6. VEGAS-STYLE MEM CHURCH WEDDINGS: As Canady residents, we got a big thrill waking up to the sound of the Memorial Church bells pealing in celebration of a wedding. But these weddings were all too rare.
Memorial Church is rarely used: Sunday services, an occasional High Holy Day, a Commencement service or two and not much else. Why not exploit all the downtime by making it a quickie-wedding haven? Install a few theme chapels. Hire a few more reverends and rabbis and start advertising in Modern Bride.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL INCOME--300 days per year, and 10 weddings each day (an hour is more than adequate), $500 per wedding: $1.5 million.
MORAL REPULSION QUOTIENT: Encouraging marriage in this morally bankrupt world is a good thing. Allowing white stretch limos to park in the Yard is not.
7. PROFESSORIAL SERVICES: Every academic wants to teach at Harvard for the same reason Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn agreed to give a Commencement speech here after turning down the rest of the Ivy League: "Because it's Harvard."
That means Harvard has total leverage over its professors. Basically, we own them.
Lots of Harvard professors make a lot of money on the side selling their talents to corporations, governments, private clients. They write popular books. They rake in the honoraria.
Bully for them, but Harvard should get a piece of the action. Twenty percent. Hell, make it 30. If The Dersh wants to represent murderous European socialites, the school that made him a star should at least be able to snag a new gym for his efforts.
While we're at it, we might as well make our well-paid servants lend a hand to anyone willing to shell out the big dough. Force Marty Feldstein to help millionaires with their taxes. Force Seamus Heaney to edit pulp best-sellers. Force Jeff "I'm too busy saving the world to talk to undergraduates" Sachs to clean up a country that has some money, dammit. Force Med School profs to perform celebrity plastic surgery.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL INCOME--Tens of millions if we play our cards right, baby.
BUT ISN'T THAT INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTION?: Yes.
8. MARKETING BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO THIRD WORLD NATIONS AND RURAL INSURGENCIES: This is an incredibly lucrative business, and Harvard has hundreds of chemistry and biology professors who work in impractical fields like comparative anatomy or theoretical chemistry who might do far better work manufacturing third-generation neurotoxins. Remember, we own them.
ESTIMATED ANNUAL INCOME--$300-500 million, depending on the state of the Libyan economy.
SLIGHT ETHICAL DIFFICULTIES: A bit of a thumbs-down for sponsoring proliferation, destablizing the post-Cold War world, purveying weapons of death and possibly bringing about Armageddon.
But hey, bucks are bucks. Death is a growth industry. And Harvard--with only a paltry $6 million endowment to its name--could really use the dough.
Michael R. Grunwald '92 and David A. Plotz '92 plan to join consulting firms if they graduate.
Harvard has a lot of money, but in these financially troubled times, it needs lots more.
No problem.