Disruptive Tendencies

Immigration Policy as Scientific Impedance (Redux)

Yesterday, I wrote about how two out of three Americans, awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine this year, were immigrants to this country. Well today, as I perused the Times again, I came across an article on this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics recipients. It turns out that two out of three of the Physics winners are also immigrants. Dr. Kao was born in Shanghai and Dr. Boyle in Canada.

Imagine a scenario today, where a Chinese or Canadian engineer had a job opportunity in the US. Chances are that their prospective employer would attempt to sponsor them for an H1B visa, an employer-sponsored visa for positions requiring advanced degrees. But there is a limited number of these every year, and typically the H1B pool is vastly oversubscribed. So maybe today’s Dr. Kao or Dr. Boyle can’t even enter the country to work.

Or perhaps they get lucky, and get that coveted H1B. Despite the fact that neither their spouse nor their children are able to work under their H4 status, they decide to emigrate anyway. The 6 year clock starts ticking, and unless they get a Green Card during this period, they’ll have to move elsewhere at the end of this period – earlier if they lose their position with their employer sponsor.

Once again, they’re amongst the lucky ones, whose employer agrees to the expense and administrative overhead and begins the employer-sponsored Green Card process. Before the application is actually submitted, the company needs to submit a job description, with a minimum set of qualifications required to do the job, and have this approved by the Department of Labor. Once signed off by this Department, the position needs to be posted internally and advertised externally for a period of 30 days, during which time the employer is required to accept applications for the job.

If, during this phase, an American applies, who meets the minimum level of qualifications, the potential applicant is deemed to be taking a job away from an American and cannot apply for his/her Green Card, meaning that once his H1B 6 year clock runs down, he/she must leave the country.

It’s very easy to imagine tomorrow’s potential Nobel Prize winners being put through this process today. Does anybody believe that employment is zero-sum? That there is a finite number of positions available? Or is it more enlightened to acknowledge that scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are creators of jobs, and that their desire to immigrate to America should be embraced and encouraged.

There’s way too much friction in the system today. Brains abhor friction, and in a flat world, can just as easily be located elsewhere. When the Nobel Prize winners in 2040 are all in China, Russia, India or Korea, it will be too late for America, and it need only to look back a few decades and bemoan its own immigration policies.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

 

Immigration Policy as Scientific Impedance

A headline in today’s New York Times proudly proclaimed, “Three Americans Share Nobel for Work in Cell Biology”. The three winners discovered telomeres, thus solving a longstanding puzzle involving the ends of chromosomes. Apparently the implications of their work extends to cell division in both cancer and aging, which I must say, I’m very pleased about.

The article goes on to describe how two of the recipients were women, and how rare an event this is, with only eight women having won the Nobel Prize for Medicine previously. “Fantastic”, I thought, as science needs more women role models for young women today.

Then the article took a slight turn – it seems that two out of three recipients are immigrants. Dr. Blackburn came to the US in the ‘70’s, because it was “notably attractive as a place to do science, but goes on to suggest that “while America is still a magnet for foreign scientists, one shouldn’t take that for granted.”

Having previously blogged about the implications of an unenlightened immigration policy (“US Immigration Policy & Global Competitiveness”), I read on with interest.

Indeed, the point that was made by Dr. Szostak was that the world was now much more competitive in science, and that “we have to work a little harder to attract people from around the world and make sure they want to stay here.”

But as noted by Dr. Cech, former president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, onerous visa requirements are benefitting European countries especially, as “Even now, there is an implication when foreign scientists apply for visas that they should be distrusted, denied several times, and should have to hire lawyers and jump through a lot of hoops.”

Brains, like bits, abhor friction. It doesn’t matter whether the electrical impulses are synapses firing or semiconductors crunching data, electricity travels the path of least resistance. If US immigration policy makes it too onerous for today’s brilliant young minds to move to the US, these future scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and yes, even Nobel Prize winners, will no longer be able to proudly call themselves “American”.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

Reflections on "Working"

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”, is a question we ask our children. Why do we use the verb “to be”, as if their job is what they are, not what it is that they do.

Or is our job what we are?

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to watch the Trinity Prep high school musical theater class perform “WORKING”, a musical adaptation from the book by Studs Terkel. Watching a group of exceptionally talented students, with a private school education and the future in front of them, play mill workers and firefighters, check-out girls and waitresses, UPS drivers and Wall Street executives was a jarring juxtaposition.

