Court Tells C.U. to Release GMO Data

By wpengine | November 15, 2002

The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court, the state’s second highest court, ruled last week that Cornell must turn over documents pertaining to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at the Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park in Geneva, NY.

“Cornell is conducting itself in a totally shameful manner and everyone who studies or works at Cornell should be concerned that the atmosphere of the University is polluted,” said Jeremy Alderson, who launched the lawsuit against Cornell.

At stake is a question of the public vs. private status of Cornell’s contract colleges under the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

“With Cornell, you are kind of in a weird area,” said Dianne Campbell J.D. ’97, Alderson’s attorney.

Under state law, public agencies are required to turn over documents unless specifically excluded from coverage and Cornell’s state-backed organizations are therefore public agencies, according to Campbell.

The Cornell Ag and Food Tech Park, which is still in its planning stage, has received support from the state of New York. However, the University contends that the park is under the direction of a private institution.

Alderson and Campbell maintain that the statutory colleges and other programs that receive money from the State University of New York (SUNY) should be covered by the act.

The principle at stake matters more than the individual details of this case, according to Henrik N. Dullea ’61, vice president for University relations.

In Stoll v. SUNY College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, said that for the purposes of the FOIL, a determination must be made in each case whether the information requested was within the public or private domains of the University. If the current order remains intact, it could unleash further FOIL requests. However, whether or not the order forcing the University to release the documents will depend upon whether Cornell appeals the case and on the decision of the Court of Appeals to reverse or uphold the order.

For example, Dullea said, schools in the SUNY system are required to make professorial and staff salaries available, something that is generally sensitive.

“Our faculty and staff in the contract colleges are employees of Cornell University,” Dullea said. “They are not state employees.”

“The law is not totally black and white,” Dullea said. “You can find that Cornell is public pursuant to one statute but not necessarily to another.”

“In a democracy, it’s important that people have access to government procedures, documents and policies,” Campbell said, adding that government should not be allowed to pass along its information to a private institution to escape the FOIL.

Alderson, host of “The Nobody Show” and an advocate for the homeless, became concerned about GMOs when he heard that the Geneva Ag and Food Tech Park would house companies that might do GMO research.

“We, the people who live in the Finger Lakes region, are taking whatever risks there are in genetically modified organisms,” Alderson said.

Alderson contends that the long-term consequences of GMOs are potentially hazardous for the environment and for human health.

“As the rich become more powerful and arrogant, the people lose the right to know what it is they’re eating, and even what it is that’s growing right next to them,” he said.

Alderson filed FOIL requests for information on field tests using GMO crops at the park, risk assessments of GMOs, potential tenants of the Ag and Food Tech Park, and other financial statements, funding sources and compliance records related to the park.

“We offered to provide much of the material requested voluntarily,” Dullea said. Alderson said that the University’s offer was insubstantial.

Campbell’s law firm, Lo Pinto, Schlather, Solomon and Salk, took Alderson’s case without charge.

“It’s costing them money because they think it’s an important thing to do,” Campbell said.

Archived article by Peter Norlander

MCAT Changes Mean Test Takers Cannot Hold Scores

By wpengine November 18, 2002

Students taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) will not be able to withhold their scores from medical schools starting April 2003. The Association of American Medical Colleges’ (AAMC) Nov. 8 announcement will mean that students will not be able to submit their best score to the medical schools to which they apply, but will have to submit all of their MCAT scores. This new policy does not include 1991 to 2002 scores. Favor The AAMC consulted medical schools and other testing programs and most parties seemed in favor of the change, according to Ellen Julian, assistant vice president and director of the MCAT. Julian said that the main reason for the change was to discourage students from taking the test more than once. “The intent is that they don’t want the students to take the test for practice,” said Albert Chen, executive director of Kaplan Test Prep. Julian estimated that in one year, one-third of students take more than one MCAT. In many cases, students pick their best score out of all of their test results and send that score alone to medical school admissions officers. Consensus “Students should be ready and not take the MCAT if they aren’t” ready, Chen said. After Julian spoke to many medical school officials, she said most admission directors “wholeheartedly approve” of the changes. One supporter of the score option change is Dr. Charles Bardes, associate dean of admissions for Cornell’s Weill Medical College. “I think that the change will benefit both applicants and the schools. Withholding an MCAT score could be interpreted as hiding unfavorable information, so that full disclosure makes an application more candid and forthright,” Bardes stated in an e-mail. Chen said that he does not expect average test scores to change. Rather, he said that scores will probably increase because “only legitimate students are willing to take it.” “I don’t think that the policy changes will affect scores significantly. It could happen that if students do not take the MCAT without preparing, the average score will be a little higher,” Bardes stated. According to Chen, taking one test will simplify the admissions process for both schools and students. The change will decrease students’ anxiety over taking the MCAT multiple times. The AAMC urges medical schools to place more emphasis on a student’s entire score history rather than MCAT test results. “MCAT scores are only one consideration in medical school admissions and not the most important consideration by any means. We will not change our evaluation methods as a result of the MCAT change,” Bardes stated. According to Chen, students could opt for other options such as taking practice tests through test preparation agencies. He said that by doing this, students will only have to take the MCAT “once and for real.” “Students will take it in stride. Everybody wants to do as well as they can already. It’s not our intention to increase pressure on our exams,” Julian said. The AAMC also announced other minor changes to the test. Questions about alkenes, phenols and benzenes from the Organic Chemistry portion of the exam have been removed. According to Chen, many of these content changes started last year. Kaplan spent approximately $4.5 million since last year to update its testing services. In addition, the cost of MCAT registration will increase from $180 to $185, although extra phone charges and early score report fees will be waived. “We have saved many changes up over a long period of time,” Chen said. She added that future changes will now be announced immediately. The new changes will not effect biological and environmental engineering student Rachel Ross ’03. However, she said, these new changes might hurt students’ chances to get into medical school. The MCAT “is an endurance test more than an intelligence test. It keeps students honest, but will hurt people who would otherwise take it again,” Ross said. She added that the new changes would not add pressure to students, saying that, “pressure is sky-high as it is.” Daria Homenko ’04 said that the policy would reduce the hassle of sending scores herself. She is not worried about the implications of taking only one test. “Talking to people who have applied, I think if you end up taking it twice and improve your score, [medical schools] wouldn’t mind,” Homenko said. “There are so many other things that the MCAT is not the only thing they look at.”Archived article by Brian Tsao
Spotlight on: Alice Fulton MFA '82

