Toward the end of perpetual financial crisis, the chief financial officer at Saint Barbara’s releases a memo. It says there is a $10 million budget shortfall, the latest and steepest in a string of them. This particular shortfall is “the result of a multitude of factors, including demographic changes, a cultural shift in the meaning and value of college, and government efforts to make tuition more affordable and reduce overall student debt.” There is also a section outlining “unexpected increases in food costs, which primarily relate to inflation but also involve students consuming more than in previous years, to a degree impossible to anticipate.” It’s this line that raises eyebrows. Two days after the memo is relayed to campus, an economics professor sends an email to all faculty (which distribution list, due to long-standing institutional practice, also includes administrators and high-level executives). The email says, in part, “Greetings, all. I have just sent a notice to all of my classes encouraging them not to take extra apples, cookies, sandwiches, or fountain beverages from dining services. The Student Life Center is not a to-go counter. I impressed upon them that this is a VERY SERIOUS MATTER and have already waved away the objections many of them have responded with, most of which revolve around the idea that room and board establishes no set amounts or rations and that, if it did, it would be a form of body shaming, assuming as it does that all students have caloric needs that can be reasonably capped by a faceless committee. Obviously, this argument is self-defeating, especially in times of crisis, as the so-called ‘Greatest Generation,’ or whatever’s left of it, fully understands. As they fought fascism, so we fight the scourge of academic devaluation, and I encourage all of you to send similar notes to the students under your control, in order to strengthen our community and secure our financial future.”
It would be a stretch to say that this email “goes viral.” It perhaps inspires chuckling private conversations. The content is not addressed in any official capacity. Mostly, what happens is what always happens to mass emails. It inspires one or two collective replies and several personal replies. Then, it’s deleted and largely forgotten, at least among faculty. For students (some of whom receive copies through mentors, or “moles,” depending on one’s perspective), however, it strikes a chord. Stories are told about previous protest movements. Vietnam is not mentioned. Someone says they heard about this time students tried to run up the college’s electric bills, but that must have been ten years ago. Ten years seems like forever. No one has much interest in organizing. What they do instead is create little videos of themselves trying to load up plates with as much food as possible (playing Jenga with tofu blocks, etc.). Some videos also feature cost calculations. Some of the cost calculations are largely accurate; others are wildly off-base. At lunch, the students laugh at these videos. They spend more time watching than eating (which is, of course, the whole point). They send the clips across campus and to their friends at other colleges, and, somewhere in the midst of all of this, Saint Barbara’s releases its latest student recruitment numbers.
The goal is to draw 400 students. The college needs to maintain an enrollment of around 1500 to be basically viable financially. This time, though? They get 98. Almost immediately, another administrative memo goes out, arguing that the numbers are the result of a lack of spirit, lack of effort, lack of belief among faculty and proposing (meaning, essentially, enacting) extensive budgetary reductions. Some faculty even assent. The econ professor is blamed by many. Others argue it’s really just an anomaly, that the numbers will rebound, and college enrollment is an individual choice that can be assigned a probability, and so it’s theoretically possible to enroll zero students in an academic year, though, of course, the chances of that happening are vanishingly small. One theory states (and this is the one that turns out to be correct) that the reasons for the decline matter not at all. What matters is that college is entirely a matter of perception and prestige, and once the shine’s off the apple, so to speak, well, oh boy, son. Better fucking look out. The next year, Saint Barb’s enrolls 87 students. As goes without saying, this is not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. Sadly, the college has to announce that it’s closing, and its final graduating class (due to transfers and one or two rules violations so egregious as to necessitate removal from campus) totals 44.
Why those 44 choose to stick around, who can say? Perhaps it’s the thrill of being last. Perhaps stubbornness. Perhaps attention. Most likely, it’s because there are always people who feel an intense obligation to stay until the very end of the party (in the vain hope that it might never end), and the atmosphere on campus during these last four years is full-on fucking revelry. Most rules cease to exist. Grades become meaningless. Departmental expense accounts are emptied. Films are screened. Speakers say weird shit and fights break out on the quad, and the whole aura is that mix of ecstasy and danger that accompanies all unregulated space, and, after the graduation to end all graduations, no one is contracted to clean up the trash. It blows across parking lots. French fries are spilled on the walkways. Some of the fries are covered in bird shit. Some of the fries may be regurgitated, or maybe that’s just ancillary human vomit. At night, the raccoons return, having been previously kept at bay only by the devious diligence of the maintenance crew and their commitment to complete and total warfare. They say you can hear rodent chatter in the crowded bar district three blocks away. Drunks feed the raccoons as they walk home, as they detour between drinks. The city thinks all this is quirky (or will until someone gets bit), not a bad temporary half-replacement for the lost revenue stream represented by the departure of an army of addled 18-to-22 year olds, and their interest in the liability of it all is limited to these signs that say “Small Animal Sanctuary, Please Keep Safe Distance.” A month goes by. One of the signs is stolen. It ends up at a lease-expiration party, what some will call the true death of Saint Barbara’s College. The college’s final, gasping exhale. The party takes place inside Bomberville, a two-story up the hill from campus where a television has been running for over two decades. Gathered around it are twenty-five years of alumni, some two hundred people crammed wall-to-wall in a basement, and The Sopranos is on. Been playing for about 86 consecutive hours. The last act of an extinct institution. Call it a statement of purpose. There is the final, famous cut to black. At that exact moment, someone (who could be the current occupant or the founder or someone who remembers watching The Apprentice, who can vividly picture people, drunk and cheering and all of them dressed like Donald Trump) pulls the plug. The crowd has been instructed to observe complete silence. It’s a promise they can’t keep. A spark flies. Maybe it’s just the ghostly flicker that sometimes attends decapitated electronics. Whatever it is, the crowd now gasps. Somebody yells something. It might be “fuck you,” or it might be “no fucking way.” It might be primal or guttural or inhuman, but it is most certainly American. Its color is blindingly white, streaks of jet fuel staining the Illinois sky.
