“We had someone from (University Advancement), that was Danielle, and I’ve been working with her all summer and she approached me with this idea,” Porter said. “She sat on as the adviser for the senior class council last year, and we kind of noticed that every year, the class gift is a bench or a tree.”

Now, instead of giving to a bench or a tree, MSU seniors will be able to donate money to a college, unit, student group or organization of their choosing.

“I think that there’s a bigger message here, which is how can we make Michigan State better and how can we promote the community better?” Porter said. “A gift is great. You can see the class of 1930 on campus with a bench, but what does that do for the community? It’s great, but we were looking to zone in and figure out what can we do to make the community better, and I think people are realizing that message, which is great.”

The senior campaign will run similarly to the way the gift was run.

“We’re actually going to be handling the campaign very similarly to how we handle the gift,” Matlick said. “So we’ll be sending out a variety of emails to the seniors educating them about the senior class campaign, giving them a little bit of history about the gift/the campaign and giving them opportunities to give via email, via telemarketing, so our MSU Greenline program, as well as a couple of tabling events that the senior class and I will set up across campus to talk to people face-to-face to have that peer-to-peer solicitation.”

Seniors are separated by fall or spring graduations, and fundraising lasts all semester.

“It is a full semester campaign for the senior class, because we don’t want to just pop up at the last week school and say ‘hey, give us your money,'” Matlick said. “We want to make sure that people are well-educated and they understand that they have the opportunity to give to different areas across campus.”

Matlick said that many seniors were unaware of the senior gift, but she hopes that won’t be the case with the campaign.

“Last year, while there was still a gift, only 7 percent of our seniors gave,” Matlick said. “So it just wasn’t highlighted across campus, and that’s one of the major things that the Senior Class Council and I really want to focus on this year is bringing attention, or bringing the senior class campaign to the seniors’ attention and realize that it is a tradition that’s been around for a very long time and we want to make sure that the seniors have the opportunity to participate in such a tradition on campus.”

The bill to change the gift to a campaign was passed unanimously by ASMSU on Thursday and went into effect immediately.

“So for the rest of the year and, hopefully, unless it’s changed in the future, that’s the way that it’s going to be followed from now on,” Porter said. “It’s going to be a senior class campaign rather than just one gift.”

The first senior gift was the Rock on Farm Lane by the class of 1873. The class of 2016’s senior gift was a bronze statue of Sparty that will be unveiled in the Union during the fall.