An Open Letter the the Utah State University Alumni Association

Dear Kimberly A. Larson, BS '00 MBA '02

My wife and I have received your postcards. Your many, many postcards sent on behalf of the USU Alumni Association, requesting we call your number so we can have our alumni file "verified."

I would direct you to the administrative department at Utah State, which surely has a record of us attending your school. Or indeed check your own records to see since you are sending us each at least two postcards a month that the chances we are alumni of Utah State are actually quite high. I suspect you will find enough information to confirm that we are indeed alumni and thus I have no real pressing need to call your number to have our records "verified."

Now, I am not obtuse enough to think a simple records verification is the real reason you want to hear from us. No, alumni associations, while known for wasting money on physically-mailed postcards sent at least twice a month to alumni must have a more pressing desire to speak with us. If this were a mere question of verification, a website at which verification could take place could easily be assembled and that information disseminated.

What you want, of course, is not alumni record verification, but alumni monetary donations. And I get it. Alumni often have fealty toward their institutions of higher learning and thus might be persuaded to make a donation to help indigent students or fund ivory-handled back-scratchers for whomever at the university wants one.

Rest assured, if my wife or I suddenly come into money and decide a charitable donation might be forthcoming, we know where to find Utah State University lest, of course, the university has found a way to move its assets down Sardine Canyon into the hinterlands of Utah.

So please, consider our alumni records as verified.

I note on the cards you send that you are also "collecting stories" in order to "memorialize the history of the campus through the years." I cannot speak for my wife, but here is my story of my campus experience:

I completed an entirely online program and never once set foot on campus as a student. I do appreciate the instructors I had while taking these courses. I learned a lot and still have some of the textbooks.

I also note the now rather menacing "Once an Aggie, always an Aggie" message included on the cards. It cows me, yet I rely on the strength of my wife who, when I pass her the alumni record verification card addressed to her, she deposits it in the kitchen trash.

So keep sending the cards, I guess. Or use this post as my verification of alumni status. Either way, I remain your grateful if pinch-pennying alumni.

Sincerely,

B. J. Davidson, Biff at Large