My younger sister, Emmy, is starting school next year at Williams, putting Ma and Pa Valet in the somewhat unenviable position of paying for two kids at rather expensive schools. This got me thinking about just how big a hunk of cash it takes to go here every year.
There certainly are ways to rationalize the cost. That wacky Ronald Reagan, he used to talk about a trick involving stacks of money in order to illustrate the size of the federal debt. Since a dollar bill is like a 10th of a millimeter thick, a stack of a thousand one-dollar bills is about four inches high, and a million one-dollar bills is like 300 feet high.
I forget how many miles high the federal debt was, and I'm sure that at this point Ronald Reagan has too, along with everything else except "Nancy" and "Supply Side Economics." The point (and there is one!) is that the federal debt was a pretty goddamn tall stack, and all Dartmouth asks for is ten feet a year! I bet the bursar would especially like it if you were to arrange your tuition into a cute little one-dollar-bill tower, and if you were to do so, I would especially like it if you wouldn't mention my name! Thank you!
Of course, there's plenty of other equally stupid ways to rationalize the tuition bill. For example, if your parents were to keep you at home instead of sending you here, it would probably take at least $50 a week to feed you, whereas here it takes just $70 per week of DDS money, plus meals out, plus late night drunken EBAs. Wait, bad reason not to keep you at home; never mind.
Ok, I thought of a good one. I think this is certainly one of the most interesting facts about Dear Old Dartmouth, despite the fact that we never "play it up" when we mail out those cute little brochures to all the prospectives: you can buy three black-market kidneys for the price of one year here. Well, at least based on the presumable going rate of $10,000 per kidney, which I am sure is a highly accurate number, since it comes from those urban legend Blitz forwards about people who get kidneys stolen at parties by med-students-run-amok. I know this because my mom kept telling me about those forwards at great length as part of her general mom concern while I was on my LSA last winter. "And don't go to any parties, and if you do, stay away from all the med students!"
At any rate, if the choice is $30,000 worth of kidneys or a year here, can't you just hear parents muttering, "What the hell do I need a grand total of five kidneys for? May as well send the money to Dartmouth."
Also, I think it very clearly articulates to parents the importance of a Dartmouth education: you can't even live without a kidney, so judging by price, Dartmouth must be...well, three times better than not dying.
And I think we should all try to remember that. As I run around here trying to get work done and everything, I will bear in mind that, no matter how much I have to do, at that instant Dartmouth is precisely three times more fun than being dead. This weekend when I go home to see my sister's high school graduation, and when every vaguely related relative asks me how school is, I think I will tell him or her precisely that. Then I will help my parents arrange the dollar bill tower for next term.
