Claremont McKenna College’s Board of Trustees has launched a new public relations campaign entitled “We Have More”, aimed at raising public awareness of the new Kravis Center, mid-quad renovations, and the upcoming Roberts Pavillion. The campaign is a direct reaction by the CMC Trustees to Scripps College’s fundraising campaign entitled “We Want More”.
According to Board of Trustees Chairman David Moogrublian “we really just wanted to remind the student body about how much better than Scripps we are. Always.” When asked if the campaign was also provoked by current Scripps Board of Trustees ChairwomYn Lenda Davis Taylor’s refusal to go to Wedding Party with him, Moogrublian avoided the question, only stating “look, we’re just better than them. Always have been, always will be.”
The campaign has created a fair amount of controversy on campus, with a number of CMC students protesting the hypocrisy of the campaign. “How can we claim that we have more if there are only three tea times per day?” asked CMC Senior Fate Nalk. Others were more angered by the form the campaign itself was taking, citing poor taste in the choice of banner fabric unrolled over the Kravis Center over Parents Weekend. “It’s totally gauche” cried a Rose Institute employee Andrew Ham ‘15, “the banner is completely opaque! How am I supposed to fantasize redistricting campus now?”
Regardless of the controversy, the campaign is here to stay. Yesterday, the Kravis Leadership Institute announced the creation of a new “Innovative Privilege Prize” to be awarded to the student who “most exudes the CMC spirit of having more.” Current front-runners include a group of students from the Student Investment Fund, who have proposed buying out Scripps in an effort to balance the organization’s already skewed gender ratio, as well as Henry Kravis himself, who has proposed renaming the school to Kravis McKenna College. According to Kravis “I pretty much own this place – nobody here has more than me. Might as well stop pretending it isn’t true, right?” A speaker for the “We Have More” campaign has explicitly stated that the movement is for publicity, not fundraising, though he also added that he would “definitely not say no” to more donations as the team is already laying the groundwork for next year’s “We Have Too Much” campaign.
– Aseem Chipalkatti CMC ’15
– Photo design and concept contributions by David Leathers CMC ’15
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