Okay, I hear all about the dire straits our fair institution finds itself in regarding alumni donations every month or so. Bottom line, they’re weak. Upon finding out that we’re having yet another rather unspectacular speaker at commencement (Is this some kind of exchange program perhaps? Are UPenn grads going to be lectured incoherently by our own Dougie B?), I have to say, why shouldn’t they be? Why would anyone donate to a school that seems to go out of its way to not impress the people with the money? Doug, you were in charge of PR stuff at NPR, right? So why, at the biggest event of the year, one which many alumni return to see, are we not wowing them with an impressive speaker? Or for that matter, wowing the people that will soon be (possibly wealthy) alums? This school has consistently let down its undergraduates with crap like this (Spring Fling bands anyone?), usually in the name of saving money. Ya gotta spend to earn. Give us a name! Yes, that’s right, all you need is the name, because let’s face it, NO ONE is listening to what they’re actually saying. We don’t care. And most of us will be hung-over. Or still drunk.
Haverford is getting Dave Matthews. I don’t really listen to him, but damn, that’s pretty cool. That’s something I could finally brag about to my friends at home (since no one in my town has ever heard of this place); something I could take some pride in. “My school sent us out with a bang.” I could think to myself, “They showed they cared, just a little, at the very end.” But apparently you don’t, and when some poor Red & Black society sap calls me in a year or two asking for donations, I will respond in kind.
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