<p>Well, I guess that was kind of my point, but in reverse. If all they can raise in a few days is $10,000 then it’s unlikely the people protesting the decision will make much of a dent in the problem. That’s a trivial amount of money and it took a week for it to get to that level. By comparison, I was able to generate $2,500 in donations from a group of acquaintances for an MDA “lockup” in about 2 hours earlier this year. Based on what has come in to the art museum in the past week, the financial interest isn’t there.</p>
<p>The school needs to come up with a way to address a continuing $10,000,000 annual shortfall. Generating that kind of revenue stream needs a total capital infusion well above $100,000,000 and more likely $250,000,000 in this economy. Let’s face it, if there was that sort of other option out there, it would be being squeezed pretty hard at the moment.</p>
<p>The BOT and JR are not cartoon villains here. They’re not twisting the tips of their mustaches while tying to art museum to the train tracks. The school has cut 70 positions from the staff this fiscal year. This isn’t like the state posturing about how they’ve “cut to the bone” by dropping a couple of secretaries just before raising taxes. There is a severe structural deficit in the school’s finances that needs to be addressed now. </p>
<p>Does losing the art museum diminish Brandeis’ stature? It might. Would hacking another $4,000,000 - $10,000,000 out of the staff do far more damage to the school and its reputation than losing the museum? It certainly would.</p>
<p>Again, we all agree losing the Rose is awful. However, I have seen no one propose anything making as big an impact on the stability of the University as would legally liquidating as much of the collection as allowed by the terms of gifts. It’s sad, but it’s the only solution I’ve seen. Doing nothing while waiting for something better to come along has killed far more entities than most people believe.</p>