Columns

The closure of the Design Department saw the Registry picketed by a motley collection of jawboning student politicians, unkempt art students, and hangers-on from the International Socialists. As I’m in finance, my mind clearly works differently to the aforementioned rabble, so would someone please explain to me what exactly they were protesting about?

Losing just one more way to squander thousands of dollars of taxpayer money? Losing just one more way to spend years of their lives on a meaningless degree? Getting rid of Design made sense for all the right reasons, but I don’t suppose ‘sense’ is something we can ever expect the hoi polloi to grasp.
I can speculate as to why we haven’t seen finance students protesting about the proposed merger with accounting: we have this thing called ‘useful work’ to do, and are capable of using basic logic to see that waving placards around about a decision that has already been made is a waste of valuable time. 
Sure, the Design students may get sympathy for their protest – but never forget that if it weren’t for the financial world patronising their ‘creative work’, and generous grants from the Government, they would be living in a box like ordinary junkies, their ‘talents’ on display only in train tunnels and underneath bridges. 
It’s not a case of us thinking that ours is the only worthy degree. Studying anthropology, gender studies, art history, and theatre serves a semi-useful purpose – it gives them some things to ponder all day long while they are serving my Big Macs and pumping my gas. Besides, the elite of finance cannot exist without an underclass of all others. As any investment bank says on its recruitment page, diversity is one of our core values. We even prove our dedication to diversity by occasionally letting women into finance classes, and yes, even the workplace if they are well-connected and easy on the eye.
But onward to the merger. This University has a proud history of fostering the financial minds of tomorrow. By messing with a winning formula, we risk turning the jewel in the School of Business’s crown into a laughing stock. The University’s own advertising slogan urges us to ‘take your place in the world’. Think of how confused the accountants will get about their place in the world if they are merged with us! They may actually get delusions of adequacy. We make the money, they just count it. They should not be mingling in classroom topics way above their pay grade – the very thought is enough to make me barf all over my Wall Street Journal. I can foresee all kinds of disasters: students expecting to be able to derive the Black-Scholes equation (finance) using just the plus and minus keys on their calculator (accounting), students trying to value a stock using discounted cash flow analysis (finance) but being paralysed by trying to understand the implications with the change in GST rate (accounting), and students wanting to go out to a bar for a night of Jager Bombs and scoring babes (finance) but failing to get past the front door because they’re worried about whether their night will be tax-deductible (accounting).
It’s bad enough we have to share our careers day with them. Under the merger, the office reception would shift from the fifth floor to the fourth floor, which is near enough to the ground that the people down below are almost recognisable, instead of appearing like ants, as we have become accustomed to.
Accountants are known the world-over for having zero personality, and can’t expect to get laid by any girl except the sort who is willing to settle after she realises she lacks the intelligence, allure, or genetic pedigree to nab herself a financier. By contrast, bankers are very promiscuous people – why, just last year, we fucked the whole world!
Who the hell is Skegg to do this anyway? Just because the Queen calls him “Sir,” he thinks he is qualified to understand the implications of a merger – something that is strictly our domain as students of finance. As I understand it, the Vice Chancellor comes from a medical background. I do find it so quaint when people from such base professions think they can give a valid opinion on matters about the economy. Skegg, if you are reading, the basic principle to follow is to create value, not destroy it: a concept you haven’t yet grasped. 
Luckily, I am almost done and will be out of here in a few short months – but the thought of a reduction in the quality of Otago finance grads is not a pleasant one, especially if it means we would have to interview students applying to my firm from the University of Auckland, or worse, Canterbury or Waikato. John Key is a former banker himself, and I will be writing to him personally to see that this is overturned. I expect he’ll see sense. To the mob from the Design protest, if you’re not too busy counting food stamps, you should do your country a favour and write to him too – the fate of your future benefactors is at stake.