Earlier this week, David Rockefeller ’36 gave $100 million to Harvard. That’s a lot of money. The gift is earmarked for international programs—a whole lot of them, one presumes—as well as for the arts.

Rockefeller’s generosity is unsurpassed in the history of the College. Never before has an alumnus written Harvard a cheque with quite so many zeroes. But despite the undisputed magnanimity of the gesture, the dining hall chatter—scientific measure of the pulse of the undergraduate population that it is—has seemed to be unexpectedly divided on the worthiness and direction of the gift.

Aside from the important symbolism of the gift, couldn’t Rockefeller’s cash have been better directed? It isn’t hard to think of a whole lot of worthy causes that don’t have a $35 billion war chest at their disposal. If you’ve got $100 million in chump change to give away, why on earth would you give it to Harvard?

There are plenty of good arguments, of course. The list runs quickly from the tired to the cliché, and I wouldn’t dare presume to tread on the turf of the good folks at the Harvard College Fund, who make the sales pitch for a living. Suffice to say, complaints that donations to Harvard might have been better directed betray a deeply ungrateful streak in some Harvard students’ constitutions.

Like it or not, we are the beneficiaries of our benefactors’ beneficence. Few institutions lay claim to an endowment the size of Harvard’s, but just as few can claim to have the capacity to employ such a wealth of funds. Sustaining the sheer numbers of museums, laboratories, and—perish the thought—students that Harvard does comes with a very hefty price attached.

While other prestigious research institutions, like the University of Toronto, are contemplating cutting down the size of their undergraduate student population for space and economical reasons, Harvard is contemplating an expansion. The benefits of gifts like David Rockefeller’s will extend across generations, just as they’ll extend across the Charles.

Like so much among Harvard undergraduates, self-righteous discontentment about the University’s windfall—which presumably comes at the direct expense of starving children somewhere—is mostly meaningless chit-chat. But even the suggestion of ungratefulness comes imbued with a great deal of risk.

By questioning the wisdom of our alumni’s generosity, undergraduates bite the hand that feeds them. Hard.

Adam Goldenberg’s columns appear weekly in The Voice, and on alternate Fridays in The Harvard Crimson. Visit his blog at www.thisisgadfly.com.