Diamonds and Coal

Coal to financial “challenges,” hiring “pauses” and other euphemisms we’ve heard this semester. Anyone who’s looked for a job this summer knows this economy is totally had-intercouse-with.

A diamond to the pioneering students who heroically abolished Columbus Day this semester. After being commissioned to embark on your ambitious project, you boldly navigated the frothy waters of administrative committees, languishing at the mercy of procedural obstacles for months, before triumphantly discovering the savage University calendar of myth, to which you brought modern enlightenment. Truly, you deserve a holiday of your own.

Coal to SDS and the Corporation, whose respective antics have surely gone on far too long. How about a compromise — SDS members get to sit on the Corporation, and Corporation members get to, every now and then, cut the brakes on that boom-box/shopping cart during a downhill protest.

A diamond to new UCS President Clay Wertheimer ’10. With Petteruti under construction all year, we hope you won’t mind having the council meetings in the suite you chummy kids are all living in together.

Coal to the fact that the owner of Shark Sushi Bar and Grill has actually followed through on his promise that Shark would indeed have a shark, saying last week that the five-foot predator was currently “acclimating in the tank.” This sounds like the most dangerous abuse of literalism in branding since Johnny Rocket’s brought in that surplus Soviet VA-111 Shkval.

Coal to journalist and Commencement speaker Fareed Zakaria. You’ll need to stretch your speech out to at least 30 minutes, so try to rack your brain for some words other than “I,” “me” and “my new book.”                     

A diamond to Aretha Franklin, who will receive an honorary degree from the University at Commencement next month. Maybe you can teach whoever was pooping in the Harkness washing machine earlier this semester a little bit about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

A sentimental diamond to the Blue Room, which will soon no longer exist as we know it. There’s nowhere in the world we’d rather not be able to spend meal credits.