Monday, monday

Hey MILLI,

Did you ever wonder about where that $40,000 of your tuition went? One of my econ major friends that wants to work for the IRS did some research and got some preliminary numbers on the breakdown, which I thought were pretty interesting:

$0.00: adequate parking on campus

$1,555: planting flowers

$2,007: unplanting flowers

$2,793: replanting flowers that we just unplanted

$5,988: planting more flowers right before Alumni Weekend

$200: Coach K's daily fruit basket

$2: Untenured faculty salary

$3: Tenured faculty salary

-$3: research compensation

-$0.00: teaching undergrads

$3,625: wining and dining the Board of Trustees

$4,076: wining and dining anyone that went here but isn't here now

$4,882: wining and dining anyone who doesn't go here now but will in future

-$201: A.B. Dukes/Robertsons

-$80: Asians

-$0.32: that one kid from Idaho (to complete the 50 states)

-$4601.68: athletes (read: basketball players)

$13,295: room & board

Although some of the prices surprised me, most didn't: the room and board cost is probably similar to that of Manhattan-which is funny, because Duke is a lot like Manhattan in general: huge public park, minority representation greater than national averages and tons of kids from Jersey.

VANILLI

 

VANILLInator!!

Thanks for the numbers, though I was surprised that none of my tuition went to buy off the Princeton and Times reviewers who moved us up from 52 to 11 this year. This made me wonder, then, what has changed so significantly in the past year to effect this improvement? Some ideas:

• Rolling Stones > Collective Soul

• TVs in Wilson mean that students never have to miss an episode of CSI.

• Phillip Kurian graduated.

• And Pasha.

• the B.C. Walkway must have been really dragging our rankings down

• Cosmic Cantina is now on Points

Our high rating can't be because of the disappointing new Perk, that's for sure. Why couldn't Pauly have just moved his stand to von der Heyden? Because Pauly, in one of the most foolish marketing blunders in Duke history, does not sell coffee with his hot dogs. The amount of money students spend on coffee would pull a small West African nation out of debt.

No. 11 surely isn't about the appreciation of minorities at Duke. I heard that at Body Rock the acapella group BLUEbonic Plague sang "Purple People Eater." The extra-terrestrial minority of the Duke population has expressed extreme disappointment in the lack of cultural sensitivity displayed in lyrics like "pigeon-toed, undergrowed" and repeated references to their "one horn." Besides, they're still amped up about that whole Miss "Universe" competition.

We could be no. 11 because of the high-caliber speakers Duke has been bringing in, like former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Of course, never in its wildest dreams did the Administration ever imagine that 2,000 students would wake themselves up from a drunken stupor to see him speak. Actually most of those people didn't really want to see Powell, they were basketball fans who wandered over to Wilson while waiting in line for Cameron tickets. I think this explains the occasional spontaneous "Go to hell, al-Zarqawi, go to hell!" cheer which interrupted his speech.

Well, either way, I gotta go celebrate Duke's rise in the world. 11 shots of 151 at 11.

MILLIcious