Tuesday, January 12, 2010, tremors rock Haiti, 15 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital city. Shaking with a force of 31.6 megatons or 31 small-nukes, Port-au-Prince crumbled. Buildings once vertical lay shattered across the landscape. Devastation spread as the poorest country in the west lost its entire power grid. 

The already fragile infrastructure was now broken. Combined with, “poor infrastructure, landslides, vulnerable neighborhoods, no strict building codes, [and] a high density population,” recovery seemed hopeless.1 

And then came relief! Obama promised a “swift, coordinated and aggressive” effort.2 The Red Cross and U.N. rushed to provide relief as U.S. and international charities followed. Philanthropic Americans started new causes and poured money into the country. 

However, that is not the whole story.  Interwoven in the epic relief effort is a narrative of corruption, scam and politicization of crisis. 

Starting at the top, the over 3,000 NGOs have taken most of the donations to effectively pay their employees. The America Red Cross has already admitted to financing their debt with donations. After nearly two month relief efforts and $354 million collections, almost half of the 1.3 million homeless don’t even have a tarp for the rainy season.3 More substantially, not even one-third of the collected money has been spent on relief. Instead it stays stagnant in the bank accounts of large NGOs. 

Even worse is the bottom feeders of the crisis, out scam the average Americans. According to Symantec Corp, maker of Norton Antivirus, the first scam e-mails about the Haiti earthquake appeared only two days after the quake.4 Scammers send e-mails requesting money for children in Haiti, when they are actually routing your relief money to pay for their child support! 

So, what has Lehigh been doing about the earthquake? 

Lehigh has been using Haiti issues as a source of free publicity and program subsidies. Three programs in specific are have used this crisis as a source of publicity. 

Starting with the publicity stunts, the Brown and White took a non-Haiti related speaker on campus, Ellen Gustafson, and painted her speech and the associated program as a Haiti only front cover news issue. Ellen came to Lehigh to speak on leadership through her experience as founder of FEED Projects, LLC and the Feed Foundation. This event, hosted by the Leadership Initiative at Lehigh was student run program that brought together students across campus from all majors to learn about leadership. However, the Brown and White did not cover any part of that story. Instead they took out of context, a mention Ellen causally made about Haiti and turned it into a front page picture.  

Continuing with the sources of program subsidies, both the Hawks for Haiti program and the DanceFest 2010 have used the Haitian discourse to conjure interest for their events. According to Tyrone, organizer of DanceFest, only 70 percent of the proceeds go to Haiti related donations. The rest of the money goes to the host. Similarly, Hawks for Haiti is organizing a carnival for Haiti. However, there is no mention of how much money or support they actually plan to give to Haiti related organizations. 

Together crisis politicians at Lehigh have agreed to donate all of the money raised to the Red Cross, the corrupt organization mentioned above. In a conversation with the Community Service Office, I was told that the director researched the best place to put the money. It is clear this research did not take in to account any in-depth analysis of charity effectiveness. 

In the treachery of charity for Haiti, what can you do to help? How can you avoid scams?

There are two ways to do the right thing: 

(1) avoid scams 

(2) be informed. 

The Christian Science Monitor recently published five tips to avoid scams.5

The top three things that have to say are: 

(1) be cautious with online donations.

(2) check out the charities.

(3) donate to organizations not individuals. 

If you ask for all of the facts and call the charity you can learn a great deal about where your money goes. 

Furthermore, it is important to be informed. You should read technical information sources that are non-biased. For example the U.S. Geological Survey measured 16 earthquakes above 6.0 on the Richter Scale in the last 3 months. Some of these earthquakes were more than ten times as powerful as the Haitian earthquake.6 It is also important to consider the opportunity cost of your donations. If you donate to Haiti, you are not donating to help HIV/AIDS in Africa or the earthquake in Chile or poverty in Bethlehem. Therefore, when looking at donations through a systems lens, it is important to think about where you can give for the most impact and the most need.

Sources

1 – http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=2434299

2 – http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=9547609&page=1

3 – http://www.sfbayview.com/2010/red-cross-under-fire-where%E2%80%99s-the-money-for-haiti/

4 – http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/HaitiEarthquake/story?id=9561420&page=2

5 – http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0115/Five-tips-to-avoid-Haiti-relief-scams

6 – http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2010/

Corporate advocates and wall street watch dogs all have their own political machines armed and ready for anything in the 2010 “Obama agenda.” With the formation of a Consumer Protection Agency to reform the financial marketplace, the wall street dogs are ready for a heyday. Meanwhile, corporations are doubling their lobbying budgets and moving their operations and conferences to Washington D.C.
With all the employed enlarging their loudspeaker to the ears of lawmakers, there is no voice for the unemployed. While Obama might say his focus will be jobs for 2010, he has no idea how to start. The following list, far detached from the intentions of Obama, is a set of well rounded suggestions.

