This November I received an email with the subject line “Make your year-end gift to Goshen College on Giving Tuesday.” Over the next few days, as “Giving Tuesday” approached, I received more emails, asking me to donate money to GC. One of them even urged me to increase my annual giving to $1,000.

I would argue, however, that over the course of my time here I’ve already been giving thousands of dollars annually to the college, albeit in the form of tuition rather than a gift, and that it is inappropriate to ask me, as a college student, to give more money.

According to Inside Higher Ed, colleges and universities in the United States took in over $58 billion in donations during the 2023 fiscal year. While that number is hard to quantify, one thing is clear: financial gifts are important to any college.

Why would Goshen be any different? It’s not. Teams of people spend their days working to raise funds for the college — it’s a large part of President Stoltzfus’ job. Fundraising helped us open a top-of-the-line nursing center, and over the coming years it will help GC do much more.

As a communication student, I am also personally intertwined with gift giving. The Center for Communication Studies was made possible thanks to donors — I walk by their names every single day. In May, I’ll spend a few weeks working with 91.1 The Globe to execute our membership drive. Over the course of two weeks we’ll raise over $50,000.

All this to say, I’m pro fundraising and gift giving. I’m not pro asking students to participate.

Sending a student an email asking for a financial gift is insensitive at best and downright disrespectful at worst. Many students take on debt during their college career, and will spend years working hard to pay it off. According to the Federal Reserve, more than 40% of adults who pursued higher education took out student loans.

Over the last few years, I have watched Goshen College repeatedly ask students, many of whom were thousands of dollars in debt, to reach into their pockets, pull out their hard earned money, and give a little bit more to the very institution that they are already putting themselves in debt for.

I choose to believe that this is unintentional, that the way it comes off hasn’t been considered. I think it’s easy to create mass emails to send to alumni and to just add current students to the mailing list.

I also think it would be just as easy to remove them.

It’s not like it would be a big loss. In the most recent issue of the Goshen College Bulletin, the class of 2024 was listed as having donated a whopping $142. I’m sure we can afford to live without that.

It’s not the end of the world, but asking current students to give money isn’t a good look for administration. Ending fundraising messaging to students, and encouraging them to engage with the development office solely in nonfinancial ways, would be a good way for GC to show that it’s thinking about the needs and feelings of its own students.

Unless we come up $142 short of a goal, then we can talk.