At Babson, don’t be surprised if you have to wear a tie once every week. Probably more often.

That means that you have to tie a tie!

If you don’t know how, or can’t tie a great knot, watch this video on how to tie the perfect tie every time. It’s a video by Tim Ferriss (author of The Four Hour Work Week) and you can read more here.

Now practice that a few times and you should be all set.

This here, has got to be my favorite way to post. Below you will read a series of emails from the Babson authorities, and at the end, I just can’t take anymore. At the bottom, you shall find my response. Read more »

Now at some point, this kind of absurdity has to stop. A very close friend of mine was beginning to prepare to return to fair, fair Babson, and he began to go and check over the My Housing section of Babson’s portal.  And my, wasn’t he surprised and joyous when he saw how wonderfully the new staff of OCL is operating?

Abso-fucking-lutely NOT!

Instead it was more of shock and horror for my fellow final semester senior (December Grads), as when he checked his housing arrangements for his Putney single, he immediately noticed that Babson had paired him up with a roommate! He called me up quite distressed at the thought of spending the last semester of college with a roommate he’s never met and probably won’t get along with. Immediately thinking he may have screwed up, we tried to figure out if there was any way that he meant to click on a different one. After a few hours of pouring over how my friend must have selected a double on accident, we realized that he indeed did select a single based off of what the online floor plan map of putney third floor displays.

So my buddy emails housing and tells them that the screw up is definitely on them and theres no way they are going to put two kids in a single and that there is no way he is going to have a roommate his last semester here.

OCL’s Housing email address responds: We are sorry but we cannot help you with this. Please contact your area director.

Thats it. Thats the end of their email. Now excuse me, and pardon my french, BUT THOSE FUCKING MORONS LOOK LIKE THEY’RE STILL USELESS! I think OCL should be reinterpreted by the students to mean, Off Campus for LIFE. I MEAN THEY DIDN’T EVEN TELL HIM WHO IS HIS NEW AREA DIRECTOR!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!

I 100% know that improving student service is a strong concern for some of Babson’s administrators. And I know one of the reasons OCL was restaffed was to hopefully prevent idiots from making mistakes like this and also so if things like this did happen, they’d be quickly caught and repaired before they became an issue.

Dean Hanno, we’ll be meeting soon.

Bryan “Reverend Esby” Steward

PS: I’m really curious how many of these OCL mistakes happen that I don’t hear about. Want your story posted? IM me on AIM, Reverend Esby, and tell me how it is.

This has nothing to do with Babson, but I thought it was pretty funny.

It’s the “Best of Craigslist” for Boston.

Check it out for cool items for sale and funny stories that were posted to get the word out.

Take this cat for sale…

During my years at Babson, I’ve seen a few letters posted on the dormitory bathroom doors. Things like “Girls Only. Guys Keep Out!” and “Quit pissing in the sink!” Amusing, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Well, I just found the funniest bathroom notice I’ve seen:

Student Masturbation Is Not Allowed in Dorm Showers

Oh, Babson e-mail, how I fucking loathe you. Yet, I can’t stop compulsively checking you….

Before I go address an e-mail I found this morning in my Babson inbox, I would like to offer a solution to the junk that suffocates all Ugrads. Get First Class. Private schools use it, other colleges use it. You can create conferences and seperate announcements to the entire class that people can choose to view. You can also create conferences that are dedicated to CAB or Academic Services so we don’t get bombarded by Babson’s version of spam.

Stop sending me pointless e-mails, like the one below where you describe a senior send off party with bling and condoms. Your telling me that I worked my fucking ass off and your sending me off with a condom and some fake bling?

I’m am LOLing in class. Thank you, Babson.

—–Original Message—–
Sent: Wed 5/2/2007 9:40 AM
Subject: New York New York

Come get your NYC condoms

And Make-Your-Own Bling!

Who: All Ugrads

What: Senior Send-Off Party

When: Thursday, May 3rd

9 P.M. – Midnight

Where: Knight

Here’s a little financial tip that will help all those who will soon be graduating: never donate your money to Babson. Now, I know a lot of people might be saying, “why would you not want people to donate?” Well, there are several reasons, so bear with me as I hit all of them.

First, donating to Babson is the literal equivalent of donating to your toilet. You wouldn’t take wads of cash out of your wallet and flush it down the toilet, would you? So why would you hand over wads of your money to people who will do just that? It makes no sense at all.