1. Draft the unemployed. Instead of a liability, our unproductive workforce can be asset. Clinton era national service programs including AmeriCorps, Learn and Serve America, and Peace Corps were created to help revive America. By diminishing work-loss benefits and payouts, the government can effectively “draft the unemployed” to serve America. A roughly ten percent hole in the economy can be revised to help rebuild infrastructure, strength diplomacy, and improve education.

2. Legalize gambling, prostitution, and drugs. Artificially limiting livelihoods is a sure way to cut the number of jobs. If congress made accounting illegal to practice next week, we would not only incriminate our auditors, but we would cut millions of jobs. The same thing happened in 1920 when America experimented with prohibition. From the start of 1920, when alcohol related livelihoods were legal, to the end of 1921, unemployment in the United States more than doubled. Conversely, the end of prohibition has a near perfect correlation to the economic recovery after the Great Depression. Once again, with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration created in 1973, the unemployment rate almost doubled again.1 Therefore we can greatly increase the supply of jobs by eliminating legal restrictions on “sinful” industries.

3. Remove minimum wage. Any economist would tell you that rent ceilings to protect low-income workers will inevitably leave more people homeless. The same concept applies for minimum wage. Wage floors prevent demand from being met. If an employer is willing to pay two workers five dollars an hour and you tell him that he has to pay each worker seven per hour, he will only hire one more productive worker leaving the worker unemployed.

4. Legalize organ sales. In the words of Levitt and Dubner, authors of Super Freakonomics, Iran has more economic sense than America in regards to human organs. One major drag on the economy is the amount of long-term care patients, of which transplant waiting-list patients make up more than 100,000. 2 This enormous drag on the economy, established with the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, could be repealed to cut medical costs and save lives. As a result of repeal, doctors would have more surgeries to perform and lawyers would have more malpractice cases to deal with, increasing net amount of doctors and lawyers.

5. “Drill baby drill.” In the words of Sarah Palin, we need to increase oil drilling at offshore platforms and in environmentally protected areas including ANWR. The more we drill here the less we drill in the Middle East. It is zero sum. Instead of funding terrorists and Saudi princes we should allocate our money to desecrating America soil. The more we drill from the U.S. the more jobs we will create and less depen dent we will be on oil from instable governments that don’t believe in human rights. Right now we spend $200,000 per minute on oil imports, that’s like giving a Ferrari to Hugo Chavez every minute or buying a private jet for Nigerian identity thieves every hour.

6. Bring back the uranium. According to George Kuczynski, executive at PPL, “We have been planning to build a multi-billion dollar nuclear power plant for years, but regulations have halted progress.” Instead of pontificating about sustainability and renewable energy, Congress should act now. By loosening regulations on nuclear power plants and passing a carbon tax, Congress can encourage a green and more radioactive future. With most of our energy infrastructure over 35 years old, a major crisis could cripple America. Therefore, we should be proactive and create some serious high-paying nuclear engineering jobs by encouraging energy companies to go “green”.

The following link to a Huffington Post article highlights the reasons why men all over the world die earlier than women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/myles-spar-md/why-do-men-die-younger-th_b_457660.html

However, this article calls into question our societies aggressive support for heteronormativity. Should men in our society rule? Should we continue to take excessive risks on wall street? Is our encouragement of sport teams best for Lehigh?

Alumni often visit Lehigh to give lectures, speak on panels, or advise students. However, Lehigh students take many of these opportunities for granted. Attendance for most speaker series is often limited to overachievers and students prodded by their professors.

The question for everyone else becomes, “do I want to play another hour of Xbox or see a lecture in the Perella Auditorium?”

What is lost in this consideration is the value of Lehigh lectures. Alumni provide a view into the future. They can tell you what your life will be like, where you will work, and how much you will be paid. They can also explain some of their mistakes and detail how you can do better than they did, faster.

This article will focus on a few of those missed opportunities. Specifically, I will forward you alumni insights from the ISE Panel discussion and an independent interview with Daniel Mulholland.

“Become a student of what you do.”

Most students will graduate into jobs that require significant training past classroom education. Steve Senkowski, former executive of Armstrong, elaborated, “learning to learn is an important skill.” The best employees learn every step of their career. You must ask yourself, “Can I do the entire project from start to finish without conflict?”

“Take a job for the most valuable experience.”

There will be jobs out there, with great starting offers and many perks that lack substance. Tom Cassidy, Director at Bayada Nurses, took his first job at UPS for the extensive learning experience in industrial engineering. Although it was not the highest paying job, it was the job where he learned the most. This education translated into a quicker path to more senior, higher paying jobs.

“Never accept the initial solution.”

When working, you will often find quick solutions to arduous problems. However, it is your responsibility to strive for excellence and reject the first answers. Gary Whitehouse, Dean at Arizona State, explained that even if the statistical distributions match, you still must consider the source of attributes for your data.

