Giving to Yale
"To the Editor:
In ''Three Cheers (and a Big Question) for Yale'' (Everybody's Business, Oct. 23), Ben Stein asserted that small contributions hardly mattered to the university, whose endowment has made huge investment gains.
At Yale Law School, contributions from alumni -- like Ben and me -- amount to about $10 million a year. Many Yale Law graduates are church mice like me (I can't speak for Ben), and we gather that $10 million mainly in small bits and bites. We have to find that money each year because we have a big shortfall between what it costs to open the law school's doors each September (roughly $60 million) and our income from tuition and our own endowment (which the university does a great job of managing for us).
Forty percent of Yale Law students get outright grants for tuition, paid for largely by small contributions from alumni. So the small contributions from Ben and me are important.
Ben, it's great that you support an animal shelter. But please don't forget Yale Law School.
James Dabney Miller  Washington, Oct. 26
The writer is the president of the Yale Law School Association."