Janine Papin, the head of the theater department and director, summed up the rationale for the selection as follows:

“Each semester, Patrick (Nugent, Musical Director) and I attempt to find a show that meets the needs of the students enrolled. In the case of WORKING, each of the 13 students has his/her time in the spotlight and as part of the ensemble. As they step in and out of different people’s shoes, it shows them a side of life that they have yet to, or may never experience. I believe that exposure to the different sides of life and various socio-economic groups will help these students see things differently. We have all been told that we can’t really understand anyone until we have walked in their shoes. I hope that this show deepens both the actors’ and the audience’s understanding of the human condition.”

She knows her students, and is always striving to teach them, not simply about “acting”, but to make them better citizens of the world. Her students know this, or at least sense it, and are incredibly responsive and loyal. Parents of students also get this, and are profoundly grateful for her commitment to her students. Every one of them is a better person for having worked with Janine and Patrick.

As a father watching the show, one of the scenes was particularly poignant. Mike (sung by Jamie Pittle), a father, speaks to his own son as well as to his relationship with his own father.

“Boy you never stop to think, how fast the years run now they’ve taken you…I remember when you were three and a half, your ma and me would sit there…planning for our kid. I was your hero then. I could do no wrong. As far as you was concerned, I was the best of men…You hadn’t learned, how little time it takes and that Daddies make mistakes.”

“Seems to me that lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad…Lots of funny things come back, I thought I’d forgot, and now they make me sad…He was my hero then. He couldn’t do no wrong, as far as I was concerned, he was the wisest, and the strongest, and the best of men…I hadn’t learned…that Daddies make mistakes.”

Mike then went on to describe his rationale for working, and his dreams for his son:

“…my kid is my imprint, you know what I mean? This is why I work…You know what I want? I want my kid to tell me that he’s not going to be like me…I’m sure the first caveman who went over the hill to see what was on the other side, didn’t go just out of curiosity. He went there because he wanted to get his son out of that cave.”

I would wager that I wasn’t the only man in the theater for whom this song hit close to home.

The kids on stage are being groomed for success. They come from privileged backgrounds, and are candidates for America’s finest schools. Notwithstanding their background, these kids are no strangers to hard work. Academic rigor is de rigueur and scholarships from the best schools are likely. You don’t get to be as talented as these kids by accident. They have had to work at it, and I have a profound respect for their talents. There is nothing to which these kids aren’t able to aspire, but a little wisdom imparted along the way can only help.

 “If I could’ve done, what I could’ve done, I could’ve done big things…With leeway to go far as I could go, I would’ve gone places – to the front of the line, the top of the tier, a long way from here…”

Perhaps as a result of this class, these kids (and the audience) will think differently about the maid, the grocery store clerk, the truck driver, the immigrant laborer, the firefighter, and the mason. If this happens, mission accomplished.

These people work, and like Mike probably work hard, so that their sons and daughters can have a better life than they’ve had. That’s something to which every one of us can relate, and is worthy of our compassion and respect, no matter the work.

Thank you Janine & Patrick.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

High Octane Intellectualism

Coming off an election where “elite” was an insult, “Joe the Plumber” was a hero, Obama was “too articulate” and Sarah Palin was sold as being capable of assuming the Presidency, I was despondent about how dumbed down America appeared to have become. Part of that comes from living in Florida, a southern swing state, where there’s tremendous gravitational pull for the worst of partisan politics, but it seemed to be more pervasive this cycle than in previous elections.

Then, last week, I travelled to Boston to take a 2-day course on “Technology Negotiation” put on by Harvard, MIT and Tufts. Spending 3 days in Cambridge was like a shot of adrenalin right to the brain, and I realized that there is intelligent life out there!

But not just intelligent, people with big brains thinking big thoughts. There are people who are smarter than Spock everywhere you look.

The program itself was excellent, with a top-notch faculty and about 70 attendees from all over the world. Lawrence E. Susskind, Dr. Hal Movius, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld spent the full two days working with us, answering questions and inspiring the group. During lunch on Day 2, several of us began discussing the nature of technology. I brought up a concept that I love by Nicholas Negroponte, who describes the transformation that is occurring as the move from the production of atoms to the production of bits. From “stuff”, to information, content and software. The implications are profound.

