Musings of an Anonymous Rosser

By: A. Rosser

Posted: 3/18/08

So a challenge has been laid before me by this so called 'Chef' to spice it up a bit. While I momentarily thought about taking the high road and letting it be, I asked myself: 'Why spar with an imaginary character that names him/herself after a cook and gives a shout out to Andrew Eis in the first column? I mean, anyone who hangs with Eis at Skeeper's clearly has questionable morals and ethics, and I'm better than that.' But, after that short moment of weakness, (and realizing I've had, on more than one occasion, a beer with Eis at Skeeps) I decided f*** it-game on.

Instead of taking shots at 'The Chef' (which I'm sure will come in due time), I'm putting forth my frustration on the new seating policy that is the bane of our existence and one of the stupidest things the school is doing. Honestly, the new seating policies are basically targeted at Graduate students. First, the Graduate students get screwed by not being able to purchase tickets for partners. This rule doesn't even pertain to undergrads! How many undergrads come to school with a 'partner' of some sort…and I don't count the little stuffed animals the freshman bring to make them feel safe at night. This rule basically tells graduate students to go to hell. With 15,000 Graduate students on campus, how many 'partners' actually exist? Maybe 25% have partners? You're telling me those 3,000 people take up too much room in the largest stadium in the country? That's assuming, of course, that all of them even purchase tickets…which we know all of them do not.

Ok, so how about Rule #2…the rule that is the true 'F*** You' to all the Graduate students on campus - the new seating order preference. For those of you who haven't seen it (and I'm shocked and appalled that you haven't yet) the seating order is as follows: Seniors, Grad students with UM undergrad degrees, Juniors, Sophomores, Freshman and Grad students without UM undergrad degrees. Let's look at this objectively for a moment. There are roughly 25,000 undergrads on campus paying an average of $20k/year for tuition. That comes out to about $500M (give or take a bit for rounding) in tuition/year from the undergrads. Now let's look at the Graduate population. With only 15,000 of us on campus, we're outnumbered nearly 2:1…but pay roughly $35k/year in tuition (that's $525M/year in tuition for you non-quantitative folks). So, despite the fact that we pay more money in tuition/year, generally have 2 fewer years on campus, and will probably all be more successful than 95% of the undergrads here, the school still wants to bend us over and stick us in the nosebleed seats. Who the hell came up with this idea? Do you want to lose some of the Graduate population that you so love to tout? Did you ever think that some of us had 'football' listed in the positive column for Michigan before signing papers to come? Do any of the other top b-schools even have a football team worth mentioning? (I hear the Harvard-Yale game is a f***ing doozy; maybe I'll pass on the Michigan-Ohio State game this year and go out to New Haven instead.) It's a differentiator kids…why doesn't anyone realize this?

Clearly, about as much thought was put into this decision as the one to promise the Class of 2009 a new building for the start of their second year during GBR last year. Regardless, let's look at the upsides of this situation. First, by sitting up near all the freshman, the b-school guys will have plenty of scantily clad, hoed-out eye candy to distract them during the game since the b-school girls don't seem to be doing it (I'll agree with 'The Chef' on this one). Additionally, we may even be able to start a lucrative beverage supply business for all those fresh 18-year olds who will be sitting near us and don't have fake ids yet (entrepreneurial studies in action!). Finally, there's always the easy access to the top wall of the stadium-all that much easier to throw ourselves off and end the misery when the team sucks again…