By wpengine November 7, 2001
The men’s soccer team (5-4-1, 0-3-3 Ivy) won’t have to go far this evening as it travels up I-81 to meet the Syracuse Orangemen (7-7-1, 4-5-1 Big East). The 7 p.m. kickoff at the Soccer Stadium of Lampe Athletics Complex will be the first of four all-important intrastate regional games for the Red. Both teams have a lot to gain with a victory, aside from local bragging rights, an at-large berth to the NCAA tournament is still up for grabs. Cornell currently is ranked 25th in the NCSAA/Addidas national coaches poll and ranked no. 2 in the New York state region. Syracuse is not ranked nationally, but is no. 6 within the region. Head coach Bryan Scales is not a big believer in polls, “The polls are not something that we concern ourselves with.” The Orangemen are winless in their past four games and have lost their last three decisions. It is their longest losing streak since losing the last five games of the 2000 season. In Syracuse’s last game it dropped a 2-1 overtime decision to No. 23 Notre Dame in South Bend, IN on last Saturday. Junior midfielder Darren Ingles scored the lone Syracuse goal during the 81st minute. Senior forward Kirk Johnson who doubles as the team goal scoring leader (12) picked up an assist. For Syracuse, this is the last regular season game and it anxiously awaits to see if it will get a berth to the Big East postseason tournament. They are on the outside looking in right now and are at the mercy of how other conference teams play out the remainder of their conference games. This is not true for the Red. “We are in the driver’s seat right now. We can control our own destiny,” Scales said in reference to his team having the opportunity to run the table against four New York regional teams. If the Red can pull off this feat, it will undoubtedly remain in the no. 2 regional spot and make it hard for the NCAA tournament selection committee to turn it away. Junior team captain and defender Liam Hoban has recently impressed more than just his coach and teammates. For the week of Nov. 5th, Hoban was named to the All-Ivy Honor Roll team for his last two strong performances. He scored on a penalty kick against Dartmouth last Sunday on the road and led the defense against both Dartmouth and Army the game before in a 2-0 shutout in West Point, NY. “Liam [Hoban] has been a leader vocally and by example all season, and he calmly and coolly executed his penalty kick [against Dartmouth],” said Scales. Last year Syracuse stormed on to Berman Field on Oct. 4th and came away with a 3-2 win. Senior back Nick Haigh scored on a header in the 2nd minute. The Orangemen scored the next two goals and took a 2-1 lead into halftime. The Red came out quickly again in the second half as Hague assisted forward Adam Skumawitz ’01 for the equalizer during the 48th minute. Syracuse had the last laugh, but Cornell looks to return the favor in its house tonight. “Syracuse is very dangerous going forward, and our back four, strong all season, will have to deal with these forwards. We are going to have to find a way to create opportunities,” said Scales. On a side note, Cornell assistant coach Kevin Bacher was the winning goalkeeper in last year’s meeting between these two teams. Bacher had 9 saves for Syracuse and had a big role in the win. Scales said about Bacher: “He is going to have some funny emotions, but he is a competitor and is going to be pulling hard for our guys to win.”Archived article by Donald Lee
By wpengine November 7, 2001
Amid political turmoil in the Middle East, Cornell and other universities forge ahead with educational programs in Qatar, weighing multinational interests against the risks of having faculty and staff in the Muslim emirate. Cornell is closely watching Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which first embarked on the rocky desert soil four years ago when it established its arts school for women in Qatar, according to Daniel R. Alonso, dean for the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. VCU President Eugene P. Trani said the university was reconsidering its interests in Qatar after the World Trade Organization hesitated over continuing with its global ministerial conference in the country, which is still planned for Friday through Nov. 13. He offered faculty and staff members the option to leave Qatar and return to VCU without penalty. “I wanted to make sure the faculty felt safe as a first priority,” Trani said. But no one has wanted to leave Qatar, he added. In response to reports that Qatar may be harboring al-Qaeda terrorist cells, VCU has beefed up security around its Shaqab College of Design Arts in Doha, the capital city. Cornell’s Weill Medical College has agreed to establish a branch in Qatar — the American branch of a medical school in a foreign country — with the emir spending $750 million over the next 11 years. Although optimistic about the agreement, Cornell will soon put an emergency evacuation plan into writing, according to Alonso. “We’re applying prudent care,” he said. “Qatar is traditionally a very safe country. It was the kind of place people felt secure without locking their doors. Everything changed on Sept. 11, because the whole world has become potentially dangerous.” Although Cornell does not have any personnel presently living in Qatar, the first representatives from Cornell will move there in early February. The design phase is nearly complete, and construction will begin in January 2002, with completion in summer 2003. Temporary quarters equipped with labs and classrooms will be renovated for the first-year students of the premedical program, which will begin in fall 2002. Medical school classes will commence two years later. Qatar, a tiny oil- and gas-rich country in the Persian Gulf, has a “very stable” government, according to Gregory Sullivan, spokesperson for near eastern affairs at the U.S. Department of State. The current emir of Qatar took power in 1995 after a bloodless coup in which he toppled his father’s rule. The new government has pledged full partnership with the United States in its mission to eradicate terrorism. Qataris have expressed condolences and outrage over the Sept. 11 attacks. “We haven’t seen any public backlash against Americans,” he said. The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) is also considering establishing a business school in Qatar. A 60-person delegation of UNC faculty members and administrators will be visiting Qatar for the next few days to examine the situation, according to Robert Shelton, provost for University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. As with Cornell and VCU, the Qatar Foundation has promised to yield complete control over the academic process but fund the school entirely on Qatari money. UNC is six months into negotiations and expects to make a decision by the end of the year, according to Shelton. The Sept. 11 tragedies have not caused any delays. Americans should be more concerned about safety in the United States than in Qatar, said Paul Petrie, associate dean of VCU’s arts school. “People here don’t have a clear reading of what it’s like over there,” he said. “If anything, we’re going to have trouble prying faculty members back home when some of them end their terms this year.” VCU faculty have the option to remain in Qatar for a maximum of three years, according Petrie, the Qatar college’s founding director, who lived on-site for the first three years. The VCU faculty in Qatar have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to the arts school, which will graduate the first class of students this spring. In a petition presented to the administration, they said: “We urge VCU to maintain its commitment to the college and entrust to us decisions regarding our presence in Qatar. To abandon our mission here would undermine the progress we have made and leave our students with nothing to show for their hard work and trust in our institution.” Archived article by Jennifer Roberts