Disclaimer: this article was written for the April 1st issue and is a part of The Goofly. This Grizzly issue is satirical.
This week, Federal regulators took over Ursinus College’s endowment, causing the 171st largest bank failure in American history. Ursinus College’s endowment, valued at around $128 million, tanked to a value of about $69 million, losing almost half of its assets in just a 24-hour period. In a press release shortly after the announcement, President Robyn Hannigan said, “You only lose the money when you sell,” but just an hour after her statement, the board of trustees saw the writing on the wall as the accounts continued to tank, and they indeed, sold.
The collapse is owed to a series of Crypto Currency investments gone wrong, including a 20 million dollar investment in the disgraced crypto currency hedge fund, “FTX.” The investment into FTX was spearheaded by former president Brock Blomberg, who said, “Sam Bankman-Fried [FTX’s CEO] seemed like a cool guy when we met in the Bahamas. Plus, he’s got ‘bank’ in his name – how can you blame me for trusting him?”
Students, alumni, staff, and board members alike were shocked to see Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) vans parked outside of Corson Hall. The FDIC personnel were beginning the take-over process, only to find the Business Office in a frenzy of shredding files.
According to reports, the FDIC personnel has now dismissed every single staffer employed by Ursinus’s Business Office, citing a lack of trust, but one employee close to the inner-workings of the office will stay on as a confidential informant in order to provide the FDIC with in-depth details about the college’s financial mismanagement.
The Goofly will keep readers updated when more information is made available as to what this means for current students, but as it stands, there are many, many unanswered questions, leaving the future of Ursinus College up to the feds.