“Non-Negotiable.” What an Alumni Revolt Tells Us About the State of Higher Ed Fundraising
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University of Texas at Austin. Blanscape/shutterstock
In early March, the Texas Tribune reported that University of Texas at Austin alumni threatened to withhold donations in 2020 if administrators did not support the university’s alma mater song “The Eyes of Texas.” The song, wrote the Tribune’s Kate McGee, “has divided the university community in recent months over its ties to minstrel shows where performers wore blackface.”
“My wife and I have given an endowment in excess of $1 million to athletics,” wrote one donor cited in the Tribune article. “This could very easily be rescinded if things don’t drastically change around here.” The song is “non-negotiable,” wrote another alumnus. “If it is not kept and fully embraced, I will not be donating any additional money to athletics or the university or attending any events.”
On March 9, a committee found that the song had “no racist intent” but acknowledged that its first public performance was likely by performers in blackface during a minstrel show. Moving forward, the UT-Austin press release stated, “‘The Eyes of Texas’ will remain as the university’s alma mater song, which had previously been decided and was not a matter under consideration by the committee.”
Any development officer will tell you that donors will sometimes push back against administrative decisions. What makes the Tribune story so fascinating is that it provides a window into donors’ unfiltered and at times repugnant thoughts. We rarely get to read emails from alumni making overt threats while railing against what they consider “cancel culture run amok.”
But these emails do not exist in a vacuum. They come against the backdrop of a higher ed field gutted by the pandemic, fundraisers’ growing reliance on affluent alumni to plug the gaps, and heightened calls for social and racial justice that, if the Tribune story is any indication, can rankle the very same deep-pocketed alumni.
Cause and effect
We can’t definitively say if the UT-Austin story is part of a trend without similar information from other universities. Nevertheless, we know that university officials operate under the assumption that campus activism may have a measurable impact on fundraising.
In 2016, the New York Times’ Anemona Hartocollis reported that alumni were dialing back giving to protest administrators’ refusal to push back against student activists. Amherst College President Carolyn A. Martin told the Times she was “not surprised” that protests contributed to a 6.5% decline in alumni giving for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
We’ve also seen donors reward universities when their administrators challenge campus activists. In 2017, Kenneth Griffin gave the University of Chicago’s economics department $125 million after its dean of students spoke out against “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” Griffin praised the school as “fundamentally committed to free expression, fierce debate, and intellectual pursuit,” and a culture of “rigorous questioning and open discourse.”
On the other hand, sometimes, big donations themselves are a source of protest. In January, billionaire trustee James Crown gave the University of Chicago social work school a $75 million donation, sparking protests from students and alumni concerned about the family’s association with General Dynamics, a major U.S. defense contractor.
More recently, the Tribune’s McKee reported that Texas A&M University examined the potential philanthropic fallout if the school removed a campus statue of a former university president and Confederate general, Lawrence Sullivan Ross. A report found the school “could expect a short-term drop, but long-term fundraising would likely remain unaffected.”
A confluence of factors
Some of the conflict we are seeing now comes from a combination of universities’ overreliance on wealthy alumni and surging demands for racial justice, coupled with greater scrutiny of “toxic” donors, all of which are prompting fresh interrogation of university practices and traditions. Campus clashes over such practices have been happening for decades, and much of the debate is reflective of the same reckoning that is happening within so many of the country’s institutions. But schools have become increasingly reliant on wealthy alumni, which can exacerbate tensions between students and administrators, and add a financial incentive that may influence how schools respond.
Last June, the Austin-American Statesman reported that the UT system planned to cut more than $28 million from UT-Austin’s budget through the end of fiscal 2021. While UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell was confident the university would meet the target through previous savings, he also said officials would defer debt payments and left the door open for future layoffs.
We can safely assume that UT-Austin’s development officers were simultaneously working the phones to solicit support from older, wealthy alumni who found comfort in the fact that the S&P 500 was up 45% from its March low.
“‘Top of the pyramid’ donors are “still making money and doing better than the rest of the world,” Don Hasseltine, Aspen Leadership Group senior consultant and vice president, told me in June. In many cases, “95% of the money raised in a capital campaign will come from 5% of the donors, and 50% is going to come from 30 donors.” UT-Austin, as it turns out, was and is in the middle of a big capital campaign. (Then again, universities are always in the middle of a big capital campaign.)
Around the same time the UT System laid out its forecast, Black Lives Matter protests were sweeping the country. UT-Austin student athletes asked the school to drop “The Eyes of Texas,” among other demands, and threatened to skip recruiting and donor events. “The university responded with plans to boost Black student enrollment and recruitment, but it kept the song and pledged to educate visitors and students on its history and context,” wrote the Tribune’s McKee.
“Alumni have given and are giving”
Hartzell didn’t say if donors’ threats factored into his decision to keep “The Eyes of Texas.” But emails obtained by the Tribune showed that his staff closely kept tabs on alumni opinion.
From June to late October, over 70% of the nearly 300 people who emailed his office demanded the school keep the song. Around 75 people in emails explicitly threatened to stop donating to the school, reported McKee, who noted that these figures represent only “a fraction of the more than 540,000 UT-Austin alumni.” But again, not all alumni give equally. And it appears that many of the donors flooding the school’s inbox fell at the top of the giving pyramid.
Consider Bob Rowling, whose holding company owns Omni Hotels and whose name adorns a building within UT-Austin’s McCombs School of Business. His net worth stands at $3.9 billion. “I am not advising you or taking any position regarding this issue right now, other than to say ‘The Eyes’ needs to be our song,” he wrote in an email obtained by the Tribune. “I AM [sic] wanting you to be aware of the ‘talk of the town’ regarding UT. There are a lot of folks on this email chain who love UT and are in positions of influence.”
Rowling affirmed his stance in an interview with the Tribune. “We’re in the middle of a capital campaign right now ...We’re raising billions of dollars right now. If you want to dry that up immediately, cancel ‘The Eyes of Texas.’”
“Less than 6% of our current student body is black,” wrote alumnus Larry Wilkinson. “The tail cannot be allowed to wag the dog ... and the dog must instead stand up for what is right. Nothing forces those students to attend UT Austin. Encourage them to select an alternate school … NOW!” Like Rowling, Wilkinson stood by his opinions with the Tribune. “Everything in life all comes back to money,” he said.
McKee’s article cited other emails obtained through public records requests whose authors’ names were redacted by the school. On March 9—the same day the school’s committee found “The Eyes of Texas” had no racist intent—the Daily Texan’s Deborah Hill called on UT to request the release of these donor names.
“When UT was faced with the decision between protecting donors or supporting Black students, it opted for the choice that would guarantee financial security,” Hill wrote.
