It began in 1997, when Megan L. Peimer '97 and Ezra W. Reese '97 asked seniors to withhold their gifts from the college and place them in a privately held escrow fund to protest the University's tenure policies. The several thousand dollars raised will only be given to the University when it meets criteria for tenuring of female professors.

After three years without an alternative fund, the idea was revived in 2000, when Joshua A. Edelman '00 and Greg A. Novak '00 began collecting money to make a contribution to a charity of the class' choice. Novak and Edelman's program did not ask seniors to shun the traditional senior gift.

This year's senior gift chairs said they did not regard their relationship with the alternative senior gift as adversarial.

Rosado said the alternative fund "shows people's awareness of charity." Getman said that "in the long run, it can only help," by keeping the class involved in charitable giving.

Class gifts in the 1990s have averaged $37,600, with a wide deviation. The Class of 1998 gave $23,573, while the Class of 1999, the first to earmark their gift for a scholarship, gave $68,036.

The university's growing $19 billion endowment dwarfs the senior classes' contribution, but Getman stresses the importance of instilling "the concept of giving back," and Rosado terms the gift "money that really does benefit the future undergraduate population."