Every Sunday, I wake up, eat breakfast and walk down the street to the Alumni Phonathon, a campus job where an army of Georgetown students sit at computer stations in a windowless basement raising money for the university.
In my two-and-a-half semesters of calling I have probably raised between $20,000 and $30,000 for the university, and I am not even one of the lead callers. The job connects me with the school, and I feel proud to be raking in much-needed money for this institution.
Some shifts are slow, with a lot of answering machines, disconnected numbers or call backs, with the occasional credit card pledge that invokes excitement at the prospect of bonus wages. Certain shifts stand out for large amounts of rude responses, cursing and hang ups by the prospective alumni donors. But sometimes, as I fall into a ring-induced hypnosis and my eyelids grow heavy, a voice picks up and a memorable conversation ensues.
Last week, I was awoken from my dazed calling by an alum in the Midwest who graduated in 2000. Unlike some people that answer the phone on a Sunday, this man was not rude but rather congenial, and he seemed happy to have picked up the phone. He made it clear that he did not plan to give back to Georgetown for 10 years. I thought this could be the introduction to another good story.
Before graduation, he was short one class credit and instead of letting him slide, the school forced him to take a water coloring class in the pre-session of summer school, at the price of $2500. Of course, the water coloring was his own choice, but he made the point that the $2500 he had to fork out at the end should just about cover his contributions for his first 10 years after graduation.
Once he started talking, relaying his story to me, he seemed to fondly reminisce about the school and his upper class exploits.
As a junior, he fortuitously acquired an endowment property, which are now the university townhouses around N and 36th streets. Did I know the places? I told him I did. Did I know that you used to be able to keep them for two years? I did not know that. He had apparently been one of the main reasons this rule changed.
He was a Tombs doorman, completed their 100 days challenge and had to speak to an administrator every time he registered a party. Between organizing block parties signified by red lights outside, burning down his Village B apartment sophomore year and generally wreaking havoc college style, he made his mark on the school. He seemed a Van Wilder type???that guy that the students love and the administration curses for his antics. He compromisingly added, “they got theirs and I got mine.”
As he told stories of all the places I know so well, in his mind he was still very much a presence. He had moved away after his water coloring class and in his last memories of Georgetown, understandably, he was a star. He will always remember the school at that time from 1996 to 2000, when he ruled campus.
As he related tale after tale, I began seeing him in my memory, could picture him and his friends, as if I knew what he looked like. He told such a good story that I felt like I was there. And this was not an old man telling stories from a bygone era; it was only recently. Yet despite his fame or infamy, despite the fact that while he was a student, and many people must have known him, no one knows him now. He has all but disappeared from the collective memory of the place, except for in the archives of newspaper articles and the backs of those administrators’ minds. And he was someone who made a splash while here.
He went on with some life lessons, advice that five years of post-college experience had afforded him. I felt a sinking feeling, knowing that I too would be forgotten after graduation. Any accomplishments or 15 minutes of fame would fade with time. As I have seen my place in high school filled by people of the next classes, Georgetown will move on just fine without me and my compatriots of this era. Any hope of being remembered is overwhelmed by the simple desire to make my mark on the place.
When I hung up with the alum, although he had made no pledge to the university, I felt lucky to have had him randomly assigned to my calling pools. Those individual calls that invoke introspection and contemplation of life make the calling job that much better and worth every moment of mind-numbing ringing.
