I’ve been getting behind lately, but I think a roundup of the last week or so is necessary.

• President Marx sent out the campus-wide email and press statement:

College and university endowments across the country have been significantly affected by market volatility in recent weeks, and Amherst’s is no exception. Even with our relatively strong investment management, the endowment has lost roughly a quarter of its value since June 30. While these recent developments certainly demand our attention, the College has benefited from several years of strong endowment performance and has been prudent with its spending during that time.  This puts the College in a strong condition relative to many of our peers.

I’d like to apologize for some borderline-insensitive comments I made a few weeks ago.  It simply never occurred to me that we could lose $425 million dollars in 4 months (coincidentally, about as much as the new Comprehensive Campaign).  But there’s nothing funny about losing a quarter of our endowment.  That type of loss could seriously affect the abilities of the College to carry out its mission, including doing stuff like apportioning out financial aid.  The economic disaster may seem far away for many Amherst students - it’s not like I have millions of dollars stowed away in a hedge fund - but the reality is that we all have a real stake in the College’s financial situation.

• As a result of the fiscal turmoil, the College will delay the $20 million renovation at the Lord Jeffery Inn until at least June 2009.  It seems to me that this is the right project to move to the back of the list - after all, its renovation doesn’t directly affect students.  What may not be apparent is that the inn will close anyway:

The inn will close because it has stopped taking reservations, and keeping it open “would result in a significant financial operating loss for the college,” said spokeswoman Caroline Jenkins Hanna.

This is kind of an issue.  (1) Employees at the Lord Jeff were already upset with AC for essentially booting them out of a job and alledgedly not helping them find new work and (2) the longer the Inn is closed, the worse it is for the town (taxes, employment, appearance, downtown business, convenience, etc.).  This guy even thinks that it’ll hurt the Town Select Board election chances of our friend Aaron Hayden.  And then there’s the fact that we’re cutting down nearly 200 trees by the Dickinson museum - never a good thing to do in environmentally-friendly Amherst.  Fortunately, President Marx is great with Amherst townfolk.  I’m confident that his leadership will keep the town-gown relations strong even in a trying economic situation.

Happy Halloween.

UPDATE: See?  The College is doing damage control already.  $40,000 sure beats the handful of Snickers and Butterfingers I got for Halloween.