An ISBA effort is currently underway to convert the 3L class gift into an annual fund donation. More specifically, graduating students would be asked to pledge money to the Iowa Law School Foundation (ILSF), and would have the opportunity to indicate one or more areas to which the donation would presumably be applied. For instance, a student could request her donation go towards a specific journal or to the development of faculty lines. An additional benefit of this form of gift, or so the story goes, is that it will foster within graduates a desire to financially support the law school for the rest of their lives.

Critics of a more traditional class gift format, one in which a 3L committee chooses a tangible improvement to make to the law school, have suggested that these gifts are often misguided, needless, and out of line with the administration’s funding priorities. These individuals also take note of the many hours expended on arriving at a consensus gift and then pushing it on the class.

The arguments of the proponents of an annual fund approach certainly have merit. Selecting one gift on behalf of the entire class could easily disenchant a significant number of potential donors, and very well could not be what Dean Jones or the faculty would have selected if this was their gift to the law school. Additionally, law students tend to be opinionated, and arriving at a consensus gift could take hours of discussion and compromise. This valuable time could clearly be spent doing any number of other things.

No matter what advantages an annual fund donation has, deciding what form the 3L class gifts of the future should take must involve transparency and discussion. This cannot be a matter that ISBA addresses without informing the student body of its intentions and gathering input from a diverse and significant number of people. This cannot be an issue that is decided by a select few without regard for the opinions of other stakeholders. One or two ISBA members, the ILSF fundraiser, and a member or two of the administration is a woefully insufficient coalition through which this particular agenda can rightfully be pushed.

While the class gift certainly affects the aspects of the law school currently being represented by those involved in this effort, that argument loses sight of the most important aspect of the entire debacle – this is a class gift. Approaching the third year law students’ class gift is not the equivalent of deciding what to do with a general donation from some alumnus. It is an opportunity for graduating students to choose some way to give back to the law school. Class gifts must be arrived at by members of each graduating class, and it would be inherently unfair (hypothetically) to change the entire structure of the gift largely in secret, and then thrust the new format upon students under the guise of it being “our” class gift.

In sum, ISBA must seek out a variety of opinions, and must make the process by which the class gift will be decided known. I recognize that under the current plan being put forth students would have some choice in selecting areas to which their donations would apply. However, that would not be enough choice to justify completely changing the structure of the class gift behind closed doors. It is still early, and it would be to the credit of ISBA if this process ended up being fully transparent. In the name of fairness and maintaining control over what form our own class gift takes, let’s hope we are given a say.