As I mentioned Negroponte’s quote, Joel C-G chuckles and says that his brother runs the “MIT Center for Bits and Atoms’ Fab Lab” lab at MIT and starts to describe some of the things they’re working on. Some of the research that is going on reminded me of Ray Kurzweil’s concept of “the singularity”, so I said, “It sounds like the singularity is near”, which is also the title of Kurzweil’s book. Joel chuckled again, and said that he lived two doors down from Ray in Boston.

It was like being brought back to life. I forgot how much I missed intellectual sustenance, and for 48 hours last week, I was able to refill the tank with the highest octane intellectualism that I’ve had the privilege of meeting in a long time.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter at iplicensing.net)

(PS – For anyone interested in learning more about the premise behind “The Singularity is Near”, TED.com has a 20 minute video of Kurzweil speaking about it. Watch it, and then go buy the book!)

All is not rotten in the state of Denmark

With Sarah Palin’s nomination, much that is ugly and contentious about the US today has been brought to center stage. Having gone through the 2004 election in a swing state, I can honestly say that there is nothing more polarizing than grassroots-level politics in this country. Unfortunately, 2008 promises to make 2004 look like a day at the beach.

Following her nomination, the news quickly emerged that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. Others have written about the hypocrisy about elevating her and her mother to heroes for choosing “life”, while these same people tore into Jamie Lynn Spears, despite the fact that she appears to have made the very same mistake and decision, so I won’t go over that ground again. However, rather than avoiding the topic of her pregnancy, this should be front and center in the debate about the failure of the head-in-the-sand approach to sex education and the cost to society of this approach.

There was a line in Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver that struck me at the time and which is worthy of mention. To paraphrase: “We may not agree on a woman’s right to choose, but I’m sure we can agree on the goal of reducing abortions and unwanted teen pregnancies.” His comments demonstrate a respect for an opponent’s view, and a reframing of the issue towards a common goal. The problem is that his opponents also oppose the solution, which is open dialogue and education about things such as contraception. Taking a pragmatic view of sex education rather than attempting to impose one’s own morality would go a long way to achieving both goals articulated by Obama. Although to the Republican base, the horror of sex is too much to bear. Their opposition to a realistic view on teenage sexuality is the cause, teenage pregnancy and abortion is the effect.

An interesting exercise is to take the emotion out of the discussion and simply look at statistics. A recent article in the Times cites a US government report from 2001 that states the US teen birth rate is the highest per capita of any OECD country. Of course, I can hear the Republicans blaming this on the Clinton years leading up to 2000, and kidding themselves that “things have changed” (there’s that Republicans for “change” mantra again), but as we have seen with Bristol Palin, things probably haven’t changed very much.

Not only does the US have the highest incidence of teenage births (52.1 per 1000), it also has the dubious distinction of having the highest incidence of abortions in women under 20 (30.2 per 1000). So fully 8.23% of American teenage girls end up with unplanned pregnancies before turning twenty. Only Hungary comes anywhere near the US, and it is still only about 60% of the US figures.

Are American girls having a disproportionate amount of sex as compared to other countries? Not at all, in fact they fall somewhere down the list with eighty one percent of American women reporting having sex before their 20^th birthdays.

According to the study, the girls in Denmark are the most prolific sexually – fully 90% of Danes have had sex before they turn 20, as have had 88% of Icelanders, 87% of Brits, and 84% of Norwegians and Finns.

But what happens when you look at the Danish numbers? More girls are having sex, yet the incidence of teenage births is 85% lower than the US. And what about abortions? Half.

It seems reasonable to take a position, as Obama did, that both teen births and abortions are undesirable. So while more Danes are having sex, they are smarter at avoiding the unwanted side effects of their decision. How do you get smarter? Education and acceptance. It’s clear that “abstinence only” is a deluded approach that has been proven to be ineffective.

How else does society pay the price for this evangelical approach to “education”?

According to the CIA World Factbook, the US has an incidence of AIDS that is 300% that of Denmark. Nearly a million people are living with HIV/AIDS in this country, while Denmark has five thousand. Sure it’s population is 1/60 that of the US, but its rate of infection is still 70% lower than the US number. Lastly, over 17,000 people have died in this country from HIV/AIDS, while in Denmark fewer than 100 have done so.

