1986

Applications to Dartmouth are down, and what is the College doing about it? Spending a lot more on high school recruiting presentations (yawn), redecorating the admissions office lounge, and doing a better job of keeping campus tour groups away from the undergrads. This is not enough! What would Pepsi do if sales fell? They'd get creative! It's time for Dartmouth to do the same. Why not put tuition coupons in the Sunday supplement, or starf a send-three-kids-get-one-free promotion, or advertise "four out of five employers prefer Dartmouth grads" testimonials, or conduct the Dartmouth Challenge at local shopping malls (a blind taste test between Dartmouth and Yale)? Or how about starting a multimedia advertising blitz with the theme "Dartmouth Lets U.8.U." It isn't original, but if it can sell Reeboks to teenagers it might also convince them to enroll at the Big Green (or at least pay the application fee).

In order to save costs the U.B.U. advertisement can star some of our very own '86s, It can start with a shot of Erik Warga hanging ten on his surfboard. Next cut to a picture of Erik receiving the silver medal at a surfing competition (by the way, the background music is a rap version of "Dartmouth Undying" performed by Lenny and the Nut—remember, this is a low budget ad). With bikini-clad women on each arm (if it can sell cars and fruit juice maybe it can sell college degrees, too) and a big griip on his face, Erik turns to the camera and testifies that Dartmouth made all this possible—four years of frolicking on slippery basement floors helped him develop his balance, four years of eating and digesting Thayer burgers gave him the couragd needed to ride a tube, and four years in the Baker stacks helped him develop the intensd concentration needed to focus on surfing rather than other beach sights. But Erik, how did you learn to surf in Hanover? The Connecticut River is not known for its heavy waves. Did you bother to look at a map before matriculating? Erik is living in San Francisco.

In order to demonstrate the versatility of a Dartmouth degree, the ad should contrast Erik in a swimsuit with Paul Davis in a three-piece suit. Paul recently matriculated at the Harvard Business School so he isn't surrounded by bikini-clad women (or at least not as often as he was at Dartmouth). Paul can talk about how four years in economics classes prepared him for the boredom and tedium of studying accounting, how four years of tuition bills taught him the importance of wealth, and how four years of final exams taught him to deal with the stress of stock market crashes.

Rudy Scarito, Jeff House, Dan Katzir,Melinda Gould, and Bill Furlong also are first-year students at Harvard; they could appear in the billboard advertisements.

Next cut to Sarah Geithner agitating in Tienanmen Square. She can attest to how the shanty episode prepared her to participate in the social protest in Beijing, where she lived for a year. Now she is studying at the Kennedy School of Government.

We also need to decide when to air this advertisement. Coach Teevens would appreciate a few slots during Monday Night Football in order to attract guys like Phi!Tombaugh; Phil recently moved to Boston to work for a consulting firm.

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