HUBRIS: Plans for the Big Dig

Dear Mayor Menino,

The office of University President Lawrence H. Summers recently forwarded your request that Harvard aid in salvaging Boston’s “Big Dig” project. You wanted to leave it up to Harvard’s “collective expertise” to figure out the ways in which Harvard could help.

Let me introduce our office, the Harvard University Blended Resolution Institutional Services (HUBRIS). Since the days of President McKinley, we’ve been the point-people behind some of the most successful operations in history. Spirit of Saint-Louis? We built it. Catch-22? We wrote it. Bay of Pigs? Not us. As keepers of Harvard’s substantial intellectual, financial, and physical resources, we have the power to deploy solutions-oriented Harvard-affiliates to trouble spots around the world. In this case, we’ll save on airfare.

A local problem like the Big Dig demands a quick, permanent resolution. But owing to the project’s already sky-high cost overruns, we’re betting that you want some lower priced options. Here are all the HUBRIS-approved resource-deployment schemes that we can offer you, along with our suggested compensations:

The Platinum Plan: Remember that pretty blond kid from Fight Club with the collapsed nose? That’s what Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty will do to irregularities in the Big Dig’s finances.

Compensation: Declaration of an alcohol-amnesty zone extending over all current and future Harvard campuses. And if you want top HBS professors you’d better be willing to play hardball with legalizing absinthe.

The Gold Plan: Recent graduates from HBS’s program for professional football players will do their best Atlas impressions.

Compensation: Replace the Citizens Bank and Alpha Omega store in the Square with a pen full of loud, flesh-eating children, so President Summers can finally punish his detractors amongst the Faculty in his own, Dante-esque fashion.

The Silver Plan: Lawyers from Harvard Law School will be to Bechtel as ‘Nam was to Lieutenant Dan, only this time Forrest Gump will be as fast as a member of the Advocate on horse tranquilizer. Can you say “black knight from Monty Python?”

Compensation: Under threat of public foreclosure, make all the Final Clubs change their animal names into plant names. Or protozoa, but nothing as cool as archaebacteria. And force the Oak to rename itself the Blue-Footed Booby. Humiliation is the only thing that works on these kids.

The Bronze Plan: If you’re just looking for cannon-fodder, try sophomores who participated in e-Recruiting. The student body generally looks down on them, and none of them have jobs anyway because they ignored application guidelines.

Compensation: Harvard-Yale Game 2006: Gillette Stadium. Harvard-Yale Game 2006 Tailgate: Copley Mall. BPD Capt. William Evans: Reassigned to Williams.

The Iron Plan: Harvard’s female scientists will stress-test and replace damaged and leaky panels. Don’t worry about workplace safety: they’re expendable.

Compensation: Just don’t tell the Globe.

April is the cruelest month according to one Harvard grad, but it doesn’t have to be for the City of Boston. HUBRIS solutions are your office’s best bet to patch up the Big Dig before it becomes the world’s longest waterslide. You scratch our back, and we’ll scratch yours—in the Harvard way, with the mouth-end of our cigarette holders.

Sincerely,

M.M.

President, HUBRIS