EVANSTON — After Russian President Vladmir Putin and Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad jointly donated $1.5 Billion to the Medill School of Journalism, Dean Brad Hamm announced that the school had immediately renamed itself the Putin-Assad School of Journalism.

“It only makes sense to rename our school to honor those who have done so much to finance our purchasing of better chairs and projectors for our lecture rooms,” said Hamm as he lit a cigar loaded with several one hundred dollar bills.

The donation was announced last week, with much of it going to finance new projects to examine “collaborative, constructive, and mutually beneficial relationships between governments and journalistic enterprises.”

Student reaction to the renaming was mixed. “I have a lot of problems with the renaming,” said Gordon Enlai, a junior in the Putin-Assad School of Journalism. “It’s going to take forever for Putin-Assad to build up the reputation that we had at Medill. And this whole PR thing might mess up my internship opportunities.”

Susie Mankiller, a sophomore in Putin-Assad, said, “Maybe this will help people distinguish between us and the Northeastern University School of Journalism.”

Faculty in other schools criticized the decision. “Even disregarding the name, it’s entirely reprehensible for Putin-Assad to have taken blood money from such horrible and bigoted men,” said Professor Lucille Kerr of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. “It’s a disgrace to the moral principles John Evans had in mind when he founded this university, and to the journalistic principles of men like Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.”