Commentary

Thank you letters are a display of good manners

To the Editor:

I wish to respond to the letter by Naomi Buck in the March 28 issue, in which she took considerable offense at being asked by the Office of Financial Aid to write a letter of thanks to the people responsible for her named scholarship. To be fair, she makes an excellent point. There is no reason whatsoever why students receiving financial aid should be the only ones responsible for thanking benefactors of Oberlin. No student at Oberlin pays the full cost of their education, nor do their parents. The difference between charged fees and the total cost is covered from endowment income and gifts from alumni and friends. Recognizing those who contribute to the college is a collective responsibility.

But I have to wonder just how onerous a task it is to write a note of thanks recognizing a gift from which one has benefited personally. If it is beneath her dignity to thank whoever gave the money, perhaps it should have been beneath her dignity to accept it in the first place. Financial aid is not reparations somehow owed to low-income students for the evils of capitalism. Nor is it charity. People do not donate scholarship money to the college out of pity for the less fortunate. Rather, donors are doing their best actually to create the kind of school Ms. Buck believes she is entitled to. Insulting them hardly seems like an effective way to create diversity at Oberlin.

Ms. Buck is quite correct in that Oberlin needs money - from people who are under absolutely no obligation to donate it. And not everyone who gives to Oberlin is "rich," unless Ms. Buck defines "rich" as simply being able to give to a cause you believe in.

Three years ago, I received a junior faculty fellowship funded by a former trustee Andrew Delaney. Without prodding from the powers that be, I wrote to Mr. Delaney thanking him for his gift, and telling him about the work I planned to do during the leave his gift made possible. Writing this letter probably took half an hour. In return, I received a very kind note of thanks from Mr. Delaney, in which he told me that I was the only recipient of the fellowship who had ever corresponded with him. So far as I know, faculty too are now reminded to write such notes.

Thanking people who give money from which we benefit personally is simply good manners.

-Leonard V. Smith (Associate Professor of History)

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