Here’s what $5 does for Babson: nothing. Sure $5 across many people adds up. So maybe we can use that money for a Segue for our new president. Or maybe we can redo the entrances again because it really has been a couple months and they feel left out. Or we could pay the salaries of completely useless people in completely useless positions in the administration. It could go towards any one of a million stupid things around here.

So you say maybe it goes towards helping someone, like that it keeps tuition down. I say where is this discount in tuition, as my debt level from this school is disheartening. Should our tuition really be $60k per year? Because it’s absurd at $45+ already. Sure, maybe that ~$15k is subsidized by donations, but isn’t that just a Band-Aid for a bullet wound? So what does that really solve, then? You’re just contributing to the problem because you’re helping Babson not face the bigger issue, which is that they handle cash worse than my 7-year-old niece.

Which brings me to my next point: you’re not doing Babson any favors. The more money they get, the more they think they are doing things right. You think giving money helps the school in the long run, but it doesn’t. It only makes them hire more idiots and put off firing the ones we already have. It makes them justify wasting money because after all, if they don’t waste it then they won’t have as big of a budget next year.

Here’s a fact: if you donate a little money, they ask for more. If you donate nothing, they ask you why not. Now, if you consider that, which do you think gets more done around here–the administration continuing to throw money in the garbage, or the administration getting feedback on what they need to do in order to EARN your money?

Which brings me to yet another point: Babson should earn your donations. Yeah, they have good teaching quality. You already paid for that with $175+ tuition over 4 years. The sad part is how Babson convinces you to think that $175+ is not enough for the education you received. You have to be kidding me. If you believe that, then I also own this bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying. Not that Babson should take you out for dinner for your donation, but what are they doing for future classes of students that they need direct funding for? Where precisely is your money going? “Athletics” or some other general category doesn’t tell you anything. You could be putting money into “Athletics” and have it go toward new fold-out chairs for PepsiCo. Ask tough questions, and if you don’t get solid answers then you’re wasting your money.

I’d say the worst excuse for donation is that it’s going to help you in the long run. Ok, let’s say we get donations and therefore participation up, which might help bring our ranking up. Then what? It won’t bring it up more than a few spots in the rankings based on participation alone, it’s only a small part of a long equation for calculating rankings. Even if it did, what is that going to be worth by the time you see the benefit of it? After you’ve been in the work force for a while, it doesn’t matter where you got your undergrad. Plus, whether you graduate from here or from Wharton, if you’re graduating with a 2.0 then does it really matter where your school was ranked?

Going along with that, here’s an interesting thing: The last few years, donations from the senior class have been increasing, and yet our ranking has been decreasing. Judging by that trend, we should probably stop donating in order to get the ranking up…well, ok, that’s obviously not a logical deduction, but my point is really just to show that participating to help ourselves is a myth.

Basically, all I’m trying to say is think twice about it. Hell, think three or four times about it. It’s your money. When your parents aren’t paying for everything, every dollar counts. Donating gets you nothing at Babson. They will throw you a barbecue, yippie, as if you don’t deserve it just for surviving here for so long. Notice they never even said “Thank You” for the $175+ you already donated through tuition. You get at least that much when you buy a Snickers at 7-11.

If you want to donate, knock yourself out. It’s your money, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you think for one second that someone out there is benefiting from it, you’re very much mistaken. Actually, you’re not…there are several construction companies that make a killing off our school’s stupidity. But if you think you’re helping the Babson pseudo-community, THEN you’re mistaken.

If you’re not convinced at this point, then I have one last point to make, which is probably the most important of any of the points I’ve made to this point: there are much more deserving organizations out there. At least donate to your high school. Or a charity that helps the poor and needy. Or maybe another organization that will use your dollars to directly help those who need it most because there are a lot of people that worry about what they’re going to eat this week or where they’re going to sleep, and they could use your money a lot more than the company that’s going to build the next flag fountain.

This school is way too caught up in itself to consider the people that surround it and ultimately support it. It’s time you made a stand against that. Donating money only pushes them to continue the same way they have been. Save your money at the very least. Or show them by example that people are what matters, and that you care about others the way they should be caring. Until you do, then the school as a whole will never support the people that support it, and we will continue to have places like crapcampus.com because Babson has no idea what the concept of “community” is. If you want better things for future classes, make Babson earn it, and until they do, then your dollars are much better spent at places that really need your money and will use it to its maximum value.

Anyway, if you’d like, I’m also accepting donations that will go towards a reparations fund for seniors for having to deal with all the garbage Babson puts them through. This way they have some extra money when they graduate to start their lives instead of getting bled dry before they make their first dollar in the real world. Let me know if you’re interested.