Imagine this: your rich uncle decides he's feeling extra generous and wants to give you an exorbitant amount of money. How much, you ask? The figure totals somewhere around $2,361,205,387. How would you spend it? Although the Duke administration has already figured out how to spend its newly acquired Benjamins, here are a few other ways it could have considered.
Paying for Duke
* At undergraduate tuition rates now averaging $40,080, $2.3-plus billion could pay for 14,728 students' four years at Duke. Financial aid would be considered an understatement.
* $2,361,205,387 would pay 11.8 million $200 parking tickets for a "landscape/firelane" parking violation, and 9.4 million $250 parking tickets for a handicap designated spot parking violation.
* Duke could fix 47,224,107 broken parking gates at $50 a piece, and still not figure out it should raise the gates on the weekends.
Supporting the Blue Devils
* 18,446 students could become Level 70 Iron Dukes for their four-year stay at the University and sit amongst the rich and quasi-famous at Duke's men's and women's basketball games.
* Each of the 20 varsity sports teams could have their own Boeing 737-900 jet airliners complete with study rooms and even showers and still have over $990 million to spend on fuel and maintenance.
* When Cameron Indoor Stadium was built in 1940 at an estimated cost of $400,000 it was the talk of the town. Sixty-four years later, that $400,000 is now valued at approximately $4,986,587.84. With the recently raised money Duke could tear down Cameron and build it up again 470 times (using labor and materials from the pre-war period, of course).
Funding social life
* With some of the more expensive homes in the Duke adjacent area running $500,000 these days, Duke could create the ultimate fraternity and sorority row: separate houses not just for each of the 35 greek organizations, but for every single member of those chapters. Duke would still have enough money to install elevators and air conditioning in all of the remaining unairconditioned residence halls where independents live, with cash left over to pay for everyone's platinum cable and local television services for years.
* No matter what kind of drinker you are, Duke could provide your thirst quenching needs. For the classy and flashy sippers out there, Duke could buy 390,281 bottles of Courvoisier L'Esprit Decanter Cognac: Le Cognac de Napoleon at $6,050 a pop. If fraternity parties are more your thing, Duke could afford to provide for 30,665,005 kegs of Busch Light from Sam's Quick Shop. If designated driver is your role of choice, $2,361,205,387 could purchase 3,632,623,672 cans of Pepsi.
* In recent years, Duke has spent upwards of $60,000 to bring big musical acts in for the annual Last Day of Classes. With the Campaign cash, Campus Council could pretend it was the last day of classes every single day until the year 2111.
Transforming religion
* Duke spent an estimated $2.3 million in 1935 to build the Chapel--which, accounting for inflation rates, translates into $30,263,157.89 today. Duke could build 78 more Chapels at various places around campus (again, with 1935 labor and Duke Stone costs) and still have roughly $1.47 million to hire Ray Charles as a full time organist.
What you would do
* Junior Portia Jones needs to pay off a $12,000 credit card debt. With Duke's money, she could pay it off 196,767 times.
* Sophomore Zach Archer said he would buy a Ferrari 575M, estimated at $225,000. With $2.36 billion, Archer could buy 10,494--a new Ferrari every day for 29 years.
"Community service"
* At costs averaging around $5,722, Duke could pay for 412,653 cosmetic surgery facelifts.
* Duke could donate 591,780,778 Big Mac meals to starving people in developing nations.
* At $20 a unit, Duke could provide 118,060,269 Americans with the flu vaccine.
* What more could Duke do with its money? About 12percent of what Harvard could do with theirs.
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