Contemporary airlines have done everything they can to convince squirrelly passengers that riding in their jolly contraptions is virtually the same as traveling in a car. Southwest Airlines, with its uniformly perky staff, brightly colored planes and incessant “ding!”-ing has become an industry leader, largely thanks to the company’s ability to make truculent travelers feel at ease. Nevertheless, on March 6th, the F.A.A. levied a record-breaking $10.2 million fine on the airline for its failure to ground planes that had not been properly inspected and certified as up to code. And no khaki-clad, coddling flight attendant or cute cobalt-blue plane could change that.
Simply stated, the secret to success these days appears to be in the packaging, and we’re not talking tissue paper and packing peanuts. Starbucks, for instance, has figured out that people are suckers for anything labeled “reduced fat,” and their thusly named coffee cakes fly off the shelves. Much to my dismay, there are 10 grams of fat in one slice, leading me to wonder whether or not a regular slice of the pastry induces instantaneous arterial clogs.
Clever illusions are not limited to consumer products alone; people package themselves readily. Not long ago, Harvard power couple Eliot Spitzer and Silda Wall appeared on the cover of the alumni magazine, gazing into each other’s eyes in an aw-shucks-we’re-madly-in-love-but-also-brilliant-and-wealthy kind of way. We all know how that cookie crumbled.
Politicians buy into the bunk as well. Why else would political consulting firms such as AKP Message and Media, headed by Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod, exist? Self-proclaimed masters of the media domain groom their candidates’ images, parsing every phrase, planning every trip and approving every wardrobe “statement.” Gone is the era of rough-hewn politics, when LBJ could lift up his shirt to show the press his appendix scars and still push through legislation for historical social change. How quaint it seems now.
Even the hallowed halls of learning are not exempt from our creeping societal obsession with keeping up institutional appearances. Georgetown raises banners proudly proclaiming its Jesuit principles each fall, and no one could dispute the pristine, dignified beauty of our campus; the flowers, the spires, the manicured lawns all scream to the world, “We are just as imbued with tradition and age-old academic excellence as the next East-Coast institution!” As fine a school as Georgetown is, a large part of attracting new students each fall involves a certain amount of smoke and mirrors, because after the tour, what high school senior isn’t dreaming about tossing a football on Healy Lawn next fall or making out with a dreamy-eyed senior underneath the canopy of Dahlgren Chapel’s foliage? Though our University is cosmetically and academically appealing, its pretty face masks serious administrative problems that lie just beneath the surface, which most students don’t discover until too late. Who hasn’t heard the housing horror stories, the registration gaffes and the nightmarish academic consequences of bad advice from counselors who are supposedly in the know? In many ways, Georgetown is like that charmingly eccentric old professor who walks around in an ascot and a tattered smoking jacket; delightful and well-meaning, but a bit addled and out-dated.
What Georgetown needs is administrative efficiency to match the pretty packaging that our first-rate teachers, tulips and tuition dollars provide. Yes, a certain amount of PR may be necessary in this day and age, but shouldn’t the message that we convey to the public also jibe in private? Once we’ve got one hooked, shouldn’t we take care of our own, and ensure that every effort is made to nurture and provide for students, so that memories of sunning on the quad and frolicking in the fountain aren’t marred by traumatizing administrative oversights? A sucker for coffee cake I may be, but the buck stops here; young minds and our money are a terrible thing to waste.