“Never burn a bridge.”

Since the world is small and bad news spreads like wild fire, you should keep relationships from spiraling out of control. No matter how bad things get, according to Steve, you should end on a positive note with every relationship.

“Know every part of your organization.”

Daniel Mulholland, former president of Baker Chemical, advises you to discover each division of your organization. If you start out in sales, as he did, do not stay there. You should take every opportunity to do different jobs. Demand differentiation. Dan moved vertically from sales to information systems to manufacturing to administration to marketing before he became an executive and eventually president. It was the diagonal moves across his company that set him apart from everyone else during times of promotion.

“Leadership is getting others to want what you want.”

Students, and even some executives, confuse the terminology of manager with leader. Although, Merriam-Webster might tell you that they are synonyms, there is a distinct difference. Managers only maintain the status quo and keep employees on track. On the contrast, leaders are agents of change. They are driven to distinction. They improve their companies. Dan detailed that leaders think about the team and results count. The only way to ensure those results is to get people to like what you like and want what you want. That way you can lead and inspire instead of managing and delegating.

For those of you that enjoy learning about your future. There will be more insights available. In an academic setting, you can join the leadership minor to hear first hand from alumni in your classes. In a club setting, the National Society of Leadership and Success will have this information available as well. Also, keep posted on the Patriot website. I will upload similar content soon.

As the Dow marked a psychological rebound at 10,000, few analysts were quick to verify this achievement. With an unemployment rate heading for 10% and no clear connection to revenue, the 10,000 mark might just be an artifact of a much bigger picture.

Internationally, the dollar is suffering, exchanging at only €0.67, almost a split from a 2001 high of €1.20.¹ Nationally, banks are still suffering, with Bank of America reporting a one billion dollar loss; real estate demand is dwindling with record lows in rent; and companies are only exceeding earnings by cutting costs.

In this climate of rising futility, weak markets, and unpredictable demand, companies are becoming increasingly cutthroat in their competitive strategies. Businesses are responding to decreasing market size with more aggressive strategies to demolish their competitors through hostile competition, mergers and acquisitions, and unethical behavior. A look into a few companies emphasizes this point.

Head-to-head, Amazon and Walmart are engaging in airline style price wars with books. Cutting bestsellers from the typical $25 to $10, Amazon thought they could out-price Walmart. Think again. Walmart, known as a cost leader, cut the price to $9, and when they were matched by Amazon, went down another penny to $8.99 a copy.^{2 In the same context, Microsoft sought to challenge Apple in the retail arena by opening two Microsoft retail stores. These stores will function as near replicas of Apple stores, selling high-tech gadgets and software packages licensed by Microsoft. They will even copy the Genius Bar, Apple’s signature customer service and repair center at the back of every store.3}

Top-to-bottom, Oracle offered to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion in order to compete directly with IBM as a one-stop-shop for big business IT solutions.⁴ Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek to expand its information clutch on the magazine channel.⁵ These big buys were financed by the industry of continual mergers: banking. With JP Morgan connecting with Chase and TD enveloping Ameritrade and Commerce, it’s hard to get anyone’s name straight.

Unethically, Toys ‘R’ Us is under FTC review for using market forces to hike the price of strollers and breast pumps.⁶ Likewise the SEC has recently identified the largest insider trading ring in a century.

In this environment of ultra-competitive forces, companies and watchdogs need to step back and observe the long-term results of their actions. Will this competitive behavior end the recession? Is it best for us and our customers?

In most cases the answer is a clear ‘no.’ In the long run, consumers and producers will both lose. As companies increase cutthroat competitive tactics, they will decrease long-term profits. If you make the seas red, no one wins. Customers will lose choice and quality while companies will lose capital and positive PR.

In the case of book selling, Walmart and Amazon will have to sell below cost and will discourage publishers from selling through their channels. For Microsoft, they will create channel conflict with their nearby retailers and increase costs for the customers, since retailing is not their core competency. Oracle will minimize the functional number of customer combinations from nine (e.g. IBM + Oracle, Oracle + Other, or IBM + IBM) to two: either IBM or Oracle. This will decrease the market capacity for their software product while increasing the risk of gaining market-share since Sun + Oracle is not a well-established combination. Finally, the losers will lose – unethical business practices never get companies ahead. Toys ‘R’ Us will end up paying in the jugs for their breast pump price fixing.

In this zero-sum game, there is only one way to get ahead and win in the long run: ignore the rules. Instead of buying into the U.S. magazine market, Bloomberg could offer a hybrid terminal with a magazine feel. This would create a “blue ocean” of uncontested market space. Instead of trying to find more ways to sell products with bugs and overheating Xboxes, Microsoft should focus on developing an operating system that is not vulnerable to viruses. Banks might even be able to do more than clean their balance sheets by offering investment products to small companies.

