A house divided

It's one of life's great ironies, like freezer burn or the House Ethics Committee: For whatever reason, there has always been a rivalry between the business school and SPEA, which share a conjoined building on 10th Street.\nAs a SPEA student, I've noticed it has become popular for members of each school to deal low blows to each other, so I'd like to clear up some common misconceptions:\nSPEA stands for "School of Public and Environmental Affairs." It does not stand for any phrase beginning "smoke pot." How would you like it if we attacked the B-school's name? It would be relatively easy, too (Kelley, for example, rhymes with the word "smelly"). Remember, we're trying to be mature about this -- besides, I don't want to make any judgments about personal hygiene.\nIt's become commonplace for one school to mock the other. I know people who refer to crossing the atrium to Kelley as "going over to the dark side." Yes, I also know business majors who think it's fun to go outside, smoke a cigarette or two and throw the butts into the SPEA courtyard. Still, I would like to think this rivalry is not totally serious. \nBusiness majors are not all soulless. In fact, one of my roommates is a business major who, as far as I know, has never tortured puppies or used a child labor force to finish her accounting homework. \nLikewise, SPEA majors are not all pot-smoking, laid-back hippies. The green stuff we grow on the roof of SPEA is perfectly legal, and it makes our building look nice -- that's all. Both SPEA's undergraduate and graduate programs are highly respected nationally, and, for certain programs, its national rankings are actually higher than those of the business school. \nBoth business and SPEA majors go on to do amazing things after they graduate. In fact, after college, alums of the schools find themselves working together in their careers. What people sometimes fail to realize is that business and SPEA are closely linked. \nHere's an example: To cut down on pollution, companies need to increase efficiency. To cut costs, companies also need to increase efficiency. So maybe they hire someone from SPEA, or maybe they hire someone from Kelley. Either way, the ends achieved are the same. Apparently, it's possible to save the whales and widen profit margins all at the same time.\nHonestly, I admire business students. Who else could walk across campus in rain or snow wearing spiky heels or a power suit without even spilling a drop of their lattes? I believe we complement each other perfectly, and we need to suck it up and acknowledge that neither side is purely evil.\nNow that we've straightened all that out, I'd like to suggest that we all join hands and sing kumbaya. \nThen again, maybe that's just the SPEA student in me talking.