How About The Pottery Barn Student Center At Barnard?*

The concept of selling naming rights has gone beyond just stadiums and arenas:

A Victoria’s Secret Student Center might seem incongruous in the company of Milbank Hall, Brooks Hall, and the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residence Hall on Barnard College’s four-acre campus. It hasn’t happened — yet. But if Victoria’s Secret offered, well, the possibilities are open.

In a push to raise $20 million for its largest, most costly expansion project to date, the liberal arts college is selling the naming rights for a 70,000-square-foot building currently under construction with an online ad seeking a corporate or private sponsor to foot the bill, administrators said.

“It’s not typical to raise $20 million gifts by posting them online, but I think it would be a brilliant thing to do if a company wanted to demonstrate its commitment to women and higher education,” the vice president for institutional advancement at Barnard, Cameran Mason, said.

A $20 million corporate outlay would be one of the largest donations the college ever received, she said, and would represent about 10% of the school’s endowment. The board of trustees would ultimately have to approve the donation, and would likely reject a contentious donor “such as a convicted felon,” Ms. Mason said.

*And when crafting your lede (or political cartoon — Sean Delonas, we’re looking at you!), feel free to refrain from suggesting more obvious tie–ins because most of the ones that automatically come to mind are actually not very funny . . .