January 3, 2001

Dear Friends:

When we were on a three-term calendar, Earlham students went home for Thanksgiving not to return for winter term until after New Year’s. We did not have occasion on campus for celebrating the joyous and sacred holidays that fall in December. Now that we have changed to semesters, students are on campus until the third week in December. We pause in the midst of work on papers and exams and presentations to observe the holy days of the several religious faiths that make up our community. 

This year in December, African American students organized a Kwanzaa dinner, and also invited a dance troupe from Oberlin to stir us with African dances before the dinner. A number of students fasted from sunup to sundown each day in observance of Ramadan, the Muslim holy days. Students in Beit Kehillah, the Jewish Cultural Center, held a rousing Hanukkah celebration. 

One evening in the Meetinghouse, Christian and other students, faculty and staff gathered for carol singing interleaved with readings of the Christmas story from the Bible. After the service, we took candles to light the campus. The luminaria stretched from Stout Meetinghouse to the Heart, circled the Heart, and illuminated the length of both sides of the main drive out to National Road. It was a striking sight, one that has become an annual tradition.     

Just as the semester was ending and students were leaving for home, we received a wonderful gift: news that The Kresge Foundation has earmarked Earlham for an $800,000 challenge grant towards construction of a new interdisciplinary studies/social sciences building. This is a building project we have been dreaming about for more than a decade. We expect to call it the Landrum Bolling Center, to honor an extraordinary man: a past president and current friend of Earlham, and an exemplary citizen peacemaker in a world that very much needs peacemakers. 

I hope you will read the enclosed booklet which provides more information about the project. Earlham’s strength lies preeminently in the quality of its teaching faculty, and in the character of the learning community we invite students to join. Buildings are always secondary to relationships in Earlham’s way of thinking. But I want to emphasize that this building will be organized and outfitted to maximally catalyze encounters between Earlham teachers and students in the decades ahead. This will be a building that supports an active, collaborative, international, interdisciplinary, information-rich, and value-centered approach to learning. It will make the very best new technology accessible to students and faculty working closely together. 

We expect the total cost of the project to be $13.25 million. Counting the grant from The Kresge Foundation, we have already raised about $11.45 million. This leaves us with $1.8 million now to raise. But the grant from Kresge is in the form of a challenge. They will not give us the $800,000 unless and until we raise all the rest of the money we need. And we have a June 30 deadline to meet that goal.

I am writing to ask for your help in raising the last $1.8 million. 

We have already come a very long way. The fund-raising effort for this project began with a $5 million grant from Lilly Endowment. That grant came just six months after we had concluded our most recent capital campaign. Without that initial grant (and notwithstanding the project’s importance) it is unlikely we would have dared pursue the project at this time. But with that gift in hand, the Board of Trustees and I made the judgment that we could raise the remaining funds from among our alumni, parents, and friends. 

The Board of Trustees stepped up first. With every one of them making generous commitments according to their means, Board members pledged just under $1 million towards the project. I am especially grateful to the leadership and generosity of Tom Gottschalk ’64, a former Board chair and chair of the fund-raising committee for the Landrum Bolling Center, and of Mark Myers ’60, our current Board chair. 

Many other Earlham alumni have also already made very significant gifts. I especially want to salute John and Jane Loose (both ’64), who have pledged $1 million towards the endeavor. We are still having conversations with other donors who may be able to make significant gifts. We will need their help if we are to reach our goal. 

Now we need your help. I want to ask that each and every member of our community make a double gift to Earlham this year.

• Please make a gift to the Earlham Fund. It provides critical support for annual operations, especially scholarship support. We need your contribution to the Earlham Fund every year. And if you increase your Earlham Fund gift this year, you may help us meet a challenge posed by a brother and sister who graduated from Earlham. (Details are enclosed.) 

• Please also make an equal or even larger gift to the Landrum Bolling Center. You may want to make this in the form of a pledge that you pay off over two or three years. Your gift to the Landrum Bolling Center will help us meet the terms of the Kresge challenge. (Again, details are enclosed.)

If every Earlham donor makes a double gift this year, one to the Earlham Fund and one to the Landrum Bolling Center, I am confident we will reach our goal. 

It has become my custom to write you at the beginning of each semester. Normally these letters are not fund-raising letters, but simply a chance to share some glimpses of what is happening at Earlham. This letter is an exception – because an extraordinary opportunity lies just within our reach. 

To take advantage of this opportunity, we need the help of everyone in the Earlham community. Every gift, small and large, will make a difference. Please help us meet the terms of the Kresge challenge. (Again, if we don’t raise the remaining $1.8 million, they won’t award us the $800,000 they’ve set aside for us.) Please help us honor Landrum Bolling. Most important, please help us provide Earlham students and faculty with a vibrant new setting for learning and teaching. And please remember that we need your help by June 30.  

Ellen joins me in sending our best regards to you all, and our deepest gratitude for your generosity. 

Warmly,

Doug Bennett