EMP61 Invades The Kellogg School

Evanston, IL: In December 2003, the world’s top business school invited a class of seventy-four newly-admitted students to the James Allen Center for a weekend of orientation for the 61st Kellogg Executive Master’s Program. With the enthusiasm of Dr. Jekyll seeking to rid the world of avarice through science, Kellogg faculty and administration laid a foundation upon which great leaders would be built over the next two years. Little did they realize the terror they would unleash on the Evanston community by accepting this particular group of students into Kellogg – students who would become known, notoriously and ominously, as EMP61.
Immediately upon arriving at the Allen Center, EMP61ers demanded rooms with lake views, gourmet meals, bottomless cups of coffee and soft drinks, the latest in wireless computing, nicely-appointed guest rooms, access to gilded conference halls and study rooms equipped with luxury chairs, lectures from world-class professors, and more. Clearly, many of these so-called executives should have attended charm school before attempting business school. “Next thing you know, they’ll want M&Ms with all the brown ones picked out, or muffins without the bottoms”, exclaimed one Kellogg staffer, who refused to give her name.

Amazingly, Kellogg granted every EMP61 request, as well as a few not requested. Response from students at other top business schools was swift. Executive MBA students at Wharton and the University of Chicago expressed frustration at what they saw as Kellogg students’ unfair amenities advantage. A clearly annoyed Harvard MBA student reportedly complained, “Just because they’re smarter than us doesn’t mean they should get a better education!” Stanford, MIT, and Duke MBA graduates, perhaps swayed by their Kellogg-educated bosses, admitted regret for choosing the wrong business school.

Despite initial safety concerns related to the dispositions of EMP61 students and, of course, to the presence of a wanna-be rock star, no students or staff were injured during the orientation melee. Campus and Evanston police and their trusty billy clubs are credited with retaining order.

(December 12, 2003)

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