As a result of Utah’s slowing economy and just plain slow state Legislature, the U is getting a smaller and smaller portion of the state budget pie every year.
The money stream is dwindling faster than Mitt Romney’s hair stylist’s supply of gel. Budget cuts have gone from reasonable to totally out of hand. It seems like they’re chopping every vital function from food to faculty to fun. Just the other day, I was in the OSH building and there was a sign saying that toilet paper had been eliminated in order to preserve other essential services.
They also closed down Chartwells and posted a sign that talked about how rising tuition made it impossible for students to afford their overpriced food. Even one of my professors got axed. The department sent a janitor to teach the class in her place. “Heck. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout this crap,” the janitor said. “Why don’t you all just go home?”
Something has to be done.
The cuts have reached crisis level, and if the state Board of Regents doesn’t step in soon to do something about it, the U risks becoming nothing more than a handful of run down ’70s-era buildings with 10,000 students and only six professors to teach them. In short, I’m mad as hell and I don’t have to take it anymore.
So here’s my proposed solution: Hire all of the old boys from Enron to run the U’s day to day operations. Hire Lay, Skilling and the rest of the pals and see if they can turn this sinking ship around. Get Arthur Andersen to work a little of that old black magic on the U’s books and voila! A $12 billion endowment and free tuition! It’s as simple as that.
Here’s the way to make it all happen, step-by-step.
First, you call up the Justice Department. You do this in order to free up Enron’s management masters from the pesky shackles of their government handlers. You’re going to need to distract U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft a little bit to do it. This can be accomplished by sending a truckload of Utah gun fanatics to Washington, D.C., and telling them they have to leave their guns at lockers outside the Capitol. This will make the gun fanatics angrier than a nest of hornets. They’ll be rootin, tootin’, shootin’ mad.
The gun fanatics will pack John Ashcroft’s office with so many complaints and angry phone calls that the Justice Department will practically shut down for a couple of weeks. In this brief window of time, the state of Utah can whisk away all of the old Enron executives and give them new names and identities here in Utah.
Next, you place the old Enron crowd at key positions around the university. To begin with, U President Bernie Machen will have to go. He’s done a great job so far, but he ain’t nothin’ compared to Ken Lay. The president’s office should be remodeled all in black so it looks really businesslike and has a sort of sinister appearance about it. We want these Enron guys to be known as the “bad boys” of academic administration.
Each of the department heads should also get the boot, and Enron higher-ups should take their places. These new department heads will be responsible for turning a profit. Important majors like physics that do a lot of cool stuff on paper, but never really attract many students, will get the hatchet. Other worthless majors that attract lots of less intelligent students like communication, anthropology and political science, however, will become big business. Stupid students bring in serious cash!
The next step is to get rid of Chartwells. There’s no particular reason. They just suck.
Next, you hire Arthur Andersen to fudge a little here and there on the ol’ ledgers. Though the company’s reputation has been tarnished a by the Enron fiasco, the U wouldn’t really mind. Tarnished shmarnished. What we want is some serious dough! Arthur Andersen accountants can be placed at key financial positions around the U. They can perform creative transfers of budgets to make the U’s bottom line swell. Surely there has to be a hefty chunk of change hidden away in grounds and maintenance, right? And by eliminating Chartwells and turning dining services back over to the U, we can create a front for some serious money laundering (all strictly legal, of course).
Lastly, you hire Johnny Cochrane to teach at the law school and work as the in house council. Though Cochrane doesn’t really have much of a link with Enron and Arthur Andersen now, there’s no reason he couldn’t. And if anyone charges the U with any wrongdoing, Cochrane could just play the “race card.” He’ll argue that the U is just being discriminated against because there are lots of Mormons here. He’ll argue that Mormons are a race and that all of those jerks out there that want to prosecute Ken Lay are just doing it because he has links to the LDS Church. That’ll shut ’em up. If all else fails, we’ll hire Christina Axson-Flynn’s lawyer to defend U administrators. That will strike fear into the heart of federal prosecutors.
So there you are?a simple plan for turning the U’s budget nightmare into a budget party! U students will be riding high on the academic hog and we’ll finally get that new parking structure we’ve always wanted. Sweeeeet daddy.
Disclaimer: The Comical is pure satire and appears at the beginning of every week on The Chronicle’s Web site. Please take the stories as jokes and don’t call your lawyer. Thanks.