When you add all of this up, the cost to US society is staggering. Teenage mothers (and fathers) are forced to make a terrible decision.  They are then forced to live with that choice for the rest of their lives, one way or another. How many life dreams and aspirations die on the vine, as teens drop out of school to raise their children? What about the burden this places on social programs, not to mention the hit our GDP and tax base take, as these kids aren’t qualified for much beyond McJobs? What about the cost to our healthcare system of treating those with HIV/AIDS for decades, and the loss to the economy (not to mention friends and families) of those that have died prematurely because of ignorance and shame.

For the lack of a condom, a life is lost - the life of a fetus, the teenage mother or the AIDS victim.

So while Bristol Palin’s personal situation is indeed unfortunate, her mother’s decision to step out on the world’s largest stage makes it fair game. Indeed, I am sympathetic to Bristol, but what is disappointing is that her mother and her newfound following are so narrow-minded that they can’t even consider that imposing one’s sexual morality on others is fundamentally flawed. Bristol Palin is not a hero, but she is a victim. She’s a victim of her church’s misguided position on sexuality. She’s a victim of her mother’s views on sex education. She’s a victim of her mother’s decision to run and to put her in the spotlight. Her life will never be the same.

Abstinence only is a dangerously naïve and misguided approach that clearly hasn’t worked nationally, just as it didn’t work in the Palin household. Sex education should be a topic of national discussion with a shared objective as outlined in Denver.

Unfortunately Bristol Palin is the poster child for the failure to engage in this dialogue.

That's my .02!

Martin Suter (martin.suter@iplicensing.net) 

What have you done with your cognitive surplus today?

Recently a colleague of mine and I had a fascinating discussion over drinks one night about a concept that Clay Shirky refers to as “cognitive surplus”. He then sent me a link to a speech Clay gave at the Web 2.0 Conference in April of this year, called “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” (video).

I love reading something that really makes you think, and Shirky nails it. Effectively he describes the cyclical anaesthetization and awakening of Western society, and suggests that we’re in the middle of that cycle currently. I can’t speak to the historical accuracy of his description of the pre-Industrial Revolution gin carts helping everyone in London to dull their senses, but I can totally relate to his modern day example: the sitcom. He refers to Desperate Housewives as “a cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking…” I love that line!

Obviously, Shirky is a fan of wikis, and uses Wikipedia as a unit of measure for productivity of the collective against which he compares non-productive activity, most notably the watching of television. He estimates that there’s 100 million hours of collective human thought in “all of Wikipedia, the whole project--every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in.” He doesn’t share his calculations, but he seems like a smart guy, so I’ll take that number at its face.

He then cites statistics on the amount of time spent watching TV per year – 200 billion hours in the US alone, or as he equates it to “two thousand Wikipedia projects a year”. Therein lies his “cognitive surplus”. People sitting on their couches as passive recipients of brain candy, rather than being active producers…Doing nothing as opposed to doing something.

Where we diverge is probably in our views on profiting from this cognitive surplus. While he doesn’t come out and say it, my guess is that he believes that society as a whole will benefit from contributions made from this cognitive surplus and the collective sharing of knowledge. That’s a little too warm and fuzzy for me. I’d take a slightly different view. If we were to look at this through an economic lens, then tapping into this cognitive surplus could grow our GDP at Chinese-like rates!

There is not a shortage of time, there’s a shortage of intellectual activity.

That’s my .02 (with much inspiration from Mr. Shirky)!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter@iplicensing.net)

US Immigration Policy & Global Competitiveness

A line from a poem, “The New Colossus”, by the nineteenth-century American poet Emma Lazarus, appears on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. It ends with Liberty herself speaking:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

 

While this may have sufficed as American immigration policy pre-WWI, when a strong back and a desire to work was all that was necessary to build out the nation’s infrastructure, it doesn’t cut it today. And yet, in many ways, these sentiments continue to be reflected by US immigration policy in the 21^st century.

America is slipping by most meaningful, objective measures: Education, healthcare, productivity, GDP per capita, trade deficits, etc. I was at a private lecture, a couple of years ago, at which Gene Kranz (“Failure is Not An Option”) was the guest speaker. He decried the situation in fairly stark terms by saying that there will not be enough US aerospace engineering graduates to backfill the positions vacated by retiring NASA engineers. How are we going to beat the Chinese to the moon or continue to push the boundaries of exploration with a manned mission to Mars if we can’t fully staff NASA?

