Rusty Saber: Universities offer ultimate tenure to their alumni

I read about it in that other business journal, you know, the Wall Street Business Journal. It was about a business venture involving American universities. I spent most of my adult life either attending universities or teaching at them.

Until now, I had not heard of this business scheme. Always on the lookout for new sources of income, some universities are selling campus burial plots to alumni. Universities make every effort to get graduates to return to campus for homecoming, but this is a homecoming that never ends: Alumni check in, but they never check out.

Of the institutions mentioned in the article, most offer only "columbariums," the name for memorials where ashes are stored in urns after cremation. Individual spots for placement of one or more urns are called "niches." The University of Virginia charges $1,800 per niche; each holds four urns. The university has 180 niches; only 50 remain. Please note that I have refrained from saying alumni are dying to buy niches oops, I just did.

Richmond University, also in Virginia, has a brand new columbarium with a charge of $3,000 per niche with two urns per niche. A total of 2,970 niches are available; Richmond grads have plenty of time to reserve a niche, only 20 have been spoken for. However, university officials believe there is a lot of money to be made.

Some institutions cater to the "put me in a casket and bury me six feet deep in campus soil" crowd. Mount Saint Mary's College in Maryland charges $500 to $2,000 per burial plot. I assume the more expensive plots are reserved for the really big-spending alumni who are buried overlooking the football stadium.

Bucknell University in Pennsylvania charges a flat $950 per burial plot. Of 20,000 available, only 3,500 remain.

I'm aware that universities depend heavily on alumni for financial support, but I had no idea it extended quite this far.

A lot of students claim their professors' lectures bore them to death, but I never considered the institution might offer to sell burial plots to boredom victims.

Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but I have one: The burial industry should stay out of the business of granting university degrees and universities should stay out of the burial business.

Who says the Rusty Saber isn't a business column? Here is a second business-oriented story. If ever a story was tailor-made for Rusty Saber comment, this is it.

A quadriplegic has filed a lawsuit against a business establishment, alleging a lack of handicapped access in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

What is the big deal about this story? It's the outfit being sued that makes it what it is. The place of business is the Wildside Adult Sports Cabaret, West Palm Beach, Fla. If it sounds like a strip club, that's because it is. The first legal complaint is that the room where strippers give lap dances to individual patrons is not wheelchair-accessible.

Please understand, I'm not making any of this up. A short flight of stairs leads into the lap-dancing room where dancers well, dance in patron's laps. The room is, therefore, not wheelchair accessible. This means lap dancers must dance in the lap of the wheelchair-bound patron in the hall, which, according to his lawyer, doesn't afford him the same privacy as the other patrons.

A civil liberties issue if I ever heard one. A separate legal claim concerns the height of the counter where the dancers (not the lap variety) perform. The counter is so high that he can't see the dancers as well as other patrons. Compounding the situation, the height of the counter makes it difficult for the plaintiff to place a drink glass on it.

It sounds to me as though the strip club and the wheelchair-bound patron need each other. Maybe they can reach a settlement. Build a wheelchair ramp leading into the lap dancing room and an upraised platform at the counter. I really I doubt that the lawmakers who passed the Americans With Disabilities Act did so in order to put a stripper in the lap of every American man. But what do I know?