Could you give us some of these restrictions? This seems like a BS excuse to not support the students.
If I give a school 20 million yearly to research a specific form of cancer, and I find out that they instead used that money to upgrade the plumbing in their dormitories and spent nothing on cancer research, I would not give them 20 million ever again.
Sure, due to funding cuts students will suffer with slowly degrading infrastructure and will need to do plumbing fixes at some point. But that doesn't mean people who give them money for one purpose are happy with it being used for another purpose.
You might even form a contract with the institution obligating them do certain things with your gift
This is absolutely par for the course for university endowments. They're not big pots of money, they're thousands of small pots of money with various restrictions on their investment, disbursement, etc.
Not asking for the breakdown, wondering what some of those restrictions look like and whether they support the students with those restrictions.
For a quick institution specific overview, see “with donor restrictions” on page 20-21 (pdf page 21-22) of their most recent annual report[0].
I’d imagine “maintain and invest the original contribution in perpetuity” covers majority of the restricted funds, with use-specific restrictions in a distant but comfortable second. Since it’s Harvard, they probably also have more funky restrictions than the average bear (gifts of stock in kind with restrictions on timing of sale, voting, etc.).
[0]: https://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/fy24_harvard_fin...