Several times recently I have attempted to bring up the subject of President Clinton with my friends and people in my classes. Quite frankly, I haven’t had a lot of luck.
In fact, one guy responded, “A lot of people have been saying that they don’t really care about this issue and that is all fine and good, but when I say it, I completely mean it. I REALLY don’t care about this issue.”
Hmm … I guess even though we live in Washington, a lot of people are too wrapped up in their own lives to care about what is going on off-campus. So to make the matter a little more interesting, let’s play a little game of pretend and relate it to something on campus.
Let’s imagine for a minute that a scandal similar to the Lewinsky affair happened to someone right here at The George Washington University. Someone who we all admire, respect and look up to just as we once admired, respected and looked up to President Clinton.
How about Stephen Joel Trachtenberg? I think he’ll work. Of course, I want to preface this by saying it is all purely hypothetical and it is ridiculous to think even for a minute that President Trachtenberg or any member of the GW administration would lie to any of us – the faithful and trusting student body.
First off, I don’t know of any impeachment process for presidents of universities. I mean, Trachtenberg wasn’t exactly elected. And we have so many vice presidents – I’m not really sure how that would work and I think that might cause some undue confusion.
Probably impeachment wouldn’t be an issue. Sex and lies aren’t exactly something that make a lot of college students disrespect someone. Actually, we might see a rise in Trachtenberg’s popularity.
One of the major things many Americans were upset about in the Monica Lewinsky affair is the fact that President Clinton had sexual relations with an intern right in the Oval Office. However, aside from the fact that Trachtenberg doesn’t have any interns (that I know of), I really don’t think GW students would be bothered by the thought of sex in Rice Hall.
As a matter of fact, sex at other places at GW definitely would be more disturbing. For instance, we’d all be much more upset to hear about two library employees up on the fourth floor of Gelman than anything about Trachtenberg. I mean, once a semester some of us have to use those stacks. Or what about Funger? That building is hot enough already.
In this scenario, students would have some problems. I intern for my congressman and Thursday, a constituent called and told me that the SOLE reason for the stock market dropping was Clinton’s affair. (Granted, I don’t know much about the stock market, but I thought maybe she was giving him a bit too much credit and not enough credit to, oh … Russia, but whatever).
And although a scandal involving Trachtenberg most certainly wouldn’t affect the stock market, I think it is safe to say we would see a rise in tuition. I don’t know how or why, but somehow I know it would happen. Maybe the next time our tuition bills are sent out, we will notice a stealthy “Voluntary Scandal Reduction Fee” tacked on to the bottom. Who’s to say?
Just one more thing – maybe I am biased, but I think our Trachtenberg is much smoother than Clinton. There’d be no lame apologies or press conferences. Trachtenberg is a man of action. Why, he’d buy us another hippo to show his regret. And what student doesn’t want that?
Maybe classes would be canceled, too. But probably not – I think they only do that for Convocation.
But as I said earlier, it’s all moot – Trachtenberg would never betray us. But it certainly would make things around here more exciting and keep our minds off classes. And after all, what could be more important than that?
