Hot Stove--Yule Blog
Yes, Shirley, There is a Santa Claus
Shirley, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the retentivism of a retentive age. They do not believe except they see the endowment grow. They think that nothing can be that is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Shirley, whether they be men’s or women’s or even Princeton undergrads, are little. In this great university of ours tuition is a mere insect, an ant, in its importance as compared with the boundless endowment about it, as measured by Deloitte & Touche LLP, alone capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Shirley, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion and football exist, and you know that they abound and give to our university its highest appreciation and interest and dividends. Alas, how dreary would be the university if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no eating clubs. There would be no childlike faith then, no house-parties, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in spring break. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be put on social probation.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies, or alternative life styles. You might get your trustees to hire men and women to watch in all the foreign exchange markets on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus dumping euros, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither men nor women nor Princeton undergrads can see, like faculty compensation. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Don’t answer that. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the budget increases there are unseen and unseeable in the university.
You tear apart an alum’s prattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world of offshore hedge funds and private equity participations which not the strongest Yale or Harvard Neanderthal, nor even the united strength of all the dumbest jocks that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, and Congressional investigation can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Shirley, in all this world there is nothing else less real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! the endowment lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Shirley, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, it will continue to make glad the hearts of trustees, if not student families.
Shirley, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the retentivism of a retentive age. They do not believe except they see the endowment grow. They think that nothing can be that is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Shirley, whether they be men’s or women’s or even Princeton undergrads, are little. In this great university of ours tuition is a mere insect, an ant, in its importance as compared with the boundless endowment about it, as measured by Deloitte & Touche LLP, alone capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Shirley, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion and football exist, and you know that they abound and give to our university its highest appreciation and interest and dividends. Alas, how dreary would be the university if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no eating clubs. There would be no childlike faith then, no house-parties, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in spring break. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be put on social probation.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies, or alternative life styles. You might get your trustees to hire men and women to watch in all the foreign exchange markets on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus dumping euros, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither men nor women nor Princeton undergrads can see, like faculty compensation. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Don’t answer that. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the budget increases there are unseen and unseeable in the university.
You tear apart an alum’s prattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world of offshore hedge funds and private equity participations which not the strongest Yale or Harvard Neanderthal, nor even the united strength of all the dumbest jocks that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, and Congressional investigation can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Shirley, in all this world there is nothing else less real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! the endowment lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Shirley, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, it will continue to make glad the hearts of trustees, if not student families.
posted by mcd at 4:32 PM
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