By Observer Staff
If you read The Commentator, you’ll know that YU recently took out two full-page advertisements in the Wall Street Journal, hoping to attract the attention of “influencers” and employers. According to the article, the cost of the ads were in the six-figure range, which means YU spent at least $200,000 for both ads. Here are four better ways this $200,000 could have been spent.
- Booking Louis C.K. to perform at Chanukahfest. According to celebrityspeakersbureau.com, Louis C.K.’s booking fee is somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million. Given his recently tarnished reputation, we’re going to go ahead and assume that his current booking rate is at the lower end of the spectrum, which means that had YU not taken out the WSJ ads, they would have had ample funds to hire Louis C.K. to headline Chanukahfest. Yes, this would have been morally questionable of the student councils, but we’d just assume they were trying to increase turnout by ensuring that the students who no longer find him funny would at least show up to protest.
- Creating a Religious Studies Department. For students whose religious curiosities aren’t satisfied by Bible classes which are glorified lectures on this week’s Parsha, YU could have hired one religious studies professor, cleaned out a storage closet for said professor to use as an office, offered one Intro to World Religions course which would eventually be cancelled due to low enrollment, fired said professor before payday, and still have had enough money to hire four new Roshei Yeshiva.
- Prank-calling President Berman 200,000 times. With $200,000, YU’s marketing office could have bought 1 million tokens on prankdial.com. Assuming it costs about five tokens per automated prank call, the employees in that office could have prank-called President Berman 200,000 times. Students would probably never be in the marketing office during the calls to get in on the laughs, but the FOMO would not be as bad as the embarrassment of going to a school that needs to take out advertisements.
- Giving out 2 laptop batteries to every undergraduate student. $200,000 is not nearly enough to pay for every YU student’s tuition. But following in the footsteps of Michael Gary Scott, the founder of Scott’s Tots, YU could have at least spent $200,000 on 6,895 Replacement Notebook Battery for Dell PRV1Y 11.1 Volt Li-ion Laptop Batteries (4400mAh / 49Wh), which is enough for every undergrad student to receive at least two. After all, “Online courses are a viable option to a traditional college experience. And the best way to access those courses is with your own personal laptop…which is rendered useless without batteries.”