The US has many different visa classes. The H1B is an employer-sponsored visa specifically for those positions that require advanced degrees. However, the number of H1Bs available each year is a fraction of the demand, meaning that one’s chances of getting a visa are reduced to a lottery. Companies like Google and Microsoft have been vocal in their view that their ability to fully staff in the US is negatively impacted by the inadequate quota levels of available H1B visas and have gone so far as to open substantial R&D offices in Vancouver, as well as in places like India, China & Russia.

While getting an H1B is a milestone for many professionals, it is limited in terms of time (3 year term, 6 years max), and does not allow for spouses or children to work in the US. Nor is it a path to US citizenship – that path is through a Green Card.

There are essentially two ways to get a coveted Green Card – sponsorship by a family member already resident in the US, or sponsorship by an employer. The family sponsored applicants need not have any advanced skills or education – only a desire to reside in the US and a family member capable of sponsoring them. And while we cling to the belief that it is possible to live the American Dream, the reality is that many of these Green Card holders have neither the education nor the skills necessary to help America improve its competitiveness in a frictionless, flat world.

I speak from personal experience when I say that the path to Green Card for educated professionals is not trivial. Many potential Green Card applicants may also be H1B visa holders, at least the lucky few to have gotten one. The perception continues to be propagated that a Green Card applicant can’t be in the country to fill a position that an American is capable of doing. The first step is for the employer to demonstrate to the Department of Labor that no American meets the minimum qualifications laid out for that position. Not that they are more qualified than the prospective immigrant, simply that they meet the minimum qualifications. This is a very low bar to set and as a result, many highly qualified non-US citizens that want to live, raise their families and pay taxes in the US are not able to do so.

The sad fact is that these jobs are being created elsewhere, as the production of “bits” has very different location requirements than does the production of “atoms”. American leadership in technology and its competitive advantage are evaporating, and what’s unfortunate is that many of the people that could help stop this slide, have been lined up at the door, asking politely to get in.  However, too many are turned away and prevented from doing so.

Immigration needs to be managed, but the pool of potential immigrants is a tremendous resource to be tapped. An enlightened immigration policy would be aligned with a clearly defined set of national priorities. Want to improve competitiveness and GDP? Make it easier for educated professionals to live and work in the country. Let their spouses, many of which are also highly educated, work and contribute as well. And most importantly, so doing will allow their children to be educated, work and stay in the US as well. Professionals are net producers and help to grow the national economy and the tax base not takers.

So continue to let in the tired, poor and huddled masses, but make it easier for those of us that are neither tired, nor poor, but who desire to be productive members of the US economy to stay in the country for more than six years.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter

(martin.suter@iplicensing.net

Should Atlas Shrug?

Yesterday, I started reading Susan Jacoby's new book, "The Age of American Unreason". Many of the statistics she cites have been cited elsewhere, but it was her aggregation of these, and the discussion of the implications, that I have found sobering. This has led me to ponder whether America has any chance of remaining the greatest country in the world, or whether any forward motion is strictly a function of momentum from previous generations' effort, or perhaps through the sheer strength of a very small subset of society. I would wager that to these "Atlases", the US is getting very heavy indeed.

The examples Jacoby uses provide quantitative measures that reinforce what I (we?) see manifested on a daily basis but all too often choose to ignore:

"Nearly two-thirds of Americans want creationism...to be taught alongside evolution in public schools. Fewer than half of Americans-48 percent, accept any form of evolution, even guided by God, and just 26 percent accept Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Fully 42 percent say that all living beings, including humans, have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." (1)

In another section, she points out that, in a 1998 survey by researchers from the University of Texas, "one out of four public school biology teachers believes that humans and dinosaurs inhabited the earth simultaneously." (2)

This can't be a shock to anyone who watched the early Republican debates, where fully 7 out of 11 candidates came out as Christian fundamentalists, falling over each other in their attempts to prove their religiosity exceeded that of their opponents. Not intelligence, not competence or experience, but how strongly they believed that the Bible was the inerrant word of god was their primary qualification for running for President of the United States.

How have we allowed this to happen? How have we become so intellectually neutered so as to allow "political correctness" to supersede intellectual debate and discourse?

In his song, "None of Us Are Free", Solomon Burke sings "If you don't say it's wrong, then that says it's right". The intellectuals of this country have been the silent minority, and as a result, are equally complicit in the sorry state of US society today.

