In the eyes of many college applicants, student amenities are quickly outstripping more established criterion for judging schools, such as student-teacher ratios, historical prestige or the amount of financial aid the school is willing to provide. Colleges are responding, and the race is on. The University of Houston has opened what basically amounts to a resort, offering students Jacuzzis and a climbing wall. At the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, students can get pedicures, and the University of Southern Mississippi is considering building a waterpark. Colleges around the country are spending millions of dollars on services that cater directly to students’ tastes for the finer things in life.
In terms of amenities, Georgetown University just isn’t competitive anymore. The campus certainly has its charms, but when compared with hot tubs and movie theaters, the grilled cheese sandwiches and milkshake machines in the cafeteria aren’t so impressive any more. Yates certainly won’t be winning any awards any time soon, and the Leavey Center offers little beyond couches and a grocery store. So against this backdrop, Georgetown University is forced to continue attracting students through more conventional means: strong academics, a Jesuit tradition and a location in the nation’s capital. So far, it seems to be working, but for how long?
We don’t have to find the answer to that question, because it doesn’t have to be this way. With one quick maneuver, Georgetown could destroy the competition in the amenities arms race and add some serious cash to its coffers.
What this school needs is a gaming license.
The key is that students, like a lot of people, like to gamble, and having a casino on campus would be a bigger draw than pretty much anything else anyone is offering. Cooler than Jacuzzis, cooler than having a golf course, cooler even than learning. It would be a huge hit.
But learning need not take a backseat. In addition to being fun, gambling really is something you can build a successful career around. The World Series of Poker has become a hit on television, and poker is more popular than ever with college students (see cover story, p. 8). This campus could use a dominating sport to rally around. We have a lot of young poker talent, and building a casino and organizing competitive poker would give them an arena to show off their skills.
You can’t top the publicity we could get from having Georgetown students play poker (and win) on ESPN. Plus, it pays well-winners of the Poker World Series get a cool million in cash. It isn’t as good as the NBA, but it’s far better than the Capitol Hill jobs we’re already fighting one another to get.
Lastly, and perhaps most strikingly, is the issue of this University’s diminutive endowment. We need money, and casinos are expensive to license and build. But however much Washington, D.C. charged Georgetown for its gaming license, we could recoup it, and fast. Casinos are money machines. The endowment would balloon, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that we would soon have more money than we could ever hope to spend, at which point we could revisit other neglected areas of Georgetown’s budget-our academics, say, or the Jacuzzi budget. Want a hot tub with a 30-foot waterfall in your dorm room? Done. Want real professors, who can afford to eat? Sure. Want Celine Dion singing every night in the student center? Not really, but we’ll pay for it anyhow.
It doesn’t matter. We’ll be the first Catholic university in America with more money than God.
