The Harvard Hiatus: Charity Auction Dinner

An annual tradition of the first year class of HBS students is that each section of 90 students hosts a lavish Charity Auction, to raise money for causes close to the hearts of our classmates. After a series of presentations from our section-mates, we decided upon a few charities to support, including: ALS (a student in our class was diagnosed with it in the first week of school and though completely fit and able on the first day of class...has suffered a shocking degeneration in the past year, and is wheelchair-bound now and can barely talk), a fund for promoting education on Native reserves that a section-mate worked on before HBS, and the degenerative disease unit at the Harvard teaching Hospitals.

Students donate to the auction, and many had a number of interesting things to offer. One of my classmates is the daughter of Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of New York) so she donated court-side seats to see the Knicks, many students donated time at their parents vacation homes in exotic locations, as well as more modest items like a dinner for six, a series of rides on-demand to the airport, bottles of wine etc.

Interestingly, our favourite professors also donate to the auction. Our negotiations prof. was the Chief Operatin Officer of the New England Patriots, so he offerred the chance to attend a game with him, with the implicit offer of meeting the players, the owners and other important folks around the organization.

Many profs offer dinners and wine tastings at their homes. One professor who offerred this was our Finance 2 professor Stuart Gilson...unanimously regarded as the best professor we've ever had. He's a Canadian guy from Winnipeg, so he picked on me regularly in class, ostensibly (I found out later) to ensure that the Canadian kid was getting the most out of his "Haaahhvaaad" education. I sort of appreciated it at the time, but my appreciation is growing with time.

Anyway, I made sure I won his wine-tasting/dinner offer. It was by far the highest priced item of the night, but with my coalition of 5 other bidders, we managed to come up with enough cash. Luckily (and as predicted) it was totally worth it. Stuart is one of the funniest people at HBS, as is his wife Susan (from Nova Scotia), and after a tremendous night we decided we need to make a tradition out of the dinner...perhaps once a year. I'm all for it.

Interesting details: He's got a cellar of thousands of bottles, and a commercial-quality kitchen. Our tasting was entirely of Bordeaux wines (with the exception of 2 bottles of champange as walked in--just to get things started), reds and whites.

We had a 5 course gourmet meal with 2 wines to taste with each. Stuart kept the bottles wrapped in brown paper during the tasting, then solicited our opinions on each, before revealing that one was often a $40 bottle, while the other was a 1975 classic vintage (of undisclosed cost) and contrasted what he feels to be the pro's and con's of each. Educational as well as shocking.

Happily for me, the differences between the egregiously expensive bottles and the more moderately priced ones was present, but sufficiently subtle for me to continue "sufferring" through the lower end of the range going forward. (Unless someone else--Like BCG--is paying, of course.)

Professor Gilson (arms extended) with his wife and adoring students