Chicago Shady Dealer

DC & NYC to Restrict Immigration of Public Policy Majors

By Nico Aldape
Dec. 5, 2018

“Y’all young, broke twenty-somethings are coming into our town and stealing the jobs from all us older broke twenty-somethings,” said District of Columbia resident Sydney Pulisic. “Fuck all of you.” 

Pulisic added that she has “been here long enough that all the marble statues and museums got old, which took all of 10 days.” 

Pulisic was among many citizens against the influx of University of Chicago Public Policy majors. As Washington, D.C. and New York City each prepare to enact measures specifically targeting them, tensions have run high. 

“It’s like those ex-econ major cop-outs and poli sci people who don’t like theory only come to one of these two cities. It’s a little ridiculous,” continued Pulisic. “D.C. is as controlled by UChi pubpol grads as Seattle is by Booth grads working at Amazon. A Silicon Forest to compliment the Silicon Valley, right?” 

Recent public policy grads and current majors, however, had a different opinion. 

“Telling a pubpol major to avoid D.C. or NYC is like telling an English major to go to Cheyenne, Wyoming,” chimed in third-year Amelia Mond. “It’s not that other cities don’t have political machines (or publishing houses), other cities just have, you know, bigger and better ones.” 

Mond added that she is unsure where the pubpol-as-econ-sellout reputation of the major came from. 

“We’re not all econ sellouts! Some of us try to change things, but then run into the numerous obstacles intentionally in place to stop that change and sell out later,” Mond added. “I mean, I wish the major spent as much time on how to fix broken politics from outside the system as it did on random irrelevant game theory bullshit, but hey, that’s just me. I lowkey hate this major!” 

Mond later emailed the Shady Dealer saying that, despite her objections, she would apply to the Harris School of Public Policy before moving with her girlfriend to the Upper East Side to be a political consultant.