|
| I had a statistics teacher named Don Marx at UAA. He is the true enthusiast. I love his material. He anticipated exactly each quandary we'd face. At one point, we were constructing a predictance-interval using Microsoft Excel: a 14-step matrix-math brain teaser. My lab-partner Kathy Williams and I could not get the exact result Don did. We were in his office massaging the numbers. It had thrown us all for a loop. Don was having trouble too. In my usual manner, a cliche' slipped out: "good enough for government work" I uttered. Don looked down over his bifocals at me, taken aback. He said, in a canned-snob tone, "This is academia, we do it precisely here." I felt an inch tall. Then I busted up laughing. That guy--nonstop hilarity--he got me coming and going. |
| My graduate accounting teacher, Barbara Reider, suggested we all become CPAs and more. We would be impeccable. We were to steer clear of impropriety. Well before Enron, She sounded like an officer of the court. She was not bound by lawyer/client privilege; more to the opposite, hers was to hold the line: to enforce integrity. Cold as ice, I admired her resolve. Police or be policed, she said, take your pick. That's what I wanted reinforced in me. I was doing graduate-work to prepare for understanding and doing what's right. I'd want Barb on my team any day. Her manner was like a beacon of hope. |
| My first attempt at an MBA final-project aimed at legitimizing Michael O'Calahan's free-food distribution process. Successive waves of enforcement-action inundated me. Requirements escalated steadily. Onset of impossibility is hard to qualify. But ever-changing grounds for rejection appeared increasingly arbitrary. Michael abruptly moved away. A new mayor got in, pledging to "clean up that alley." Then I knew it was over. |
| My second MBA final project-proposal was that I'd market Anchorage to Silicon Valley firms looking to relocate. I hoped the AEDC would help me. George Geistauts warned us about folks who won't let us talk to the boss. In such cases, he predicted we'd be taken for all we had to offer and discarded. AEDC representative Jeff Pokorny said no, I couldn't meet the boss yet. Then he listed what looked like my stated objectives, as milestones to be made, before my meeting his boss. Meanwhile, the new mayor was an abomination. My selling point was to have been: we ain't hicks. We won't railroad you. But what was the mayor up to? He did a midnight maneuver to criminalize selling marijuana-pipes. In the morning, a pipe purveyor entered the legal meat-grinder (later to be spared by the Supreme Court). And then a Gay Pride exhibit in the library triggered draconian policy changes. We were railroading the innocent publicly. My words would have been made lies. I would have no influence over our civic positioning strategy. It was regressing while I watched it. |
| I proposed that I do a MBA final-project for legitimizing a Girdwood pirate radio station. George was insulted that I would sully our university with my nefarious affiliations. He clarified that my final project would not involve illegal activity. Since then, Lyons Club decided to take up the cause and successfully instilled the needed legitimacy. |
| I never expected my Handyman Connection analysis to unveil organized crime entering the maturity phase of the product life cycle. I felt like I needed help sorting it out. My participation made it a technical tar-baby. Knowing "better" meant a door had locked behind me: I have no handyman-career to fall back on now. And I'm ensnared by another ticking time bomb. Whistle-blower immunity offered scant hope. But would happen to my lovable former boss? And how would I feel if the stoners were dispatched back to their couches? I reluctantly prepared a letter to the Department of Justice, explaining the scam. I stamped and addressed the envelope. I stuffed the letter in. Still unsealed, I gave it to George, for mailing. Unappreciative, George told me to find another project. |
| For our final project, we are not allowed to destroy the system. But what about a corrupted business-model? Is that a protected part of the system? Are draconian laws "buried" to prevent anarchy? Will indictment of any part of the fabric of the system destabilize the whole? Are other destabilizing forces coming into alignment with the one I found? Can it be fixed preemptively? |
| George did not find my diction inferior. He did not dispute my facts, as presented. He did not say my findings were irrelevant. He made it vanish, flaunting my unorthodoxy but not as stated-grounds for rejection. |
| Maybe George means that a feasibility study is fine: when it weighs twenty pounds. A single sheet of paper saying "not feasible" is not newsworthy, even when the truth of it flies in the face of a burgeoning industry. |
| I'd found massive and ongoing fraud. The UAA MBA program-chair insisted my blinders just needed retourquing. He saw "nothing." |
| So to graduate, I must keep my mouth shut and pretend I missed what happened. What then is the real value proposition here? And what will the resulting diploma come to symbolize? Does accepting this "slip of paper" now consummate the breaking of my spirit? Or is this just a systemic-paradox, an artifact, bearing no real meaning? Or do I actually join the ranks of the robber barons if I accept? I understand the academic course-work well enough. That was my priority. Should I dignify this blatant violation of such a universal sensibility with any response at all? I feel bullied and dumbed down. This quagmire should be beneath me. |
| Sandbox Rules: |
| Perhaps I overlooked the gravity of the situation when I did what I thought George would have done. As an accepted work, I guess mine would have become public domain. Like a shot heard around the world, it might have signaled the opening salvo in a war pitting homeowners, unions, handy-people, government, the insurance-industry, and contractors at each other's throats. My one hope was that the emergence of major players conferred sufficient advantage to propel common-sense to the forefront. But with our present legal system, it's like a crapshoot: we can only know for sure that it would have been disruptive. |
| Subtle Influences: |
| Subtle Influences, cont'd. |
| Are we there yet? |
| How'd I get here? |