A 23-Year-Old Kappa Sig Alum Briefly Became Second In Command At The Office Of National Drug Control Policy

Doctor Franzia8 years ago

Hey you.

Yes, you. The guy who’s sitting there on that gross old couch on the back porch of your live out wondering if it’s possible to make beer out of marijuana. You want a job in the White House?

Of course you do. For a straight shooter like you, being basically in charge of a multibillion dollar drug enforcement program before you’re legally dropped from your parents’ health insurance is the only career move that fits the shape of your ambition.

You could be like former St. John’s University Kappa Sigma brother Taylor Weyeneth, who scored deputy chief of staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the ripe young age of 23. Check this guy out.

From The Washington Post:

In May 2016, Taylor Weyeneth was an undergraduate at St. John’s University in New York, a legal studies student and fraternity member who organized a golf tournament and other events to raise money for veterans and their families.

Less than a year later, at 23, Weyeneth, was a political appointee and rising star at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the White House office responsible for coordinating the federal government’s multibillion dollar anti-drug initiatives and supporting President Trump’s efforts to curb the opioid epidemic. Weyeneth would soon become deputy chief of staff.

His brief biography offers few clues that he would so quickly assume a leading role in the drug policy office, a job recently occupied by a lawyer and a veteran government official. Weyeneth’s only professional experience after college and before becoming an appointee was working on Trump’s presidential campaign.

Expanding into Taylor’s biography is a hilarious minetrain ride down a rabbit hole that just gets better with every detail.

First of all, one of the key pieces of job experience Taylor used on the resume that eventually got him hired to the position was his management of the Rho Beta Invitational, a charity golf tournament he organized through Kappa Sig at St. John’s. That’s perfect, because 90% of my resume is taking credit for philanthropies I barely even helped with. If I was sober enough to be there, I deserve to put “Executive Managing Director” on the old CV. It’s a done deal. Besides, anyone who’s ever put on a fraternity golf tournament knows that the skills involved with managing that kind of an event and leading the nation’s drug enforcement policy are surprisingly transferable.

Taylor’s background gets even weirder: he grew up working in his family’s chia seed factory (some sort of Herbalife nutrient bullshit kind of thing), becoming “Director of Production” by the time he was running track and field in high school. The factory was eventually shut down when it was discovered they were secretly processing illegal steroids from China. Also, the guy’s step-father (who was running the steroid scheme) is cousins with Alec Baldwin. Baldwin wrote a leniency letter to the judge in Taylor’s step-father’s case. Crazy.

After college, Taylor went to go work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and then bounced around in the administration before winding up in the role that inspired this article (you can read more about Weyeneth’s career path here. Before being taken down, Weyeneth’s LinkedIn page that the news media ravaged to find content for their articles this past weekend was filled with awe-inspiring pictures of him shaking The Donald’s hand, wearing suits, and lounging around the nation’s highest halls of power. Not too bad for a freshly graduated fraternity man.

You may be wondering how you can slide into Trump’s DMs and up the bureaucratic totem pole. Well, Trump has been probably the slowest president in recent memory to staff the vast expanse of appointed positions and executive agencies that keep the government rumbling along. Just like being the last guy without an intense stomachache heading into the basement after a wine-tasting function with Delta Gamma, sometimes a position is open and someone needs to fill it. Doesn’t matter who. Taylor was exactly that man. Instead of being dragged off into a corner by a ravenous senior DG running on about $15 of Charles Shaw and a ticking biological clock, Taylor was jumped by the hot mess of opportunity, heeding the siren call of public service.

Unfortunately for Taylor, the reality of courting the specter of governmental accountability and the fickle United States public sobers you up faster than that aforementioned DG throwing up in your mouth. The media found out about Taylor’s lack of qualifications and splashed it all over the internet where you’re reading about it at this very moment. Faced with the inescapable wall of millions of new Google listings featuring his name, Taylor agreed to step down from a position the world decided he wasn’t qualified for.

To be fair, he wasn’t the kind of person he probably should have been on paper. Taylor might not have actually gotten a master’s degree like his resume suggests or showed up to work at his last job consistently enough to “remain an employee,” but he did have a couple things that nobody else in his position ever had: balls, gumption, and a fraternity background fresh enough to still smell the hops and illicit substances.

People are always yelling about getting “new/fresh voices” into places of influence. In another world, Taylor might have been the exact type of person you would want informing the national drug policy. A guy who could tell the ancient, wrinkled law enforcement hawks to chill out and ease off a little. Of course, since most of Taylor’s job at the ONDCP would have been dealing with the much more pressing and deadly serious issue of the opioid epidemic, maybe you’d rather have someone that knew what the hell they were doing rather than a guy who just happened to be hanging around.

Good luck with your future endeavors, Taylor. Blaze on, you glorious champion of resume manipulation..

Image via Jomar Thomas/Unsplash.com