Letters from Whitey - journalist's anecdotes on college alumni fund raising

Monthly Review, Jan, 1990 by W. H. Locke Anderson

LETTERS FROM WHITEY

Not long ago I left my job of 30 years to seek obscurity and misfortune in central Harlem. Stupidly, as I now can see, I left a forwarding address, so the Williams College Alumni Fund had little trouble finding me. Some years ago, in a sentimental moment, I gave $100 toward replacing the pool in which I set the NCAA Division II record for most last-place finishes in a single season. Alumni Funds never forgive you for sending them money, even if you promise not to do it again. And they know where to find you! The FBI would save a lot of time and money if it linked its computers to ALUMNET.

I recently, therefore, heard from my class agent, who signs himself "Whitey." Since my neighbors often call me Whitey, I answered the letter in a fraternal spirit. But I didn't send any money. (I usually give money to my neighbors when they ask, but the Alumni Fund would just use it for drugs.) And I explained to Whitey that since I spend so much of my time these days trying to overthrow the ruling class, including the Class of 1955, maybe he ought to take me off his mailing list. I have not heard from him since.

Sad to say, however, Whitey turned me over to the authorities. I wrote him on a letterhead that gives my address as the "Center for Anarchic Disciplines," and you can guess where that led. The magistrate assigned to my case is the Director of Annual Giving. I'll just call him Whitey too. He was more bemused than amused by my letterhead, and informed me that anarchists are forbidden by definition to have either centers or disciplines. No mention was made of punishment, but his letter was full of foreboding: "How I would hate to see you cut yourself off from such good people by dropping from our rolls." Vengeance is mine, saith the Director of Annual Giving under his breath. Before long my mailbox began to fill.

At first I hung tough, but the assault quickly became a blitzkrieg. At a word from Whitey the most sordid elements of the bourgeoisie rained missives on my mailbox: lawyers, bankers, professors, publishers, brokers, politicians, bureaucrats, salesmen, clergymen, touts, shills, pimps of all sorts. Even women. My "Unleash the Fury of Women as a Revolutionary Force' T-shirt could not protect me. And soon I received a newsletter from my fraternity. Have these people no shame?

In desperation, I pled for mercy. I wasn't really an anarchist, I confessed, just a peaceloving communist, a lot like good old Gorby, really. I promised Whitey I would never again try to get my name removed from a respectable mailing list, and would start attending the church of his choice, so long as it wasn't Episcopal.

But Whitey was unmoved. People like him are paid a lot to be unmoved. He riposted at once with The Big One, his intercontinental ballistic brochure, eight pages of cheerful gloss announcing that for scarcely more than the annual income of a Harlem family, I could take the "Journey of the Czars," a one-week cruise down the Volga on the M.S. Alexander Pushkin, "built specially for these unique cruises." Let's hear it for perestroika!

In fact, I had anticipated his cruise missile, and spent days hardening my institute with discarded crack capsules, the most colorful and widely-available of the local building materials. What I wasn't prepared for, what I couldn't possibly have hardened myself for, was the cruise's "Cultural Enrichment Lecturer." Professor Doctor Whitey of Dartmouth, specialist in Soviet Geography and Remote Sensing, and formerly with the CIA's Office of Imagery Analysis. Any survivor of a modern concentration camp can tell you what "cultural enrichment" and "imagery analysis" mean.

Confronted with a weapon of such desperate caliber, my bravado collapsed completely. I am utterly bested, and have surrendered to Whitey without condition. Unfortunately, the strange war I blundered into seems not to permit surrender in the usual sense. The only reparation I can make is to accept my junk mail without protest, in effect continuing the hostilities indefinitely. George Orwell never thought of this possibility, I am sure. Move over George, and make room for Whitey. And Whitey, keep those cards and letters coming.