Commentaries: Nan's the man

After seeing the final totals of the Nan Keohane fund raising extravaganza, I told my friend from home about how much money was raised for little old Duke.

"Two billion dollars? That's a ton of money."

"I know."

"Exactly how many millions are in a billion? Ten?"

"Plus some more. Plus like 300 more millions or something."

We did some lightning quick calculations in our heads. 2 + 3 +....or wait, is it 1000 + 1000 + 300 millions? Is the 1000 part even right? Doesn't that seem like a ridiculously huge number? Is there such a thing as a million dollar bill? Wouldn't it be cool to be the president whose head is on a million dollar bill?

In the end, the calculations revealed that 2.3 billion dollars is an otherworldly sum of money. If I were Nan, and I had her special fund raising tricks, you can be certain I'd start up a Campaign for Denise fund and get myself a few thousand millions. In fact, if I were Nan, I'd be just a little pissed that a chunk of that money wasn't going directly to me. She must feel like I used to feel in girl scouts, selling cookies to the neighbors. People give you the money and you have it in your little folder that you keep in your backpack and realize that, I mean essentially, that money should be yours. After all, I was the one out there in the freezing cold blizzard tundra what have you peddling thin mints, not troop leader Miss Albano! Screw the troop, I have $16 of cold hard cash in this envelope and it's mine! Mine!

Now, I saw the chart in The Chronicle that said to which departments and things all the money was going, and donating to our education is a noble cause and all, and certainly I don't mean to bite the gift horse in the head or whatever, but I'm just wondering--there has got to be a better use for this money, hasn't there? What if those 'Help The Kids In Siberia' programs whose commercials you see on TV had $2 billion? The ones that say, "With only $1 a day you can keep this child from going hungry you selfish, well-fed, cheap American bastards." Hm, let's do some more mental math... by my astute calculations, that means I could support approximately 100 million kids until they're 60 years old with no problem. Or something like that, factoring in the extra money you need to make the sad commercials. Another dismal calculation...roughly ten of us could go to Duke for free with money like that. How, you ask, did I come up with this startling figure? Actually I made it up and have no idea what I'm talking about. But the idea is that that's a lot of money to be spending on new chairs in the Bryan Center or houses that talk to you or whatever the plan is.

At the very least, if there's any left over, you know, a few millions or something that are just laying around, maybe the students could suggest some possible uses. Personally I'd like to see an Olive Garden on campus, a moving sidewalk on the BC walkway and breakfast delivered to the room daily. Maybe someone could throw a few bucks to Alpine, too, and they could serve rolls. I think Nan can swing it. Clearly, Nan can swing just about anything. She tricked the Nicholases into giving away $72 million, Bill Gates into donating something like $50 million and God into tossing down a cool $60 mill for that handy concrete island thing they just built in the middle of Towerview Drive for no apparent reason whatsoever.

And Nan gets nothing. Or anyway, she gets the respect of her peers in the academic community, the gratitude of those of us in the Duke community, and a portrait of her looking sexy in the Allen Building somewhere. But really, nothing. So Nan, I have a proposition for you: you start work on the Campaign for Denise, and I'll cut you in on 20 percent of whatever you raise. With 20 percent of two billion, Nan, you'd have a ton of hundred thousands, or million hundreds, or however you put it. And we could expand our fund raising campaign, take it to a global level, solicit people in Europe and Asia and the Pope. Imagine! Denise and Nan, working together, paying off my tuition, hand in hand. The fund raising guru and the undeserving girl, side by side. Just like Nan and Duke. I get rid of some student loans, Nan erects some statues of her (looking sexy) on campus--we both win. At the very least, maybe Nan should be the one whose head is on the million dollar bill. She certainly deserves it for racking up all those dead presidents.

  Denise Napoli is a Trinity sophomore. Her column normally appears every third Friday.