Dear Law School Development Staff:

I will not be sending you any money. Please stop asking.

The reason for this is two-fold. First, as you are aware, I have a crushing amount of personal debt that needs to be taken care of. It is manageable and being managed, but it is also the size of a house down payment.

This debt does not preclude me from donating money to other sources--public television, friends' charity races, and so forth--but consider that I presently pay more than $1,000 to you for my legal education every month already. Yes, you received this money 5 years ago. Excellent for you. But I am paying for it now. Why on Earth would I want to donate more money at this time?

The second reason? Well, you know I don't care much about things like prestige and law school rankings. But others do, and this includes potential employers down the line. Unfortunately, my degree is worth less now than when I earned it, thanks to the school's decline in the oft-maligned academic rankings? I am not personally bothered by this, because I could give a rat's ass where somebody went to get their education. But it does alter my economic potential to see the school drop.

You could argue that more donations from alumni might help reverse this trend. I disagree. And, even were you all to successfully crack the top 50 schools in the country, the first reason still applies: I already gave you a life-altering amount of cash.

(this letter, or a slightly more professional variant, will be going in the return envelope to every USD alumni contribution request I receive for the next 10 years)