Senior Class Picks Gift for Harvard-Westlake

After a vote by the senior class, this year’s senior gift will be a contribution to the Alumni Scholar Endowment Fund. The gift will be in memory of Ishan Bose-Pyne ’12, who died last year, and will help students who could not otherwise afford to pay Harvard-Westlake tuition.

The class of 2011 chose to put their gift towards financial aid; the year before that, the class gift helped pay for the Kutler Center in memory of Brendan Kutler ’11.

The average gift amount is around $8,000 to $11,000 according to Wesley Friedman ’12, one of the students organizing the gift.

There has never been 100 percent participation in the collection of a senior gift. The average participation is around 80 percent, and Friedman said that the highest participation was 84 percent by the class of 2011.

"Some kids will give a dollar and some will give a couple hundred dollars," Friedman said. "It’s not about how much you give. It’s about class participation."