OF4-11/05/07 9:25 AM A UNIVERSITY BUCKS THE NAMING RIGHTS TREND.
The Osgood File. I'm Charles Osgood.
It's become fairly common now to name a school building, or even a whole school, after someone who has given a lot of money.
Five years ago, the Dean of the Business School at the University of Wisconsin in Madison went looking for a donor, somebody, to give 50 million dollars for that. There were no takers. Partly because 50 million dollars is a lot of money, I suppose.
But perhaps modesty prevailed. So Dean Michael Knetter came up with another, better idea. To find enough people who would be willing to donate five million a piece, in exchange for not naming the school after anybody. And 13 alumni contributed 85 million to do exactly that.
SOT - Dean Michael Knetter of University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Business
"We received that gift in exchange for not putting a different name on the school --- for example, the name of a single individual, the so-called 'naming gift' --- for the next twenty years."
The Business School at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is now called the Lubar School of Business, after Milwaukee businessman Sheldon Lubar - who donated 10 million dollars.
Lubar happens to be the 13th of the 13 alumni who paid five million apiece not to have the University's business school in Madison named after anybody. Dean Knetter couldn't be more pleased.
SOT - Dean Michael Knetter
"It's something that was right for us. You know, Wisconsin has a lot of alumni --- we're a big school. And we just felt naming the whole school after one person didn't seem like the right thing to do."
And why not?
SOT - Dean Michael Knetter
"It didn't seem inclusive enough. And we really believe in the team approach and we found a group of people that really wanted to support that idea."
The bigger the school budget, the more sense this makes.
SOT - Dean Michael Knetter
"Our budget is so big that the idea that we'd name the whole school after one person just didn't make sense to me or to these wonderful donors."
The Osgood File. Charles Osgood on the CBS Radio Network.
The Osgood File. November 5th, 2007. |
|
|
