Hillsdale College’s 1844 Society is spreading out the gratitude, after holding a week of demonstrations leading up to Thursday’s annual “Day of Thanks.”
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, the society named this week the “Week of Thanks” to help students appreciate the contributions of their donors and peers, who have made education at Hillsdale financially possible.
“It’s about perpetuating the habit of giving and philanthropy and understanding that everything we have here and everyone who has come before us here since our founding in 1844 has been greatly provided for by generous people around the country,” said Colleen McGinness, director of alumni volunteer engagement and 1844 Society faculty adviser.
On Thursday, the society concludes its Week of Thanks by partnering with the Student Activities Board to encourage students to write thank-you cards to donors. It also has a Thanksgiving dinner in the Searle Center at 6:30 p.m. A cocktail hour begins at 5:45 p.m., and Joseph Garnjobst, classical studies chairman, and President Larry Arnn will speak during the meal.
Beginning Monday, 1844 Society members posted data price tags on buildings and set up symbolic chairs along the library colonnade to represent faculty chair endowments as reminders of the costs in attending the school.
The society also handed out coffee filled a third of the way to represent the college’s “tuition run-out day,” Nov. 29, which is also National Giving Tuesday. Only until then would Hillsdale be able to run solely on tuition revenue without private funding. The society will run a 24-hour online fundraising campaign for its Ransom Dunn scholarship, and will encourage students to donate. Educating one student costs $68,000 a year; tuition is $24,670 this academic year.
“It’s not about the amount of money they give but perpetuating the habit of giving,” McGinness said.
The Ransom Dunn scholarship is a $1,250 award to returning seniors who demonstrate financial need. The award comes from the $18.44 members pay each semester, if they don’t put it toward a Greek house, athletic team, or other campus organization. Four students received the scholarship this year, including senior Madison Whitney.
“The school and our donors do such an amazing job to help the students,” Whitney said. “It hasn’t been a burden to have enough money to come here because they’re just so generous.”
The scholarship was named after professor and preacher Ransom Dunn, who served as a trustee and interim president for the college during the second half of the 1800s. He travelled 6,000 miles across the Midwestern plains and Western frontier raising $22,000.
“Students want to help each other out,” 1844 Society President senior Mariah Hardy said. “We think it’s amazing that they want to be a part of other people’s success here.”
