Reported on by: Delbarton Spector
If there was one purpose for this year’s Tepper 75th Anniversary Symposium, it was to make sure everyone knows that if you’re not a Tepper student at Carnegie Mellon, then you must be lame.
There I was, sitting at the front, flanked at either side by a who’s who of household names. The auditorium shared countenance with the lobby of a Sean Combs after-party and smelled like someone had put on way too much Calvin Klein One. To my left sat famous American businesswoman and convicted felon, Martha Stewart, whose 2023 Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover still haunts me. To my right, legendary pimp-turned-preacher Archbishop Don Juan, whose breath almost made me want to throw up. It was, in my most humble opinion, one of the greatest days to be a business major.
For the opening ceremony, Professor Hooker brought forth a very compelling speech that everything Carnegie Mellon is known for is thanks to our Tepper School. Every award received and every grand innovation that sprung from this university’s loins is due to its historical wonderment. ‘How might that be?’ the lame non-Tepper student might ask. One might call it a series of hoops, but really, it’s just the truth.
Even though Herb Simon — the author of “Administrative Behavior” and whose library here sucks — came up with operations management when he was at Berkley, Tepper still claims him as their own. Artificial intelligence and computer science, too. All were created from Simon’s rib, and therefore, all future innovations in those fields also came from the Tepper School of Business. And who would ever doubt that? Operations management is so important. Before us, companies just made decisions at random and prayed.
Hooker finished his presentation nine minutes over schedule, due to his over-explaining of how great a venture capitalist Papa John’s DJ Diesel is. The audience ate it all up, a porch zapper to bugs. Afterwards, a dedicated 15-minute recess was held for us to post on our LinkedIns for our 800 bot followers about how insightful the presentation was. We headed to lecture sessions to have more people who never properly made it as businesspeople to teach us about business. I must have missed the sign by the door and accidentally walked into the “Two Minute Hate” session, in which a packed house of men in suits barked at footage of union workers asking for more pay. After the two minutes, we quickly moved on to the next session on ‘Why Meme Coins Are The Future.’
I came in late and had to sit next to Mr. Wonderful’s wife, Linda Greer. Thankfully, there were no boats nearby, so I didn’t have to worry about being killed. The presenter, president of business fraternity Sigma Alpha Beta and soon to be Wall Street’s next Jordan Belfort, came to tell us why we should invest in meme coins. Here are some of his reasons:
- Rug-pulling investors has never been easier nor as profitable.
- Gambling debts due to cheating blackjack dealers are paid off sooner.
- Pesky sustainability activists haven’t learned about meme coins yet.
- Profits give value to the shareholder without spillage of value to consumers.
The presentation was very well-received. The accounting department in the audience was too focused on overpraising double-entry bookkeeping as they always do, but measured by the increase in $HAWK by 0.0005 cents, it seems the rest of the audience had been successfully conned.
Our last lecture of the symposium, taking place in our wonderful Schwartz Center, was on how we should hedge against the blunders of the new administration while also maximizing shareholder value. This would be done by shorting overpriced Chipotle guac, because it’s only a matter of time before Klarna-backed Chipotle burritos, bought by people who have to take out loans to afford lunch, crash the market and cause a recession this winter.
Overall, the job market has seemingly never been better for Tepper students; their egos have never been higher. There was a thick haze of old confidence and new courage as the Schwartz Center was evacuated and the required cocktail networking event commenced. I left before that one person who makes an ass out of themselves at those gatherings started up. I’m sure they got home safe and will be ecstatic when their company credit card is charged $300 for the cleaning fee due to them throwing up in the back of their Uber home.
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