Read this column and profit

As many of you might already know, the IU Student Association is sponsoring a petition to allow an optional “checkbox” to be placed on the course registration website.

This “checkbox” will allow students the option to donate some small amount of money to a sustainability initiative.

Anyone, besides the freshmen, can tell you there are already a few checkboxes on the site that allow students to donate to causes such as IU Dance Marathon, purchase season basketball tickets or purchase an all-access pass to Little 500 festivities.

I, on the other hand, have formulated my own petition. And boy, let me tell you, I sure am proud of it.

I have taken the liberty to start the “631 Venture Capital Fund.”

The number 631 refers to the $60 you would invest, which would be managed for three years, returning one heck of a profit.

This fund, which will be managed exclusively by yours truly, will put your investment into various securities, stocks and high-yield bonds (known by doubters as “junk bonds”).

Only a marginal fraction of the overall fund, perhaps as low as 35 percent, will be allocated to administrative costs.

Should you be so bold and daring as to support this petition, you will find your investment safe and secure in the hands of a particularly savvy undergraduate student.

I have read almost nine articles on the financial crisis in 2008. That’s right, almost nine articles. Pretty impressive, I know.

I also saw the newest “Wall Street” movie directed by Oliver Stone. I looked up some of the terms in the movie, and I now feel completely comfortable in turning your investment into pure profit. Gordon Gekko would be proud.

Now, I know that some of you out there are probably skeptical. You might have heard about these newfangled things such as “bond ratings” or “the securities and exchange commission” or “fraud.”

I am here to promise you, you lucky reader, you, who just happened to read the opinion section today, that I will put forward a better-than-average effort in making sure you get the return you deserve.

All you have to do is go to the following hyperlink: www.henryalderferventures.blogspot.com and follow the simple, easy instructions to make some quick and easy skrilla!

Think of it this way: You could take that $60, that in all likelihood is either funded by your parents or some loan that you don’t want anyway, and go spend it at Kilroy’s tonight.

Cool.

You just blew $60 for an atrocious hangover and a few numbers in your address book that read “Krisstii CaLL Me!!!!” or “Cool guy that bought me a shot of Jaeger.”

Looks as if you made out as a real winner, hot-shot investor.

Instead, you can invest in your future and just give the $60 to me. I will carefully manage your funds by probably keeping track of who donated what on an Excel spreadsheet saved on my hard drive somewhere.

Even if I can’t keep track of who invested what, I could always just take the return I earned and buy a new fish for Showalter Fountain. After all, what student doesn’t want to see the fish returned to its rightful home? I sure do, and I’m sure you do too.

Well, this is the point in the column where you are probably getting tired of the sales pitch that’s been going on for the past 500 words, so I’ll cut it out.

The point I’m trying to make here is that clicking one of those checkboxes, especially for something such as a sustainability fund, you really have no idea what your money is going to.

When was the last time you followed up on what exactly your donation for IUDM paid for, or who that IU Student Foundation Little 500 scholarship went to, or how many football Big Ten conference wins your season ticket purchase produced?

It’s amazing that, as a student body, we so willingly give away our money, which many of us have an incredibly small supply of, to the most arbitrary enterprises.

Perhaps it’s fiscal irresponsibility. That would make sense, seeing as how before the financial regulation was passed last year, banks made a sizeable fortune off of student credit card fees and account overdrafts.

More likely, however, is that we trust our fellow students to make the right choices for us. We simply do not have the time to monitor all of these investments and must rely on our fellow students’ ethicality.

I think that’s rather incredible and definitely not something to be ashamed of.

And for the record, I did sign the petition for the sustainability initiative, and you probably should too.


E-mail: halderfe@indiana.edu