Great Moments in Wintertime Literature

    It was the night before Christmas, and it was snowy—very snowy—but not quite snowy enough to suit the tastes of the sometimes-intransigent Tiny Tim (grandson of Martin Chuzzlewit, who is not to be confused with the always-pleasant lad, Tiny Tim Cratchit, son of Bob (nee Robert) who was formerly employed at Scrooge and Marley), because Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, to the rue of Seth Pecksniff, had already given Tiny Tim Chuzzlewit his Christmas present, a Flexible Flyer sled, and the snow was not deep enough to cushion the Baker Street cobblestones (actually large gravels washed up on the Cornish coast and used as London pavers), so the sled runners scraped on the cobblestones making a terrible, caterwauling racket, though, quite frankly, not all that caterwauling nor all that terrible, because snow, as you know, tends to muffle noise, causing the noise to dissipate rather quickly due to the phenomenon of the Doppler effect, which being something of a scientific law, the Doppler effect works just as well on Baker Street Hill as it does on the plains of Kansas, a flat or “flattish” landscape, where it presumably, and for comparison sake, rains as hard as it does on the plains in Spain (affirmed by the noted meteorologist Prof. Henry Higgins), and while the same can be said of snow in Kansas, Spain and London, at least regarding the application of the physical laws known as the “Doppler effect” at the same precisely-measured elevation above sea level as Baker Street Hill, and meaning that snow, whether wet snow or dry snow or icy, granular snow, compares equally in all three locations, the same outcome—the muffling effect—does not apply to the snows of Vermont, for as you must have been taught in public school, the man that Vermonters called “Robert Frost” (their white-haired apparition of “Jack Frost” as he is known throughout the rest of New England) wrote poetically of snow and its many pleasing qualities, not the least of which is the very noisiness of snow that the snow itself makes when it falls from the heavens and lands in the forest where, ironically indeed, trees do not make a sound at all when they fall in the same forest as does Vermont snow, yet Vermont snow does make noise if Robert Frost is to be believed, and he may be infallible in so far as we can determine, because these forests are populated wholly by maple-syrup trees, which of course, give the Green Mountains their name, at least in summer, but perhaps not in autumn as maple trees turn a blazing orange-red at that time of year, but as Robert Frost seemed to be a snow-creature—the Yeti poet, as Vermont Buddhists call him—he would not know of leaves, an ignorance that manifested itself in his once taking the wrong road in a yellow wood, and he probably knew not much about people, Buddhists or other ilk, as he often stopped by woods on snowy evenings, and further, would stop his horse-drawn sleigh without any farmhouse near, which in turn, caused his horse to give his harness bells a shake to warn (reportedly; albeit a human reaction in most cases) Vermont folk of the Yeti poet’s presence, but regardless of how often or how hard the horse jingled the harness bells, the only reply that the horse would hear was the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.
    Another great moment in wintertime literature brought to you by David Allen.
                    MERRY CHRISTMAS

Undergrads' Fundraising Is Reminiscent of Dickens

When Oliver Twist dared to ask for more porridge, the parish workhouse master swiftly reprimanded the lad for not being satisfied with the sustenance provided him.

Times have changed since Charles Dickens wrote of the plight of poor boys forced to work long hours at the parish workhouse for not much more than room, board and a taste of the three Rs.

Today, colleges and universities are the parish workhouses for our youth, though a lad or lass need not be poor to enter the campus barracks, for he or she will assuredly be on the debtor rolls when the experience ends -- if not as an outright debtor, then as an eternal taxpayer.

With the increasingly popular practice of using undergraduates to solicit funds, institutions of higher education have turned Dickens' masterpiece of institutional budgeting ridicule on its ear. The main sources of college operating funds -- grants, student loans, scholarships, charity and government revenue -- continue to fall short in the annual quest to balance college budgets that year to year outpace the general inflation rate.

Thus, more and more schools are employing students to staff the call centers or make road trips to stage dog-and-pony extravaganzas at alumni gatherings. The waif's message nonetheless is still the same: "More."

Oliver Twist's plea for more gruel is not a perfect analogy of today's youth asking for more institutional funding, but the comparison is lacking only in the sense that your alma mater's foundation board knows that a student's plea for charity from the community will receive a more sympathetic ear than will a cold call from a foundation staffer.

And the skeptic in me must ask whether the practice of having students call donors during the evening supper hours is more by sublime design than professional fundraisers might want to admit.

When it comes to donating money to colleges, I am an easy mark. I have never made a large donation (for the obvious reason), but I feel that my continuing support for academics and athletics is a necessary act of kindness if I expect the next generation to lead society onward and upward.

The college experience remains, I believe, the greatest test tube ever invented precisely because we cannot predict the results of the multitude of experiments known more familiarly as students.

Fundraising should be an ethical endeavor. In this regard, I strongly believe that the employment of undergraduates, whether they are paid a stipend or not, falls outside the ethical boundaries of fundraising. In my view, the practice of using student solicitors strains even the pleasant etiquette of panhandling.

It is quite one thing for alumni to promote their alma maters. After all, they have had years to reflect on the value of their college experience. To the contrary, undergraduates cannot know the value of the college experience because the experience is incomplete.

Did we not warn these students when they were children about the consequences of counting chicks before the eggs hatch? Are we somehow allowed to simply withdraw that sage advice in the interest of fundraising?

Our public school system is inadequate in preparing young people for today's job market. The associate or bachelor degree, then, is considered almost a necessity even though college degrees do not guarantee success in any endeavor.

Whereas in the past an apprentice would work for several years to gain journeyman credentials, modern society looks to college to prepare journeymen (and women). And, of course, college is still viewed as finishing school for the upwardly mobile. But woe be to the college failure -- the dropout.

We can debate whether "dropout" is still the stab in the back that colleges coined it to be, but it is worth noting that the first footnote on Bill Gates' Wikipedia page refers not to his birth but to his status as a 1975 Harvard dropout.

Whether colleges deliver the goods or not, their parchments have become cultural indentures. Thus, I argue: It is unethical to employ indentured servants, in this case students, as beggars.

I will give credit to college and university foundations for employing only the brightest students to make cold calls. These kids are polished, polite and know how to close the deal. When it is my time to receive a student's cold call from foundation headquarters, I often throw the caller a curve or two just to see how he or she responds. Let me just say that they keep their eyes on the prize.

For this reason, and out of respect for their individual soliciting skills, I have come to call these students artful dodgers, and to them I offer this as a compliment with my right hand. And with my left, I offer said same to the Fagins who employ them so cheaply.