Point: Ask Not What Your College Can Do for You, But What You Can Do for Your College
Official Panhandling
Ambassador
Dear Mr./Mrs. [name].
Hello! Our records show that you have attended Muir College at UC San Diego in the past year, and we have contacted you to, as they say, catch up!
We hope that you enjoyed what our institution had to offer — great dining halls with food cooked by Yelp’s five-star student chefs, professors who score at least a B- on ratemyprofessor.com, and new facilities which aren’t exactly new, but aren’t exactly old either — and remember, it’s rude to ask a building for her age.
However, during our routine audit of our great college, we noticed much dilapidation in regards to our otherwise fine enterprise. Just yesterday, Jerry, our fourth year student chef, quit his cooking job.
Jerry, who will be taking his life to greater heights, is also taking something of great importance — the recipe for his signature “Meetloaf” that we serve to our students every Wednesday. Without Jerry or his recipe, our students will be famished every Wednesday. Also, as our signature dish, Jerry’s Meetloaf only caused two hundred cases of food poisoning; we fear this number will grow larger without someone to match Jerry’s tender, relatively salmonella-free touch.
Many of our staff are also experiencing destitution on an unprecedented scale. The provost for our college had to sell his fifth Rolls-Royce just to make ends meet. We named him Carl, and Carl the car is now gone. How will the kids react when they hear Carl has been sent to a farm upstate?
So with great humility, I write to you to ask for a generous donation so that we can start to provide our students a better setting for their education. You will provide us relatively safe school food, prevent staff undercuts, and help renovate buildings desperately in need of upgrades, like Price Center or the Chancellor’s Complex.
Thank you for your time, and I hope to hear back with good news.
~ Pam
Counter Point: I Graduated Five Years Ago, Please Stop Sending These Emails
Cashier
How do you keep sending these emails? I’ve marked you for spam seven times now, and yet you keep managing to send this! Please stop.
Wasn’t the six figure tuition enough? I got my degree, and I want nothing to do with you now. Do you know what I could have also bought with $100,000? A nice car. Or a nice house that’s not over an hour away from my work. Or 100,000 boxes of those tiny powdery mini donuts, I don’t know! And they would all be a better use of my money and time.
I had to swim with loan sharks just to pay for your school’s mediocre education! Did you know that the human body can live without one lung and kidney? Thanks to you, I unwillingly found out two days ago. I feel empty inside, in more ways than one.
So please stop. Just get out of my life. Any more of this shit and you’ll hear from my lawyer.
— Nick
