As [the students] prepared to collect their diplomas, their commencement speaker, Rob Hale, a billionaire philanthropist from Boston, returned to the dripping podium. He brought along two cash-stuffed duffel bags, he announced, and would hand every graduate $1,000 as they crossed the stage — $500 to keep for themselves, and $500 to give to any good cause.

[...]

It is the fourth Massachusetts college campus in the last four years where Mr. Hale has thrilled graduates with his signature split gift. Each time, he has selected a public school with high concentrations of first-generation and lower-income students who have “worked their tails off to get there,” he said.

Hale has no Wikipedia page.

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[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wikipedia says U Mass Dartmouth has around 6,800 undergraduates. Assume a relatively even distribution, that’s 1,700 seniors graduating. His net worth is $5.4 billion, which means he’d need to do this stunt ~32 times in order to have given away 1% of his net wealth.

[–] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I hate the man but his $7m outlay (~$1.7m each for four unis) was money very well spent in a very clever PR move. Most people will see him as noble and good. Compare his one grand gifts to happy and stunned students to Bezo's moronic "Courage and Civility Award". The award was $100m but then it reduced to $50m. You don't need to be accountant or a math major to see that Bezo's could have kept 1,000s of people employed at the WaPo instead of giving Van Fucking Jones 100 million dollars.

Jones got that money in 2021. And - as far as I know - he's basically said nothing about it and done nothing with it.

[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 6 points 5 months ago

that name makes me want to vomit