John Thain's Beer-Sponsored Canoe Race Scandal
John Thain recently got into a bit of trouble for aiding the collapse of global capitalism. But he survived this scandal from his MIT says, so surely he'll weather this storm. The college thing?
As with most college scandals, it involved a canoe race gone awry.
Thain was, at the time, a big wheel with MIT's Interfraternity Conference, and the IFC had been tasked with selecting 24 students to attend an all-expense-paid trip to LA for a canoe race sponsored by Anheuser-Busch (the '70s!). And there was some sort of scandal because Thain just picked his buddies, or something (it's really unclear, here, these '70s campus and frat politics), and he didn't pick any women MIT students, just presumably hotter girls from Boston College. Scandal!
Thain's habit of taking money he was entrusted with and handing whatever he didn't outright lost to his buddies was apparent even then.