Painting Wall Street Crimson

Thank you President Faust. Thank you for crashing the American economy for us. It could not have been an easy decision—to put Harvard’s interests before millions of Americans—but you showed unflinching resolve. Thanks to your hard work in creating this financial crisis, Harvard seniors will finally start to look beyond careers in investment banking.

You knew how bad things had gotten here: The Crimson’s annual senior survey showed that nearly a fifth of work-force bound students in the Class of 2008 were going into business, finance and consulting without considering them ideal careers. A fifth of some of the brightest minds in the country are sulking, at this very moment, behind their desks as they crunch numbers in Manhattan. They could not be saved, President Faust. But at least the Class of 2009 could.

If there is one thing Harvard does for its students, President Faust, it is to shield them from cynicism. During Freshman Week, awkward first-years keep getting reminded that they are the best and the brightest. Remember that story you told us, of little Timmy or somebody who began just like us and went on to cure Parkinson’s or something his junior year? I understand that the point of it was to keep us almost romantically inspired. Everyday on campus, as we watch heads of state mingling with Nobel Laureates, we start believing that with our Harvard education we really can change the world.

But something happens in our final year. As Harvard begins to clamp their umbilical cords, seniors suddenly find themselves to be small fish in a big tumultuous ocean. Of course they can’t cure cancer just by having worked in a Med School lab for a year! Of course they can’t win the Pulitzer for reporting on war crimes in Chechnya just because they were on The Crimson! As this dreadful cynicism creeps in, Harvard students begin to abandon their dreams of helping New Orleans or children in Ghana; all they really hope for is to make a decent living and find an apartment that is not any worse than a walkthrough triple in Winthrop. And so every summer, hundreds of Harvard seniors—artists, journalists, historians and scientists—bottle up their ambitions and enter into a loveless marriage with Count Merrill of Lynch.

You tried to stop them with words, President Faust. Last year at Commencement, you said, “If you don’t try to do what you love—whether it is painting or biology or finance—if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.” Under ordinary circumstances we would have heeded your warning. But this was Commencement, and your audience was too busy thinking of all the drunken Facebook photos they would have to de-tag before moving to Manhattan. They were gone, President Faust, but at that moment you figured that by crippling Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG and WaMu you could save future Harvard students from pursuing careers they cared little about.

Of course you had help. There are scores of disgruntled Folklore and Mythology concentrators pushing papers in investment banks. You brought them together in the most Harvardian of ways (an ice-cream social) and told them of your plan. They were only eager to oblige, and before long corporate numbers up and down Wall Street were being turned into works of folklore and mythology. Now that there essentially is no Wall Street, these people are finally free to answer their true calling: studying goblins in Ireland. They may eventually end up on welfare, but that is beside the point.

The people who will truly benefit from Operation Painting Wall Street Crimson are us Harvard students, starting with the Class of 2009. This past summer, some of our present seniors were resigning themselves to getting into bed with one of the Lehman Brothers. Now that you have shot them all dead, President Faust, these students are free to dream big again. They will think of taking that internship with The Times, or moving back home to Michigan to help their depressed community, or continuing their cancer research, and out of the ashes of greedy Wall Street a hundred little Timmys will arise to serve their country and their kind.

Alternately, President Faust, you just ruined our only hope for $100,000-per year jobs.



Rajarshi Banerjee ’11 lives in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.