Friday, November 07, 2008

GSB goes Booth! What’s in a name - just a sketchy change?

Remember, remember, that time in November! That time when the wind of change did more than just blow over a mild Windy City – a time when change sent us a blow on the head as we sipped warm champagne and munched on cold hors-d’oeuvres in the crowded Rothman Winter Garden. As if November starting off warmer than October wasn’t eyebrow-raising enough, we would soon witness two very significant changes that would top all the craziness that had surrounded us till then in 2008: from our admission to the best graduate business school in the universe and those ridiculously awesome random walks, all the way to Turbo Micro midterms and the crash of the financial markets.

A couple of days after the United States elected the first African American president in an unprecedented sweeping victory—Barack Hussein Obama, Kumbaya!—, setting the bar high in terms of democracy, freedom and opportunity for the rest of the world, the Wind of Change strikes again. Just when we thought that was enough change for our slow-paced laid-back Midwest, we witnessed another twist of events that felt like a slap-on-the-face this time, for more than just sentimental reasons. Just as we thought we had seen it all and that we had stepped into a new era, we received a rather unusual email from Dean Ted Snyder. At 4 PM on that unforgettable Thursday, Ted Snyder emails the entire GSB family saying he wants to “share a historical moment with us” in the Winter Garden. The Chicago, then, GSB heard the “what-the-heck-was-that-about” question resonate across its named halls and rooms. Personally, that sent bad vibes down my spine. Curious to know what the Dean wanted to share with us, we gathered around “free” food and drinks (hoping it was not cut out of our own tuition fees, right?) in the Rothman Winter Garden, leaving the Kolver Café, the Peter M. May Student Lounge, the Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Eugene Fama classrooms, as well as the Ida Noyes hall all empty as a booth-town (‘booth’ meaning ‘ghost’ in Hindi).

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6:00 PM beeped on some geeky Casio watches. The Harper Center soon became the center of attention of the universe, attention rose and silence fell upon the crowd, as we held tight to our champagne flutes while a sharp-looking Dean Snyder splashed the news right to our faces from his tribune, stopping the breath in our throats. David Booth, a prominent investor and MBA alumnus who had carved his hedge fund business around Chicago GSB concepts and theories pioneered by Eugene Fama and other finance geniuses of our time, had just donated $300M. Not all cash, but he broke a lot of records by far. A great victory for higher education in this country and a greater one for the prestigious University of Chicago. But what did our glorious and top-tier B-school get for that? It got the B-name: Booth.

Chicago Booth. Kind of like the Chicago Bulls. But not as bullish. Kind of like Wharton, but not as outstanding. Kind of like Kellogg, but not as amusing. Not like Stanford anymore. Because, we have a name now. Damn the miseries of our weak endowment! Just when we started to become more known internationally and as we started to work on expanding our treks and getting our (ex-) name out there, somebody thought the timing was right to confuse people getting used to our brand, on those rankings, media channels and business cards. When somebody plunks down an insane amount of money to get the naming rights to a school, what are they really paying for? I'm in B-school now, so I'm allowed to say the B-word: Brand?! But in this instance, it was all about the endowment and not the brand. Although David Booth put up the right kind of money to crank up our endowment, I don’t think the brand got the same push our funds witnessed. This, I am afraid to say, was not an association with (more likely usurping of) what was really the work and achievements of generations of faculty and scholars who have come before. Isn’t it somewhat unrighteous for a single person to be able to lay claim to that just by opening his (fat) wallet? Can you imagine - Prof. Eugene Fama winning the Nobel Prize next year and they introduce him as the Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business?

I am curious to know what the alumni feel about this? Is it not up to that living organism of 33,000 strong businesspeople populating the globe from Wall Street to London, Hong Kong and Rio to make that decision? Doesn’t it feel like our identity has just been stolen and that an entire community's brand has just been sold to the highest bidder? Is this the only way to double our humble endowment? Is this the best solution the top business school in the universe can come up with? You may say my arguments don’t hold. Just imagine some Sheikhs from the Middle East throw some billions and save the US economy (cf. Sovereign funds). Would they want to call it the United States of Arabistan? If you said “yes” to that, we have a lineup of great courses for brand management in our Marketing Department: 37101, 37102 and 37203 (since we are so obsessed with numbering everything in this place). Alas none of those courses, I am afraid, teaches us "how to raise $300M of funds in one word".

I guess I am being too harsh; I should be a sport, get on the free market wave we are so keen about at our innovative school and enjoy the game. Oh - and I just loved some of my friends’ suggestions at the BSB, “Dude, you should become a billionaire and then change the school’s name again – Jihad Khalil School of Business!”– how’d y’all like that for a brand?