ake a failed business idea, make it more costly to students by making them pay upfront instead of through their tuition dollars, and unleash it again! That’s a sound business plan—or at least Hanover Bucks thinks so.

Granted, one right thing they’re doing is catering the program to rich kids who don’t have enough time to call or e-mail their parents to ask them for money. Who else would want to use this program anyway?

You can tell that Hanover Bucks is definitely catering to the rich kids because it has a “Beg-o-matic” feature on their website to beg for money from your parents, similar to the “poke” feature we all used to poke our friends and crushes on Facebook four years ago.

Really?

Really.

I’m not joking. This is a real business initiative at Dartmouth. Having a currency similar to Disney Dollars, where there is no worthwhile incentive to use it instead of U.S. currency, is just ridiculous.

While the “Beg-o-matic” is amusing, it’s depressing how these developers think rich kids are distant from their parents and treat their parents as just money bags.

Maybe the developers did their research this time and found that rich kids do treat their parents like money bags. But based on how they’re bringing back a failed business plan with few improvements, I doubt it.

On the other hand, if you actually DO use it, feel free to write us at dfp@dartmouth.edu—though we reserve the right to ridicule you.