Alumni support for Aspire

President Tilghman rightfully hails Princeton’s exceeding Aspire’s $1.75 billion goal (Campus Notebook, Sept. 19). It ain’t necessarily so, however, that special praise is due because Aspire raised the greatest sum in Princeton’s history “despite the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”

The gap in recent decades between rich and poor here in the United States has reached a historic spread, and I’d guess that a very large proportion of Princeton alumni (most?) fit into the top 20 percent who control more than 50 percent of this nation’s wealth. So for them, making donations may never have been so painless.