• SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    But if it’s actually anonymous, how is that communicated?

    Edit: mad that you got no answer, eh?

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      lol there is one person in this whole thread who’s getting mad, but it’s not me

      and yes, as someone else said, it’s no big deal for someone to contact the business office of an institution and offer money on the condition of anonymity and other conditions. and the business people say okay, forms are filled out and signed, and money is transferred. they want to be anonymous because they don’t want all the other institutions calling them asking for money too. and/or they don’t want the world to know they’re the ones influencing the school’s spending

      no one wants donors to be able to influence whoever they’re donating to. but that’s how reality works

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yeah, Coldcell is having a real hissy fit.

        If the identity is known, it’s not anonymous, it’s undisclosed. That would be an entirely different thing.

    • Cypher@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Are you really that braindead? An anonymous donation can mean the donor requested their name not be made public, it doesn’t necessarily stop the University from knowing where the money came from.

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Sure, Jan.

            My only mistake was not assuming that the school was lying.

            The definitions of the terms being used are quite clear.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It sounds like the university called it “anonymous donor” for PR reasons whilst it is in fact “undisclosed donor”.

      Your point only makes sense if indeed the donor was genuinelly anonymous (I.e. even the University had no idea who they were) rather than merely described as anonymous by the University for the purpose of divulging it to the outside world.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          You didn’t made a mistake, IMHO.

          Nobody made a mistake.

          There was just a mistmatch between your unvoiced assumptions and those of other people posting here, so all of you were really just starting from different points and hence going in different directions.

          I suppose many downvoters might have assumed you were purposefully taking a specifically literal interpretation of “anonymous” in this context for the purpose of defending the University whilst I myself just went with it being a perfectly valid explanation until proven otherwise that you’re just a more literal person than most.

          This is why I went for writting a post which I believed would provide some clarity rather than downvoting your posts.

          As I see it your points were valid for an interpretation that the University and the article used “anonymous” in the most honest of ways (meaning, “unknown to others”) and other posters pointers were valid for an interpretation that the University and the article used “anonymous” in a deceitful way that didn’t match the dictionary definition but instead meant “unknown to the general public”, something for which the correct word is “undisclosed”.