TKC Letters Project - What We Already Have

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.

The rain fell in torrents. The sky matched the violence of the alleyways, sheets of rain caressed central park treetops. Three mysterious figures strolled down Park Avenue, and you know what?

I hate cliches. They give mundane things a false sense of romance. They make the mediocre or synthetic appear special.

Irony is a funny thing: I’m addressing a letter to “The King’s College Letters Project,” as if any of this is really about some business school in downtown Manhattan.

This letter has nothing to do with college, and everything to do with people. There are thousands of stereotypical King’s students in every school all over the country. What exactly makes us special?

We all chose to be here.

That’s all it is. This isn’t some magic formula with thirteen secret herbs and spices. We all own our choice to come to King’s. Many (far larger) colleges can afford to carry dead weight. We can’t. You don’t just coast through a class at King’s. You can’t just roll out of your dorm and into a cafeteria. We choose to be here, and we choose to stay committed. When it became clear that King’s was at risk of closing I thought “this is it.” I suspected we’d start seeing rats jump the ship.

Nobody did. We’re all still here. If you are an investor reading this, and you’re wondering whether King’s is an attractive value proposition, I want you to ruminate on how exceptional that is.

Nobody quit. We’re all still here.

This isn’t a sudden injection of vigor. We’ve always been like this. Many of our students are small business owners. Our professors host students in their homes. Our debate team has won trophies over Harvard students. Who else does that?

Let’s go back to that dramatic scene at Park Avenue. Those three figures were me and two of my friends. A new school year was starting. It was the first time all three of us were together in the same place at the same time. Spontaneously, we all joined arm-in-arm, kicked up our right legs like the leading trio of a Fred Astaire film, and sang Sinatra, loud and off-key.

Fly me to the moon

Let me play among the stars

Let me see what spring is like

On a-Jupiter and Mars

In other words, please be true

In other words, I love you

I don’t love King’s, and I’m not afraid to admit that. However, I do love our faculty and our students. It would be far harder to gather so many wonderful people from scratch than just save what we already have.