Tin Soldier: Waterloo-gate: Conspiracy Exposed on Campus!

By Kevin Ling
Paranoid Schizophrenic

Earlier this week, reports of the man who caused the collapse of Wall Street have surfaced in the media. The Toronto Star profiled the former University of Waterloo statistician, Dr David Li, and showed how the economic theories which he devised single handedly brought our economy to its current state. While investigating how the economic turmoil has affected the University of Waterloo, the Tin Soldier was contacted by an individual who claims to be close to the heart of a recently uncovered Waterloo scandal. The Tin Soldier has the exclusive story.

Agreeing to speak only upon the condition of anonymity, the informant who wishes to go by the name of Rusty Shackelford met with the Tin Soldier in a secluded parking lot on Ring Road. During the meeting, Shackelford provided the Tin Soldier with classified documents that implicate several key university figures in a conspiracy to destroy the current job market.

In an undated memo between two members of the board of directors, it is stated, "There are too many jobs out there. Our graduate student enrollment is dropping each term. Deal with it." Although some of the paper trail is missing or likely destroyed, Shackelford believes that this memo was written sometime around 1998, just before the dot com bubble burst. At that time, the economy was performing very strongly and it appears that the university wanted to put a plan in action to ensure that the good times would not keep rolling.

Of course, with any such allegations, skepticism and questions are bound to arise. How does the university benefit from a weakened economy? Shackelford says that it is quite simple. When the job market is strong, students finish their bachelor's degree and get jobs right away in the industry. The university then misses out on the money that would be made from the exorbitantly high tuition rates for master's degrees. To increase the school's revenues, it is in their best interest to have students unable to get a job after graduation. Students unable to find jobs are much more likely to consider taking graduate studies to delay their entrance into the workforce. So less jobs increases the amount of graduate students which in turn puts more money into the pocket of the university.

Where does all this money go? Included in the documents leaked to the Tin Soldier are university budgets and revenue statements. The financial records are missing certain key elements, including where the money that is funding the construction of E5 is coming from. However, several tapes of telephone conversation recordings seem to confirm that the construction of the building is being paid mostly by the overinflated graduate program tuition fees. Such fees have been taking a hit in recent years, until the recent decline in the global market.

Through careful analysis of the rest of the tapes, it would seem that the university had an arrangement with Li. Back in 1998, when graduate student enrollment in the faculty of engineering was nearing an all time low for the university, the university commissioned Li, a well known figure in the field of economics, to begin his work. Li was to lower the amount of jobs available for UW graduates in return for a cut of the tuition funds. It is possible that the conspiracy goes even deeper, though. Seventeen minutes worth of audio recordings on the tapes have been scrambled or erased.

The Tin Soldier tried to reach Li for comment, but he was conveniently "out of the country," under the guise of running a business in China. As everyone knows from The Dark Knight, the Chinese will not extradite a national so there is currently no way to hold Li accountable for the destruction of the North American economy.

I only hope that this story makes its way to print and into the hands of the readers before I can be stopped. The truth must be told. I will not be silenced...