It took me a while to write this. I just… I haven’t been well recently. Waking up every morning knowing that life as I know it will effectively end in just a few months has got me pretty depressed. As of May 21st, 2014, Capital One will no longer be a part of my Georgetown experience. God, that’s so weird to say. No more Capital One. Wow.
But really, what the fuck happened? Everything seemed totally fine; it didn’t look like there was any serious tension between Georgetown University and Capital One. I mean, I spend practically all of my free time at Capital One and I had no idea that this was coming. My world was deceivingly normal in the weeks leading up to “the announcement.” Devoted employees Sheryl and Chris engaged in the same witty financial banter as usual, the bowl full of butterscotch candies at the teller’s counter was still being refilled, and 30-year fixed rate mortgages remained at the same jaw-droppingly low interest rate of 4.250% that only a bank as virtuous and noble as Capital One is willing to provide. But now that’s all going to end. Gone forever. Jesus Christ, what’s the point anymore? What’s the fucking point?
You know, I wouldn’t have even come to Georgetown if I had thought that this was even remotely possible. When I was looking for colleges to attend, I had one requirement, and one requirement only: I need a Capital One on campus. I should’ve gone to Delgado Community College, I should’ve listened to my gut. Now my home away from home is being destroyed; the walls are closing in on me. To make things worse, David Rubenstein, Georgetown’sVice President of Financial Affairs and Treasurer, has decided to suspend me in a fucked up limbo until April as I wait for the announcement of whatever inferior bank will take over Capital One’s hallowed place on campus. Whatever it is, it can never fill Capital One’s shoes.
I feel as though my heart has been ripped from my chest. I haven’t been so upset since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2013 decision to fine Capital One $3.5 million on trumped up (and almost certainly fabricated) charges of understating auto loan losses during the 2008 financial crisis. Everybody just wants to get my bank down, but no. I won’t let Capital One be your punching bag.
To the socialists of Occupy Wall Street, to the charlatanic SEC, and to the Great Judas known as Georgetown University, you can attempt to mock, slander, fine, and (in the Georgetown’s case) replace Capital One, but know this: Capital One is forever. Capital One’s place in the Leavey Center may be lost, and Georgetown is definitely making the biggest mistake that it has ever made and will ever make, but Capital One remains in the hearts and minds of all that have interacted with it. Don’t get discouraged when you walk past what was once Capital One on your way to Hoya Court and see a shitty nothing bank in its place, because in some small way, it’s still there. Capital One continues to live in the in the first day of spring, in the smile of a child, in the sublimity of the stars, in the warmth of young love, and in the staggering beauty and mystery of life itself. Capital One certainly still lives in me. Does it live in you?