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Gift of the University Wise Men: A Christmas Parody for April

Gift of the University Wise Men: A Christmas Parody for April

Last updated on: April 24, 2017 at 7:50 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Gift of the University Wise Men: A Christmas Parody for April 2017-04-24T07:50:54-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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One million and eighty-seven thousand. That was all. And sixty thousand of it was in pledges. Pledges collected one and two at a time by bulldozing the alum and friends and donors until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times the University President counted it. One million and eighty- seven thousand. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on his leather couch and Tweet. So he did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of Facebook rants and Tweets with angry Tweets predominating.

While this particular leader is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the school. A school striving to break into US News rankings with a few hundred freshman a year. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

Just outside his office was a letter-box into which too few returns on mailings would go, and a capital campaign from which no mortal finger could coax a thing. Also, appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Lyons Christian University.”

The “University” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was hoping for hundreds more freshman a year. Now, when the income was shrunk, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming College. But whenever the Board came to the University and reached the Executive Conference Room above the Quad, the President was called leader of a University and greatly praised. Which is all very good.

The President finished his social media rant and attended to his schedule via smartphone. He stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray freshman walking a gray sidewalk in a gray campus. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and he had only $1.87 million with which to improve his US News Ranking. He had been saving every penny he could with this result. Student loans don’t go far. Expenses had been greater than he had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 million to buy an increase in ranking for the Board. His Board. Many a happy hour he had spent planning for something nice for them. Something fine and rare and sterling–something just a little bit nearer to being worthy of the honor of being in the third quartile of US News and World Report.

There was a mirror over the fireplace in his art deco office. Perhaps you have seen a mirror in a college administrator’s office. A very careful and apparently humble person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of sneaked glances in a meeting, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. The President, being humble, had mastered the art.

Suddenly he whirled from the window and stood before the mirror. His eyes were shining brilliantly, but his face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly he picked up a binder and let it fall open to the tab that was red.

Now, there were two possessions of Lyons Christian University in which all took a mighty pride. One was the heritage of the school that had been the Founders and every generation since. The other was the faculty. Had an Ivy had a campus across the street, the President would have mentioned the University heritage some day just to depreciate the wisdom of the world. Had the President of Harvard been their best friend, the Board with all his Harvard endowment piled up in view, the Board would have pointed to key faculty every time they passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now the heritage of Lyon’s filled the school like the waters cover the seas. It reached below her problems and made itself almost a garment for her. And then the President glanced at the statement of faith nervously and quickly. Once the President faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the red tab of the binder.

On went his old brown tweed jacket; on went his old brown hat. With a whirl of his winter jacket and with the brilliant sparkle still in his eyes, he fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where he stopped the sign read: “Alcibiades Fund. Money Available to All Schools.” One flight up the President ran, and collected himself, panting. The head of the Endowment, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked “Available to All Schools.”

“Will you give me funds? If I give up my heritage?” asked the President.

“I buy schools,” said the Money. “Give me your history and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down went the binder with the University heritage.

“Twenty million dollars,” said the Endowment, measuring the sell-out with a practised eye.

“Give it to me quick,” said the President.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. He was hoping for new programs.

He found it at last. It surely had been made for Lyons and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the other schools, and he had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum program: simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation–as all good things should do. It was even worthy of US News. As soon as he saw it, he knew that it must be Lyon’s. It was like the School. Quietness and value–the description applied to both. Twenty-one million dollars they took from him for building it, and he hurried home with the 87 thousand. With that program, and the grant from that Endowment, Lyon’s might be properly anxious about her place in the rankings in any company. Grand as the faculty of the University was, the Board sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old fashioned values, programs, and funding.

When the President flew back to campus, his intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. He got out his University history, the vision statement, and the Bible, and went to work repairing the ravages made by ambition added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends–a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes his head was filled with clever self-serving justifications that made him look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. He looked at his reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If the Board doesn’t kill me,” he said to himself, “before they take a second look at this compromise, they’ll say I look just like every other school.. But what could I do–oh! what could I do with one million and eighty- seven thousand?”

By February, the budget was made and the new money was leveraged with new loans and ready to change the school.

The Board was never late. The President tapped the new binder containing the new vision statement and the new grant and sat on the corner of the table near the door that the Board always entered. Then he heard the steps on the stair away down on the first flight, and he turned white for just a moment. He had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now he whispered: “Please God, make them think I am still Christian.”

The door opened and the Board stepped in and closed it. They looked tired and very serious. Poor folks, there were only twenty-two of them–and to be burdened with a University! They needed a new stadium and they were without decent Internet.

The Board stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. Their eyes were fixed upon the President, and there was an expression in them that he could not read, and it terrified him. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that he had been prepared for. The Board simply stared at him fixedly with that peculiar expression on their faces.

The President got off the table and prepared to speak.

“Fellow Lyons alum,” he cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had our statement of faith and values cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a real school. It’ll be there again–you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. Faith grows awfully fast when hidden. Say `Merry Christmas!’ Mr. President, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice– what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve changed the vision statement?” asked the Board, laboriously, as if they had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said the President. “Don’t you like the University just as well, anyhow? It’s still us without the original vision, isn’t it?”

Some of the Board looked about the room curiously.

“You say the statement of faith is gone?” a few said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said the President. “It’s sold, I tell you–sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, Board. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” he went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I discuss the new rankings in US News with you?”

Out of a trance the Board seemed quickly to wake. They enfolded the President. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year–what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

The Board drew a binder from an overstuffed brief case and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Mr President,” they said, “about us. We don’t think there’s anything in the way of a statement of faith or a vision or a plan that could make us like our administrators any less. But if you’ll look at that binder, you may see why you had us going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick administrative change to passive aggressive muttering, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the powers on the Board.

For there lay the key faculty contracts–key Christian hires, side and back, that the President had wanted long without proper funding. Beautiful faculty with perfect CV’s –just the type to fit in the beautiful vanished statement of faith and vision. They were expensive faculty, he knew, and his heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were his, but the vision that should have motivated the coveted faculty was gone.

But he hugged them to his bosom, and at length he was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “We can have both can’t we? Faith doesn’t have to be in print!”

And then the President leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

The Board had not yet seen their beautiful present. He showed them a PowerPoint eagerly. The precious grant seemed to flash and gleam in the bright light of his brand new projector.

“Isn’t it a dandy, folks? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the bottom line a hundred times a day now. Give me your binders. I want to see how this grant looks in it.”

Instead of obeying, the Board sat in their swivel chairs, hands under the back of their heads and smiled.

“Mr President,” said they, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I doubled down on the vision statement to get the faculty. And now suppose you discuss the basketball team.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men–wonderfully wise men–who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of a foolish President and a Board in a University who most unwisely sacrificed for US News ranking the greatest treasures of their school. But in a last word to the wise, of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts to schools, these are two of the most foolish. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are the most foolish. Everywhere they are foolish. Don’t give to them.

—————–

There is another version of this story.

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