In Atlas Shrugged, the intellectuals of the world went on strike, removing themselves, their capital and their productive capabilities from society and physically relocating to a world of their own. Today, it is not just the exodus of intellectual horsepower, but capital flows and competitive advantage as well that threaten this country. In an information/knowledge based world, how is it possible for the US to be competitive with such a pervasive, systemic abdication of reason? And perhaps more importantly, what are the prospects to pull out of this dive?

As in Atlas Shrugged, the US is being held aloft by a disproportionate few - intellectuals, engineers, entrepreneurs. In a flat world, where ideas, capital and people can move with relatively little friction, it will not be surprising if these few "shrug". Wouldn't you?

That's my .02!

Martin Suter
(martin.suter@iplicensing.net)

(1) "Public Divided on Origins of Life, August 30, 2005, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

(2) George E. Webb, The Evolution Controversy in America (Lexington, KT, 1994), p.254

Incubating Licensing Concepts in Business School

Allen Kupetz, Executive-in-Residence, Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College, is the kind of professor that was exceedingly rare when I was in university. Allen wants his MBA students to gain a deeper appreciation for the “real” business world, and is not shy about bringing in local subject matter experts to share their insights with his class. I’m very fortunate to be Allen’s “go-to” guy on the topic of licensing.

Tomorrow, I have the opportunity to speak with his “Technology Entrepreneurship” class about IP Licensing, both as a catalyst to start a company as well as a means of commercializing early-stage technology. If they’re like me, there’s little chance that they’ll be filing patents on their own inventions, so I’m hopeful that introducing them to sources of IP and describing what it takes to get a deal done will be interesting. My goal for the talk is to expose them to the world of licensing, as a means of harnessing their entrepreneurial aspirations…stuff that you’ll never find in a textbook.

The academic world needs more guys like Allen and fewer textbooks.

That’s my .02!

Martin

(martin.suter@iplicensing.net)

Acadia U: A Cajun's Flashback

For the tens of thousands of students that have walked by or shopped at Cajun’s over the last 20 years, it must certainly seem like it’s just part of the background. Indeed, that it has become a deeply engrained part of the Acadia campus, for so long now, is something in which I, and many others who were involved in its inception, take considerable pride. But perhaps few today know that Cajun’s was conceived by Acadia students, is student owned and operated, has created jobs for hundreds of Acadia students, and has brought in millions of dollars in revenue to help fund the services delivered by the ASU for students.

The Year 3BC (Before Cajun’s)

After having worked fulltime in a sporting goods store in Montreal for 2 years before resuming my education at Acadia, I was determined to figure out an easy way to pay, not only my tuition, books and living costs, but to support a fairly active social life as well. So, in July, I phoned the registrar to find out what the school colours were. After learning they were red and blue, I ordered 72 rugby shirts and 36 lined, nylon jackets with red & white ACADIA across the back, and shipped them down for my arrival. On the first day of Frosh Week, one of the first people I met played on the rugby team and told me that the company they ordered their jerseys from couldn’t deliver. Before I knew it, I had outfitted both the men’s and women’s rugby teams, sold all the jackets and was counting my profits. I quickly ordered more gear, and began promoting myself around to the campus clubs, residences and sports teams. It got so that I was making several runs a week to Nowlan’s Canteen to pick up shipments that had arrived via Acadian Lines. I ended up selling over $40,000 worth of clothing each of my first three years at Acadia (which was real money in those days when tuition was under $4,000), more than covering my social life!

The Year 1BC

During my third year, I lived on Prospect St. with the ASU President, Keith Publicover, who encouraged me to get involved with the ASU. I was still putting myself through school selling clothes out of my room, but began to appreciate the extent to which the ASU was a business with the mandate to provide services to the student body. Outside of the membership dues paid by each student, the only other major source of revenue for the ASU in those days was the AXE. Certainly a lot of my profits ended up there! However, there were rumblings at the time of possibly raising the drinking age in the province, which would have had a huge impact on the ability of the ASU to provide services. And thus began the discussion about how the ASU could diversify its revenue base. I suggested to Keith that if I, as a student working out of an apartment on Prospect, could do tens of thousands of dollars a year in sales, imagine what a store in the SUB could bring in. He agreed, and we took that initial seed to Jeff Redden, then the GM of the ASU.

