Case in point

There’s been an overwhelming prevalence of young men in newly bought suits, briskly walking around in pairs with some pamphlets and the same soft-cover book lately. At first I thought there was a Jehovah’s Witness convention on campus, but when my non-existent doorbell wasn’t constantly ringing, I looked for other clues to this mystery. They gathered together in ornate conference rooms wearing similar uniforms, so it could be some sort of cult, but the meetings were often catered by Panera. Everyone knows that after the whole Ubuntu debacle last year, no generic food franchise would sponsor a cult meeting. What could it be? I needed some answers, so I turned to some people who already wore suits and walked around with unfounded confidence: I asked my friends in DSG! (And who said The Chronicle doesn’t dig deep for its investigative reporting ... in opinion pieces?)

Well, I got the scoop. Turns out, it’s just a bunch of frat boys trying to get summer internships. Yup, all the big banks who violated the American middle class for the past couple of years decided they would give back. They decided to continue giving outrageous, pro-rated summer jobs to the sons of the guys who filed for “early retirement” from their top-level jobs just a couple of years ago. I would be gender-neutral and say sons and daughters, but let’s be honest; they call it a boy’s club for a reason. So, while the Duke student body is made up of some of the best and brightest young stars in America, the whole ordeal seems a bit ridiculous to me. Wasn’t there a recession or something like that?

Now I’m not going to pretend to know about Wall Street, because I really only know two things about economics: First, 99 percent of the countries in the world only produce guns and butter, and second, I know jack about economics. Although my plan to somehow make enough money to just pay you frat bankers to handle my personal finances may be unreasonable, I’m the one with the soapbox, so I professionally say to you—you can make comments that I won’t read on the website later.

As these guys get flown out on the company’s dollar to kiss some hands and shake some babies (oops, did I get that wrong?), I currently sit on an airplane seat that I paid for, coming back from meeting with a doctor in New York about a likely unpaid summer internship. I may be able to get a small stipend, given I write up a grant proposal, but in all likelihood, as I said earlier, it will be totally unpaid. Yes, woe is me. And while we non-econ majors will work equally hard, and apply for equally competitive programs, the rat race for sectors outside of I-banking and conslutting are so much less high school. They also seem much less lucrative.

Now call me a dirty liberal, but should a 20-year-old kid who can afford one of the most expensive private educations in the world, and whose daddy “knows people” at Goldman be given 15 grand for a summer job while America’s unemployment rate is near record highs? Yes, Duke students are some of the most able people in the world, and we deserve high-paying jobs. Yes, there are plenty of people getting these top jobs whose daddies don’t know people at Goldman, and yes, who the hell am I, because I too am getting one of the most expensive educations in the world, but doesn’t something seem a little out of whack? Isn’t it a bit front-loaded? Most pre-med kids won’t be making much more than a waiter’s salary until they’re well into their thirties. Students who want to go into academia will have to somehow scrape together enough money to pay for grad school, then hunt across the country for a teaching gig. Even then, they will probably have to work several years before they get hired by a top-notch institution like Duke. And if you’re a creative type of any sort, well then you’re pretty much just SOL. Period.

As the sage Stuart Scott once taught me “don’t hate the playa, hate the game.” I can’t blame the finance kids, and that’s not just because they’re my friends and the only loyal readers of my egocentric musings, it’s because they’re just following the prescribed path. However, even though I’m sure Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the heads of the business world read my column, I think I need a little more than 800 words to fix the imbalances of Wall Street and its internship practices. So do I have a solution? No. But much like your favorite Tea Party candidate, I’m just gonna yell that there’s a problem and then have no idea how to solve it.

David Rothschild is a Trinity Junior. His column runs every other Thursday.