(Spangler) As the February 20th new club deadline approaches, Dean Clark held a press conference yesterday imploring the students to “please miss the gosh darn deadline.”
“No fewer than seven clubs were started last semester,” Clark said as he prepared to hit up an Exec Ed student for a donation. “We now have more than 70 clubs listed on the SA Club website. Seriously, we don’t need any more clubs, dang nabbit.”
Dean Kester added, “If you want to bring a speaker to campus, you don’t have to form a club to do it. With 70 clubs, there’s got to be an existing club to sponsor it. Did we really need to form the HBS Global Outsourcing Club to bring Flextronics to campus? Isn’t Flextronics a manufacturing company? Don’t we already have a Manufacturing and Technology Club that could’ve handled it?”
“And now that we’re on the subject, did we really need a Video Gaming Club to help HBS video gamers connect with each other? Didn’t all you guys meet each other when you camped out for two days at the movie theatre so you could be the first people in Boston to see The Matrix:
Revolutions? Or Lord of the Rings The Return of the King?
“Don’t you guys all hang out together at New England Comics in Harvard Square?”
According to Dr. Georgia Davis, a senior researcher at the Type A Institute at the University of South Dakota, HBS students who start clubs really mean no harm, it’s that they just can’t help themselves. “These students are addicted to overachieving,” Davis said in the well-known affected tone typical of senior researchers at the Type A Institute.
“They thrive on the excitement of founding a club and becoming its president. Their bodies crave it. When they’re not organizing a trek or a canned food drive for charity, they start shaking uncontrollably, like a smack addict who can’t get any smack.
“The only difference is that smack addicts usually have to trick themselves out to get another hit. Students addicted to achievement usually have to send their children to $25,000-a-year preschools in Manhattan.
Dr. Davis is meeting with Deans Clark and Kester to figure out a way to stop what Kester believes is “a crisis of epidemic proportions.” Clark and Kester expect to form a taskforce to recommend solutions.
RC student Evan Karson agrees this is a problem worthy of attention.
“I’m one of the people Dr. Davis is talking about,” admitted Karson.
“When I was a banker, I headed up the New York Times Neediest Causes Fund for Lehman and ran the Rock ‘N Roll marathon in San Diego to raise money for Leukemia research. All this while I was working 90-hours-a-week. I really would like to cure myself of this problem. It’s out of control.”
But Karson disagrees about the solution. “It shouldn’t come from the administration. It should come from the students themselves. Like a student-run support group.”
“Maybe I should start a support group club to do it. When’s that club deadline again?”
