the university fails at doing so, as future alumni, we should be more than ready to step in and fill the void.

The future of MSU does not lie in the hands of administrators alone. We all must do our part to ensure that future Mustangs are up-to-par with universities of similar size to us.

The College of Science and Mathematics took the cake with its 177 donors who contributed to that department alone while the College of Humanities and Social Sciences trailed in last place at 64.

At some point, like most college students, we have all scoffed at the idea of giving even more money to a university that many of us will most likely still be paying off until we are in the nursing home.

“Haven’t we already given the university enough of our time, energy, and most of all–money?” we constantly have asked ourselves.

The answer is simple–no we have not.

We cannot legitimately trudge around campus, complaining that our university is behind the times concerning technology, infrastructure or resources while we sit idly by and let it happen to the next generation.

Students, it’s time to make a stand. We need to start a tradition of passing the torch, financially, to future students who are just like us and to the university that we have come to know and love.

Maybe, as students, we don’t realize the positive impact that we can make on the university just by giving a little back after graduation.

We depended on MSU to provide us with the best education possible with the limited resources we currently have.

Now, let’s start showing our appreciation to the university that has helped shape us into the future leaders of America.

The future students of MSU deserve that much–and so much more.