Taking this theory out to the market, analysts see a bleak future because companies are hollowing out. They are trading cost-cutting strategies for revenue-building approaches. Instead of expanding their intellectual property they are selling it below its true value. When we can learn to step off the battlefield, our market will stabilize.

Sources:
1 – http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/USD/graph120.html
2 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704322004574477050954174722.html
3 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125582090441392365.html
4 – http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/10/15/ellison-oracle-wont-be-seventh-in-services/
5 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473382444906054.html
6 – http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125573656435491057.html

Question: How should Lehigh’s administration deal with underage alcohol consumption?

From the vantage point of the Lehigh administration, minimization of risk and maximization of student experience should be the focus of any policy conversation. Considering these metrics, Lehigh should adopt the following three approaches to reduce instances of underage drinking abuse “on campus”.

1) Prevent the worst instances – Using the broken window theory, Lehigh can target the outliers and worst offenders to reduce the net effect of the whole problem. By targeting students involved in recurrent hospital trips, drunken driving, and acts of public disturbance, Lehigh enforcement personnel can cut the worst out of the system. This focused policy will discourage students from engaging in the worst underage activities. Also, reducing the standard variance of underage offenses will discourage students from “breaking all the rules” because the perceived risks are much greater.

2) Use resources for next-best alternatives – Spend some of the extensive enforcement and correctional budget on exciting and extraordinary activities. If Lehigh students had other experiences that were just as “pleasurable” as drinking, they might spend their time on next-best alternatives. For example, if Lehigh offered free scuba diving lessons, showed movies in theaters, or took students on weekend adventures to different cities around the country, students would choose those alternatives. Administrators should spend less time making rules and more time making experiences.

3) Push drinking away from campus – With Lehigh’s “not in my backyard” mindset, controlling consumption can be as easy as pushing it away from campus. By monitoring underclassmen dorms on campus instead of patrolling off-campus houses, the university can save resources and push drinking away from campus. By creating a circle of control, the university will ensure that less students drink on campus.

To Discuss this issue, please see all three of our editor’s viewpoints, and comment here.

Think back to before your freshman year. You were a senior with a life changing decision to make. Were you going to attend Lehigh or another similar school? In that decision, many aspects of student life were balanced: academics, food service, campus life, and available student services. Little facts like library building hours, newspapers in Rauch, and flexible course choices entered your mind as a whirling matrix of decision variables.

Many of these variables may not have seemed too relevant to you until recently. That is when they were taken away. Recognizing the end of the college readership program, the reduction of buildings hours including library hours, and ten percent cuts in department funding, might have raised your temper. These recent changes along with a systemic shift of the registrar to restrict student overloads and the business school’s insistent need to control every minor expenditure, have created a pattern of abstinence. That is abstinence from student based priorities and abstinence from transparency.

However, Lehigh is not alone. Universities including Dickinson, Whitman College, and even Harvard are facing harsh realities of budget cuts.¹ These universities were forced to hold “virtual swim meets”, cap student printing, and lay off a variety of student service providers including janitors.² With all of these cuts, the New York Times has even started a blog on what colleges can cut ³.

In what seems like a hopeless loss to the quality of the American university, there is still hope, but only if universities can radically shift their business models. Instead of prioritizing administrators’ salaries, professors’ job security, and blue sky research, universities have to return to their core business model. They must develop an educated work force, produce industry relevant research, and provide a productive environment for intellectuals to flourish.

Just like any other service business in the world, Universities must understand that the customer always comes first. Whether that customer is the student paying tuition, government agencies providing grants for economically effective research, or companies paying for research and development, universities must meet their needs.

At the same time, universities must remain competitive. That means using agile business models to adapt to changes immediately instead of ten years later, incentivizing professors to win more competitive grants, and reducing faculty and staff in weak economic times. Instead of begging alumni for money, Lehigh should be proving its research has value for companies. Instead of focusing on only tenured professors, Lehigh should hire more adjuncts and professors of practice as it does for its MBA programs. Finally, instead of acting as three independent silo colleges, Lehigh should integrate cross-college resources.

If Lehigh cannot revise its stale, 1950s business model, it might not be able to sustain itself for the indefinite future. Students might not be able to have the available resources and services they once had, and alumni might not give to a university that did not fully satisfy their needs as students.

Sources:

1 – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/education/19college.html?_r=2&hpw

2 – http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/slam/blog/263

3 – http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/what-colleges-can-cut/

As a result of the current financial crisis, many intuitive lessons of our parents and mentors are becoming countercurrent truths. The industrial age assumption that hard work, a lot of studying, and a little luck will land you a great job for life is no longer a reality. Currently, the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent and rising (U.S. Department of labor). Students in the finance department are now fumbling for jobs and even Engineering Co-ops are being cut.

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