The Wharton Lauder Institute Class of 2007 facebook is out, so we’ve assembled our very own Lauder MBA All-Star Team. (The Lauder program is a 2-year joint MBA/MA that emphasizes linguistic and foreign studies) All the quotes are from student biographies.

Here are the starting 5, with reserves:

Himanshu Bahguna – Center – The “Biceps of Bhopal,” Himanshu "invented a Wall Climbing Robot” for use at sororities and on-site maintenance of chemical and nuclear plants. Now these robots will be put to use on Ben Wallace and Shaq, freeing up the Bahg-man for his patented 60° slam after taking off from 10-feet in front of the foul line. Also chants of ‘Gu-na will be done in perfect synchronization with the “Air-ball” chant.

Jed Brawley – Power Forward – Jed has "visited almost every state and national park" through the travels of his transient circus family. Jed “learned Spanish from his neighbors,” French from a small juniper titmouse, Tuvan throat singing from his colon, and !Kung from a metronome. Jed also rocked out IM sports and various duties at his frat house at UVA, making him the ideal candidate for pushing around dumb jocks in the paint.

Joe El Rady – Point Guard – If Joe can escape the Lebanese Civil War (which he did as a child), certainly he can escape the suffocating defense of Bruce Bowen, which has been likened only to minor secretarian violence amongst warring tribes.

Ernest Hartner – Guard – Ernest is proud of the fact that he’s from “Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city of three rivers and home to more bridges than any other city in the Americas.” I have no idea why that is relevant information in a personal biography, but Ernie will need to forge these connective inroads to his teammates, distributing the rock.

Stephen Tapley – Guard – On Tapley’s Mormon “Go Out and Find Your First Wife Mission,” he found a *Brazilian* wife, which he gratuitously emphasizes in his biography. With this *Brazilian* wife, “Stephen’s attitudes and perceptions of international issues were challenged and enhanced,” primarily through advanced hair-removal techniques and outfits consisting of nothing but dental floss and coconut shells. Stephen also takes time to “mentor young men as a leader in the Boy Scouts of America.” We need more US players who can “handle” South Americans like Manu Ginobli and Francisco Oberto, and "young men" like Lebron, so Tapley gets the starting nod.

Katerina Cai – Secret Weapon – having spent over 6 years at Hewlett Packard, Katerina is fully equipped to “discover” the schemes of opposing teams. Kat is currently working on the rhomboidal offense, which she thinks is at least 180° better than Phil Jackson’s triangle offense.


Wilson S. Li Youn Hing – 6th Man – Although he ranked “first in the national exam of his country,” which is perhaps the most ambiguously awesome (salightly Vayner-esque) thing you can say about yourself, Wilson will have to settle for playing time as the 6th man.


Felix Okobi – Thug – Okobi, who “still found the time to captain his hostel’s table tennis team” while…apparently staying in some hostel, probably won’t dress much. Okobi will be come off the bench solely for intimidation purposes, because that’s what it takes to be dominant in the fierce world of youth hostel table tennis.

U-Tee Cheah – Towel Boy – Cheah worked for Aristos Logic, spun off from Western Digital, where he “recognized the inherent inefficiencies of the then-current methodology and created an entirely new debugging paradigm for the company, allowing bugs to be identified, and fixed orders of magnitude faster than before.” Right. Ok, so Cheah’s basically getting the nod as Towel Boy because of his cool name, and so he can find moisture absorption solutions and floor-to-towel placement strategies that can create a whole new drying paradigm for the MBA, allowing Dihydrogen Monoxide to be removed from surfaces orders of magnitude faster than before.