By wpengine November 18, 2002

Prof. Alice Fulton MFA ’82 is helping to bring prestige and popularity to the University’s English department. The poet’s most recent book, Felt, has been awarded the 2002 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry by the Library of Congress. This biennial prize awards the recipient $10,000 and is given on behalf of the nation to the most preeminent book of poetry published in the preceding two years. Because she “had no idea the book had been nominated,” Fulton was surprised that she won the Bobbitt Prize. Yet, her first thoughts after finding out that she won were memories of her earlier days at Cornell. “The first thing I thought was that Archie Ammons had won this prize, and that made it more meaningful to me,” said Fulton. Ammons was one of Fulton’s most beloved English professors at Cornell and Fulton’s office in Goldwin Smith Hall is the same one from which he used to work. Ammons died in 2001. From her Cornell office, Fulton realizes that a book of poetry will not necessarily become widely popular. “Poetry is never a bestseller, but it can have a life anyway” without popular culture’s fanfare, Fulton said. The impact of a book of poetry is through the audience it does reach, she added. According to Fulton, just as the “Butterfly Effect” demonstrates how the effect of a butterfly waving its wings in New York could become a monsoon in the Pacific under the right circumstances, so her work could be profoundly effective if it reaches the mind of one person who becomes empowered and fights for a greater cause. The receipt of this award and others like it provides Fulton — and authors of poetry in general — with the opportunity to reach a wider audience. Felt was chosen by The Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 2001 and as a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry. In her work, Fulton expresses her own concern to better express her passion. “I try to find what matters to me before writing,” she said. Her deepest issues are cruelty, suffering and justice. “I want things to be fair. I want the world to be just, though I know it never will be. We can fight to make it more just than it would have been had we not raised our voices,” she said. Fulton extends her view of expression beyond the realm of poetry. “I think writing is important. All writing is testimony. It’s not just self-expression,” she said. Through the expression and receipt of writing, Fulton believes in the profound interconnection between all humans. In Felt, Fulton emphasized this interconnectedness by appealing to the common experience of human emotion. “For many years, I thought that to focus on feeling would be too manipulative. But while writing this book, I decided to think about emotion and make it part of my subject,” Fulton said. The title itself also played a key part in Fulton’s goal. Not only is “felt” the past tense of “feel,” Fulton said that, “Felt is made by twisting fibers together. This became a metaphor for the interconnectedness of humans, animals and planet.” Readers often struggle with emotions that exist between two feelings, but for which there exists no one word. The beauty of poetry is that it can enable people to feel emotions there is no word for. “Poetry is very much about how a thing is said,” Fulton said. In poems such as “About Music for Bone and Membrane Instrument,” Fulton writes about an almost ever-present network of connection between words, meanings and life. In this poem, she describes the metamorphosis of a paper fan into a celebrity devotee — a human fan. She constantly plays on the qualities of both as one blends into, molds and becomes the other. “Creating the inner life of a fan wasn’t too much of a stretch because I’m a fan myself,” she said. Lofty goals aside, Fulton remains a grounded individual and poet. She believes she has her mother to thank for it. “My mother has a way of telling me to get more real and stop talking like a college professor. I wanted her diction and language and advice to be part of a poem too — so that alongside high reverence, the sublime, is common sense,” she said. Fulton reminds herself of the need for humor in poetry, just as it is needed in everyday life. “I also try to laugh at myself because I’m absurd. We all are. You have to laugh at yourself because otherwise, well, you’d be an ass,” she said. Fulton’s ability to encompass feeling, connection, sublime and common in her work is an accomplishment praised by her colleagues. “This commitment to fertile interactions among and across fields has made Prof. Fulton a special resource for faculty and students in English, as we try to imagine new conjunctions between creative and critical work,” said Prof. Laura Brown, chair of the English department. To emphasize Fulton’s cross-disciplinary perspective, Brown said that Fulton is currently teaching a course on “Science and Poetry” and has also studied and written about feminist theory, environmental science, Emily Dickinson and the little-known seventeenth century poet Margaret Cavendish. Fulton hopes that the prize, which she will formally receive on Dec. 5, will remind the community of the importance of English and the arts. “It’s largely up to the universities to keep the arts alive. Yet, at the moment, universities are much more interested in funding the sciences,” Fulton said. Still Cornell does take pride in the work of artists like Fulton. “We are proud of her accomplishments, and we are especially excited by the possibilities she provides for us as a model of the creative intellectual,” Brown said. Fulton’s reflection on Felt demonstrates her own opinion of what is important in the making of a creative piece. “I hope it’s a strange book. Good strange,” she said with a smile. Archived article by Liz Goulding