Early last semester, fellow columnist/concerned citizen/love guru Bob Kessler penned an amusing and provocative piece on the Saint Mary's Executive Board stipend. In it, he suggested a few alternate uses for the $20,000 usually distributed to the Board's members, among them building a beer fort and installing bidets in the dorms (I support the dorm room ball pit initiative, for the record). Things were presumably resolved following the controversy, and the world went on spinning as usual (I say "presumably" because actually knowing the outcome of the story would imply I read articles outside of the Viewpoint, which is patently false).
In any event, graduating seniors have started receiving mail asking for donations to the senior class gift. Before I go any further, let me say that this is a worthy cause in my mind, given all that the university has done for us in our four years. Unlike the Saint Mary's cash, which stinks of the abuse of power, the senior legacy fund does not appear to be shady in any obvious manner. This year's class gift will go toward establishing an "internship assistance fund," which will allow students to defray some of the cost of spending the summer after their junior year in the white collar world's version of indentured servitude. Still, as they are prone to do, Kessler's words from last October continue to ring loudly in my ears. What else can we do with this newfound cash? Are we content to just stick it in the endowment fund without a second thought? No. Not on my watch. To borrow a line from Maximus in Gladiator: "What we do in life echoes in eternity." An unpaid internship fund is the safest use for these funds, but it is too bland for my palate. Let's achieve greatness, Class of 2009, so that every student that leaves Notre Dame after us will know us not as alums but as legends.
The senior legacy fund's suggested donation is an exceedingly cute $20.09, with the extra $.09 providing an excellent way to rid myself of the nine pennies currently stuck to the bottom of my car's center console. With approximately 2,000 seniors, this implies around $40,000 to use for the betterment of the Notre Dame community, and makes the Saint Mary's stipend look like pocket change. Outlined below is my three-part plan for achieving Domer immortality:
Build a replacement for the X Lot. Right now, the vast majority of you are asking yourselves, "What is the X Lot?" If you are included in that group, I have two things to say to you. One, I'm sorry, and two, get with the program. The X Lot, also known as the Radio Tower Lot, is home to the student tailgates on gamedays and is more commonly known as "the happiest place on earth." Like all good things, however, the X Lot's time is running short due to the new hockey arena that is planned for the site. No.1 ranking be damned, the hockey team is taking something I love and killing it. The largest chunk of the $40,000 will go toward turning that silly pavilion they just built next to the DPAC into a bigger, better X Lot.
Secondly, a portion of the proceeds will establish a legal defense fund for those cited by the Indiana State Excise Gestapo at the X Lot. I don't care if Indiana's Keystone Cops have undercover agents, camcorders, horses, or helicopters - when it comes to gameday, future generations should never have to say, "I'm sorry I party."
My last, and best, proposal comes from some research I conducted over Spring Break in Panama City, Florida (a.k.a. America's Sodom). The largest bar/club/den of iniquity in town boasts that it hosts roughly 6,000 revelers nightly. In a place as humid as Florida, that's a lot of body heat. Suffice it to say, I expected my evening there to be about as sweaty and sloppy as the Backer during Amen Corner (a.k.a. Callin Baton Rouge, Rocky Top, and Country Roads in rapid succession). Instead, I was delighted to find an elaborate system of cryogenics suspended above the dance floor that, when employed, lowered the temperature of the room by around 40 degrees in under 5 seconds. When I left the bar, dry and content, I was determined to bring such a marvelous contraption to Notre Dame. Thus, with the remainder of the senior legacy fund, we will install a similar system in the Backer. No more tropical rainforest; now everyone will be able to stand in the Backer sludge with their two-inches of personal space at a reasonable temperature.
This is our opportunity, 2009. With my plan, we will make it so that future senior classes will find no better use for their legacy funds than constructing statues in our honor.
Brad Blomstrom is a senior majoring in finance and economics that hopes
everyone enjoyed the free Keystones from the Easter Bunny sprinkled across campus last week. He can be contacted in person at the X Lot this Saturday or anytime at bblomstr@nd.edu
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
