Not Your Father's Harvard Crimson
I like it when people use our data in their articles. I like it when people get angry at charities and demand that they do better. I like smart people. And I like the enthusiasm of youth.
So why am I not a huge fan of this article in the Harvard Crimson? After all, it's written by a passionate, smart, angry young Harvard student, and she uses our data and ratings as her jumping-off point to hammer a bunch of America's largest charities?
Because she's angry about the wrong things, and she makes about 10 factual errors (maybe more, I stopped counting). And they're not small errors. For example, she blasts the Susan G. Komen Foundation for only giving out "13 cents for every dollar they raise." The problem is that she got that exactly backwards, in that Komen spends 13 cents to raise a dollar! This is not a small difference. In fact, it's the difference between running a criminal enterprise and being a responsible charity. And so it is that her thesis--that giving to charities is like "running dollar bills through paper shredders"--is based on the fact that she misread the data horribly.
In the author's defense, she is a member of the "class of '09" (yep, a freshman) and her credentials are that she lives somewhere called "Wigglesworth Hall." She's just a kid, and if it weren't for the power of the internet, I never would have even seen her missive anyway. I was going to blast her editor for letting this screed get out without checking the facts, but then I saw that she is an editor.
Aim higher, Harvard. Or else I may take this back.
So why am I not a huge fan of this article in the Harvard Crimson? After all, it's written by a passionate, smart, angry young Harvard student, and she uses our data and ratings as her jumping-off point to hammer a bunch of America's largest charities?
Because she's angry about the wrong things, and she makes about 10 factual errors (maybe more, I stopped counting). And they're not small errors. For example, she blasts the Susan G. Komen Foundation for only giving out "13 cents for every dollar they raise." The problem is that she got that exactly backwards, in that Komen spends 13 cents to raise a dollar! This is not a small difference. In fact, it's the difference between running a criminal enterprise and being a responsible charity. And so it is that her thesis--that giving to charities is like "running dollar bills through paper shredders"--is based on the fact that she misread the data horribly.
In the author's defense, she is a member of the "class of '09" (yep, a freshman) and her credentials are that she lives somewhere called "Wigglesworth Hall." She's just a kid, and if it weren't for the power of the internet, I never would have even seen her missive anyway. I was going to blast her editor for letting this screed get out without checking the facts, but then I saw that she is an editor.
Aim higher, Harvard. Or else I may take this back.
posted by Trent Stamp at 3:38 PM
3 Comments:
You'll now note that some readers of the article - either readers of this blog or defenders of the Susan G Komen Foundation - have taken up the cause and are pointing out the commentary's inept interpretation of Charity Navigator's data.
All members of the Crimson (even those who don't write for the paper, such as designers) are considered "editors". Sending mail to letters@thecrimson.com will go to the person who actually edits op-eds.
Can we use her article as proof of the deterioration of the US education system then?
I am dismayed that she did not even bother to call any of the charities she lambasted to get an explanation of what she had read.
Self-righteous and wrong is far worse to me than high overhead costs.
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