With a commitment that they would at least consider a business proposal, I began to write the initial Business Plan, with ulterior motives in mind. As I saw it, the ASU would need to have someone work full-time in the summer leading up to the store opening, as well as to manage the store during the year. But as I began to run the numbers, and with no idea what level of revenue was realistic with a storefront, it was difficult to project a profit with a full-time store manager’s salary built-in. So, wanting to get approval for the project, I cut out the manager’s salary during the year, making it an Honorarium position as are the other ASU executive jobs, which cinched it for the ASU. We got the green light in the spring of 1987, I had a summer job, and Cajun’s was about to be born.

Pre-Opening

At this stage, we still lacked a name for the store, but had been given a location, on the upper level of the SUB overlooking its present location. We had about 550 sq ft, not huge, but enough for a real store. We began by laying out the store using masking tape on the floor – the changing rooms here, the counter here, and so on. Then, one night, several of us, including the newly elected ASU President, Heather Sanford, were sitting around (maybe with Keiths in hand)  trying to come up with a name for the store. There was no shortage of ideas, just a shortage of good ideas, when I had a flash and came up with the name “Cajun’s”, which I thought was an excellent tie-in to Acadia and the history of the region. And so, Cajun’s it was.

The lines of clothing were relatively easy to select, as I had relationships with most of the suppliers anyways; Barbarian rugby shirts, Trimark jackets. We selected a local supplier for fleece, Nova Scotia Textiles in Windsor, who made great, high cotton, heavyweight fleece. In fact, they were the main supplier for Roots sweatshirts in the mid-80’s, but were badly hurt by the Free Trade Agreement signed around the same time. We planned to open the doors with about $20,000 worth of inventory on the shelves, with follow-on orders in place for many of the longer lead time articles.

To save money on fixtures, I went to the Zellers store in New Minas where I was able to buy a used cabinet and glass display case in burnt orange for under $100. With a little wood veneer mactac, it looked like a new display case! Added to that were some used, chrome displays, and our big spend was on a slotted wall on which you could hang different kinds of fixtures.

The First Year

We opened the doors on September 1, 1987, with the paint barely dry, but the shelves stocked, having pulled an all-nighter folding clothes, putting them on hangars and getting ready to go.

With only an ad in the Ath, a sign in the SUB, and some posters around campus, we managed to draw a big crowd on opening day. There’s a picture of me in the 1988 yearbook counting all of the cash from our opening day (with a gleam in my eye).

The first year, we had a part-time staff of between 8-10, including Jennifer Bentley, Donna Conrad, Vicki Hermann, Laura Lee MacLean, Rob McColman, Maura Ryan, Stephanie Suter (my sister) and Debbie Tracey (my girlfriend at the time, and my wife for the past 18+ years). It was a great team, and I’d like to think that a job at Cajun’s was fairly coveted as word got out.

While we never set out to be trendsetters, there ended up being an iconic fashion item just before Christmas – the famed “Acadia Crew” sweatshirt. I got the idea for the print after an ASU trip to Boston where I picked up a Harvard Crew sweatshirt. But what we did that was unique at the time, was to print on both sides of the shirt, so people could wear them inside out. Hey, it was the 80’s and people did stuff like that! I order two dozen on a whim, barely getting Craig Kennedy, the new ASU GM, to sign off on the PO. But they flew off the shelves within hours, so we re-stocked again, and again, and again. Who knows? With fashion being a cyclical thing, maybe the Acadia Crew is getting ready for a comeback.

The Business Plan called for a student manager to run the store, and while the first few may have thanked me for the summer jobs, they probably cursed the lack of remuneration during the school year. As my last year wound down at Acadia, I handpicked my successor from amongst my staff, and in April 1988, I officially passed the torch to Laura Lee MacLean. As I walked out of the store that day, I fully appreciated Shakespeare’s line about parting being such sweet sorrow.

Looking Back

It’s ironic to be involved in this celebration this year. One of the fears that I used to be quite open about was that someday; I would walk into Cajun’s anonymously and be asked the dreaded question: “Sir, can I help you find something?” And it happens pretty well every time I return now, but I’ve come to terms with it. And while I will claim to be the original founder of Cajun’s, there is truth in the saying that “Success has many fathers.” Certainly, in the case of Cajun’s, this is the absolutely true.

 So when you walk by the store next time, pause and think about the students who cared passionately about the school, the ASU and its future ability to serve the students. More than that, these students did something. They took that passion and created something of lasting value. Is it a legacy? That may be overstating it, but I know for a fact that there’s a little piece of a lot of great people in that store, and that each of them should be proud of their contributions. I know I am.

Martin Suter, BBA 1988
Original Founder of Cajun’s