Strat Evacuates Prematurely
By Celiot Eohen

International Staff Ride ends with lost luggage, hurt feelings

SAIS Strategic Studies concentrators could be overheard grumbling early this week as they came back to class from a week in Sicily, where they had just completed the annual “Staff Ride.” But this year, their frustration had less to do with returning to their daily doldrums and more to do with the fact that none of their checked luggage, not one piece, had made it back across the pond.

Meanwhile, Professor Eliot Cohen, their captain, sat sullen in the corner of a rented ballroom in Reykjavik, three thousand miles away, waiting for them, any one of them, to walk through the door.
As it turns out, Cohen himself organized the disappearance of the group’s luggage, in what was to have been an elaborate scavenger hunt.

“Yes, I did it,” he told the Observer’s Iceland correspondent. “I had this great plan – all the students’ luggage would disappear, and then they’d see the clues I’d left for them on how to get it back, and they’d follow those clues, each cleverer than the last, and eventually, the clues would lead them here.” Cohen gestured around the room, ablaze with laser light. Six giant projection screens displayed photos of the group’s smiling faces at different spots around Sicily.

“What a team-builder it would have been – a chance for all the students to show off their resourcefulness and skills in strategic thought,” he said, absent-mindedly twirling the swizzle stick in a “strattie,” a cocktail he had specially invented for the party.

But the students, tired and hung-over after six days of non-stop touring followed by long nights of carousing, completely missed the first clue, though it was presented in a most-obvious way.

“There was a clown in the baggage claim back in DC holding a sign reading ‘Hey SAIS-ers, ask me about your luggage,’” Cohen said, his voice rising in frustration. “He had cards that said ‘Take the Tube to the Circus with no lions, no acrobats, and no clowns,’ and plane tickets for each student to London. I mean, Piccadilly Circus! It was such a softball!”

Nobody swung, not even after Cohen told the airline officials, who were in cahoots, to reveal to some of the students that their bags could be found in the UK.

“How the hell did my stuff end up in England?” asked first-year Steven Goode, whose bags were among those teasing Staff Riders in the UK. “We didn’t come anywhere NEAR London on the way back. And what was with that freaking clown?”

When told of Goode’s reaction, Cohen sighed. “I should have tattooed it on their foreheads,” he said, the sumptuous buffet behind him untouched, elaborate ice sculptures on the tables swiftly melting. “Maybe then they would have noticed.”

Other professors were surprised to see the Staff Riders back so early.

“Eliot had this incredible adventure all set up for them – they should be paragliding in the Pyrenees, not sitting here falling asleep in my class,” said fellow Strat professor John McLaughlin, waving at first-year Chris Forster, who had nodded off in the front row.

From Piccadilly Circus, the trail would have led under the Channel by train, through France and Spain, by bicycle through the tulip houses of the Netherlands, and on a high-speed hovercraft chase through the fjords of Norway before ending, finally, in Reykjavik, where massages, baths in hot springs under the northern lights, and the fabulous party awaited the students.

In the end, Cohen made one last desperate attempt to pull the erstwhile Staff Riders back across the Atlantic for the finale, sending their baggage back to them, each set with a ticket and explicit instructions to come to Reykjavik.

“Yeah, like I’m going to Iceland during the middle of the semester. I have TONS of reading to catch up on. I mean, I have to think about my future,” said second-year Jonathan Raviv, whose sentiments were generally echoed by other returning Staff Riders.

Cohen declined to say how much the elaborate theatrics had cost, stating only that outside donors would be angry that their resources had gone to waste.

As service workers began creeping in to clear the room, Cohen sighed and buried his head in his hands. “You try to get these guys to have a little fun… It’s just hard when you put so much of yourself into something and nobody notices.”

Faculty were critical of the students’ reluctance to accept Cohen’s invite. “Our students have the rest of their lives to be squares,” said Francis Fukuyama, head of the International Development program. “When I was a grad student at Harvard, five of us bought motorcycles and skipped out during the middle of the semester. We spent two weeks cruising up and down the coast. Old man Huntington had no idea where any of us had gone – we were working on an article for him and it never did get published. He totally flipped,” he said, referring to his advisor, the renowned scholar and author of The Clash of Civilizations.

“I still get this picture of him running up and down the halls in the Government building, shaking his fists and hollering, ‘Where the hell is that hippie Fukuyama!? FUKUYAMA!!!’”

“I walked into my qualifying exams half-dead, with a black eye and my jacket all torn up, and flipped Huntington the bird. You should have seen the look on his face! But I kicked butt anyway, and he had to pass me. There’s a lesson here: B-minus equals PhD – or MA, baby.”