I just got off the phone with some chicky-pop calling from PSU. It was the usual routine, she verified my address etc. and started talking about all the improvements on campus and thanked me for my past support. It's always a girl calling, I think they have in my file somewhere: "Sucker for a hot sounding woman."

So, I humored her and waited for the punchline, and she finally asked for some very large some of money to support academic programming and the individual colleges from which my wife and I graduated. I'm pretty sure they have a formula for the amount to ask, based on past donations raised to some exponent.

I had to tell her "Listen, I'm about to write a big check for STEP and the NLC in a couple of weeks before the end of the year, and that's all I can swing at the moment".

She understood, thanked me for my support of athletics, and said they were trying to do development for academics as well. Which left me thinking after the phone call, "Gee it's kind of jackassery for me to write a large check for my football entertainment, and not have much left over to support the actual important stuff at the university."

So the question is, since people have to dig deeper for STEP, will that hurt fundraising for the rest of the university's missions? Are they going to end up shafting the things that are kinda more important to society, like education and research?