As you've probably heard by now, Brown has a pretty severe money problem.
Two weeks ago, President Ruth Simmons announced via a campus-wide e-mail that the University's endowment, which once stood at a formidable $2.8 billion, is projected to be worth $800 million less by the end of June, a loss of almost 30 percent of its value.
It's easy to lose perspective in this time of billion-dollar Ponzi schemes and trillion-dollar bailouts, but let that number sink in for a second. Brown just lost $800 million.
That's more than the entire Obama campaign raised.
It's more than the combined payrolls of the Yankees, Mets, Tigers, Red Sox and Cubs.
For $800 million, every student at Brown could get his skin surgically removed and replaced with a huge array of iPhones, and we could all just walk around campus sending Facebook messages on each others' quadriceps (I hear they actually do this at Princeton).
So now what? Faced with the worst global economic crisis in decades and a donor base that doesn't feel much like giving, how can Brown ever hope to recoup its losses?
President Simmons' e-mail outlined some cost-saving measures, including freezing salaries for most faculty members and halting the planned growth of the Graduate School, but it's not going to be enough. Our school is in serious trouble, and the fate of future generations of Brown students hangs in the balance.
We need new solutions. We need to regain our financial foothold. We need our $800 million back. President Simmons, I hereby submit my plan for Brown's economic recovery:
• First, as Ben Bernstein '09 points out ("Of depression and diversions," Feb. 6), we still haven't built the long-awaited Nelson Fitness Center, and, presumably, Mr. Nelson's check for $10 million is lying uncashed in somebody's desk drawer. Let's convince him to spend it on new dorms or revamped classrooms instead. Brown has more urgent priorities than a new gym, and at this point, giving $10 million to the University's money managers for safekeeping is like letting Michael Phelps babysit your pot stash.
• And while we're on the subject of the gym, let's get realistic and sell the 80-pound dumbbells in the OMAC. No offense, folks, but this is Brown we're talking about, not Ohio State. The last time a Brown student lifted 80 pounds with one hand, he was bulking up to enlist in the Franco-Prussian War.
• More things we should sell: Perkins (too far), the CIT (too weird) and those three-wheeled electric scooters our DPS officers ride (too Klingon Honor Guard-y).
• When springtime rolls around, let's have Facilities Management tear up the grass on Wriston Quad and replace it with a permanent Slip-n-Slide. It would eliminate seeding and mowing costs, and the grateful brothers of Sigma Chi might stop asking me to write an angry column about the campus keg ban. Everybody wins.
• I'd like to see the Undergraduate Coundil of Students implement a system of fines to reduce obnoxious behavior and replenish Brown's coffers at the same time. Just imagine it. A $20 fine for every person in my English seminar who talks about the "shifting zeitgeist." A $100 fine for a cappella groups who sing Ben Folds songs. A $200 fine for people who reserve multiple Blue Room tables during the lunch rush. A $500 fine every time a Jew from Long Island uses the phrase "That's how I roll."
• And if all else fails, Brown can introduce a micro-sponsorship plan and auction off the naming rights to bits and pieces of campus property. Sure, Sidney Frank can get his name on a building, but what about those of us who don't have millions to spare? I'd gladly give a couple bucks to the University if I could wait in the Kevin B. Roose '09.5 Omelette Line, throw my coffee cup in the Kevin B. Roose '09.5 Trash Can or even do my business in the Kevin B. Roose '09.5 Urinal. Brown may have overestimated the strength of its investments, but it should never, ever underestimate the narcisism of its opinions columnists.
Kevin Roose '09.5 is an English concentrator from Oberlin, Ohio. He can be reached at Kevin_Roose (at) brown.edu
