The Amazing Class of '10

Got a longwinded gimme letter from my alma mater the other day, part of that institution’s ongoing, and futile, effort to tunnel into my wallet. I quash any temptation I might have to donate with the following reflection: Vanderbilt’s endowment is how large already? Hm, can’t remember, but it’s measured in the billions of dollars. My own net worth isn’t measured in units that large, or even in tiny fractions of whatever the endowment is. Pass.

Not that I dislike Vanderbilt, or disliked it 25-odd years ago. It’s a fine school. Harvard of the South in the Athens of the South. Glad I went. Wealthy alumni ought to pony up on its behalf now and then.

The letter was two and half pages long, which assumes a lot of free reading time on my part. But I did read the long graph on page one about the Class of 2010, composed of about 1000 people who didn’t exist the day I started at VU, though the letter didn’t point that out. It did call the class an “amazing” one, and offered some examples. The girl who represented the US in six international chess tourneys, besides being tennis team captain and student body president; the black student body president, basketball ace and soup kitchen volunteer; the high school valedictorian whose parents were refugees from some Third World hellhole, the web site designer, the fiddle contest champ, the president of the Junior Civitans International (who?) and so on.

Sorry, that’s not going to make me give money either. Fine kids all, I’m sure, but tedious overachievement doesn’t resonate with me. It would have been better for the letter to say, “The Class of 2010 includes a lot of really bright kids, mostly stable and hardworking, but sprinkled with a few real head cases, just like you remember in your class. Almost everyone did extracurriculars in high school, and a few did remarkable things. But mostly not. That’s the way it’ll be in college, too.”