By Eric Lam
News Editor
Like most colleges these days, Ryerson is selling its soul to the lowest bidder — and if you’ve got $25,000 handy you too can get in on the action.
Our school’s Invest in Futures Campaign has been peddling naming rights to megacorporations from IBM to Wal-Mart for everything from bursaries to doorknobs, and organizers have deemed $25,000 is enough to rename a small chunk of Ryerson.
And if you’ve gone to class in the Ted Rogers School of Management or the Toronto Star computer lab (painted Toronto Star blue, no less) inside the Rogers Communications Centre lately, you’ll know all the prime cuts of Ryerson meat are getting snapped up like there’s a sale on.
To make things worse, $25,000 isn’t even that much money, especially if it means Ryerson getting covered in more ads than Nascar.
Lowballing a price tag on Ryerson’s good name just doesn’t say much about this hallowed institution. It screams of desperation, of a university doing anything it can to keep up with the big boys, even if it means Rye High becomes Rye Buy.
Ryerson University, without the “polytechnic,” has spent the last 20 years trying to convince everybody else we’re for real. We are a reputable university, a reputable academic institution, we keep telling ourselves. But with every “brought to you by Canadian Tire” and “Wal-Mart Award,” we inch closer and closer to going to school in Ted Rogers’s neighbourhood.
In the meantime, we might as well open up the rest of the school to a general auction. Rye High’s never going to be worth more than it is now, and who knows when the loonie will drop again. Might as well move while the market’s still hot.
Any of you ever dreamed about seeing your name above the Manchu Wok in the Hub? I know you’re out there. Well, now’s your chance. And last time anybody checked, the rocks on Lake Devo don’t have owners. Shell out a little extra, you may even get to name one of the falling panes of glass on the engineering building (George Vari’s got dibs on the building though).
So Ryerson, please tell me you’ll think about it. It’ll be at least as classy as the average police auction.
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