Admin’s Manifesto: Bringing DOGE to SLC
Rachel O’Connor
Illustration by Benin Polanco-Morales ‘29
This just in! I’ve gotten my hands on a new set of initiatives fresh off the President's desk. It’s amazing what you can learn from scavenging in the gold-plated dumpsters outside of the President’s new palatial digs.
As we all know by now, as evidenced by dorm buildings literally falling apart (looking at you Hill House fire escape), Sarah Lawrence is in some serious need of green. And by green, I mean money, not the other stuff. With the school’s small endowment and collection of fabulously wealthy and wildly famous alumni, money is something echoing around all of the admin's minds. Some would say Scrooge suffered a similar affliction, but that’s neither here nor there.
Enter “Cristle’s Manifesto,” as I affectionately call it: a collection of policies meant to reduce costs and generate fresh revenue for the college. It seems that charging families a $30-per-person admission fee to indulge in a food truck taco during parents’ weekend was only the first horseman of the apocalypse.
The exceedingly wordy proclamation, riddled with HR speak, will be published later tonight on MySLC. Where? Who knows. Perhaps try asking the students who were recently dragooned into “updating” the website as their conference project. Not to be mistaken with the conference project that spawned the class-selection algorithm, complete with scheduled registration-day website crashes (got your pitchforks and torches ready yet?).
But fear not! I am here to break down some of the highlights. Kicking off the reforms are new hours for Bates dining hall: Mondays and Thursdays 5:00 a.m. to 5:18 a.m.; all of Friday the 13; Saturdays from 6 to7 p.m. (but only if it’s a leap year) and every other hour the night of full moons. The reduced meal hours will not only save on staff expenses, but will result in less food consumed and therefore fewer charges from local urgent care facilities. But don’t worry, to compensate us for the inconvenience of the abrupt shift in meal hours, Bates will be introducing an only slightly-sketchy seafood boil station to be enjoyed on the days the building is actually open, with listeria and ptomaine poisoning included in the price of admission. And they say Admin doesn’t know how to compromise!
In addition to the new Bates hours, all buildings will now only have power from 9:00 a.m. (just in time for your 9:30 a.m. class) to 5:00 p.m., except Westlands, which will have power 24/7 and will be outfitted with a newer, more reliable AC system (only on the faculty floors, of course) and work-study students wielding large palm fronds to fan administration functionaries as they meander throughout the building.
Each classroom will now be outfitted with its very own metal bucket! That way when the ceiling pops a leak in the middle of your seminar in the Dudley Lawrence Living Room (not that this happened recently or anything), there will be no need to call maintenance. After all, maintenance costs money, and how could Admin bear to divert any funds from the excessive landscaping or the state-of-the-art leafblowers? Besides, doesn’t everyone want to learn about Marx to the relaxing ambience of Chinese water torture? Some would really say that’s a feature, not a bug or a health hazard. Whatever. Make sure to let the tour guides know so they can slip that one in right between the helpful RAs who have totally not gone on strike in recent memory and the top-of-their field professors who are definitely being paid an (almost) living wage.
In addition to it being dumped somewhere on MySLC never to see the light of day, the manifesto will allegedly also be buried at the bottom of one of the 700 daily emails circulated by the college. Blink and you’ll miss it! We’ll be following up on this story later this week by collecting community opinions on the initiatives from what we all know are the two most reliable, thoughtful and sober sources of information and considered opinion on this campus: SLC Anonymous and Fizz. Keep an eye out and Go Gryphons!
