The Yale Daily News reports that the school’s endowment recently dropped from second place to third among institutions of higher education, trailing Harvard and the University of Texas. Yale’s endowment of $42.3 billion amounts to $2.9 million per enrolled student (Yale Daily News, September 1st online).
Yale President Peter Salovey, looking visibly distressed, held a press conference on Wednesday in which he announced a number of measures to stabilize the university’s finances. The most prominent ones include:
— Discontinuing Pheasant Phridays in the University’s dining halls. (“Most of the students eat only half a pheasant at most, resulting in an incredible amount of waste,” says Salovey.)
— No longer distributing original Gutenberg Bibles to all freshmen at orientation. Used paperback copies of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People will be provided instead.
— Ending the tradition of giving a Tesla to every faculty member who is promoted to the rank of full professor. These individuals will now have to choose between a Toyota Camry and a Honda Accord, with no guarantee of receiving their preferred color.
— Phasing out the practice of providing fraternity members who are arrested for public drunkenness with free legal counsel from a professor holding an endowed chair at the Yale Law School. Untenured faculty from the University of Connecticut Law School will be recruited for this purpose on an as-needed basis.
— Instituting a $5 co-pay for weekend helicopter service to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and Dubai.
— No longer serving Chateau Cheval Blanc 1947 at wine-and-cheese receptions for the lacrosse and corn-hole teams.
— Prohibiting students from filling large trash barrels with cash and setting them on fire on the New Haven Green “just because they can.”
— Converting the majestic Sterling Memorial Library to a high-end condominium community (Eli’s Landing).
— Building Connecticut’s largest cannabis dispensary (Inhale, Yale) on the campus quadrangle.
— Installing Britney Spears and Celine Dion as Artists-in-Residence at the 64,000-seat Yale Bowl. They will perform three times a week from May through October for the next five years.
“My solemn pledge to all of you: we will refuse to play second fiddle to some dust-covered cowboy school whose main contribution to Western civilization has been its recipe for three-bean chili.” — Peter Salovey