Premature Retirement of Lecturer Stirs Controversy

By wpengine | November 27, 2002

As a result of new College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) policies, Prof. Robert W. Venables, American Indian studies program, will leave Cornell in June of 2004 three years before his scheduled retirement. For the remainder of his tenure at Cornell, Venables will not be allowed to teach the course Introduction to American Indian Studies, AIS 100, a class he has taught since 1969 at Hunter College, the State University of New York at Oswego and Cornell.

Earlier this semester, Venables sought an appointment within the landscape architecture department so that he could continue to teach in the AIS program. New CALS policy requires program lecturers such as Venables to be affiliated with a department.

Jane Mt. Pleasant, director of AIS, explained that she had been unaware Venables would not continue to teach AIS 100 until October 1, when she received a copy of a letter to Venables from Kathryn Gleason, the chair of the department of landscape architecture.

“I had fully expected that Dr. Venables would be teaching with us until 2004,” she said. “We are dismayed that this is happening to Dr. Venables.”

Mt. Pleasant said she believes that the department of landscape architecture’s decision not to allow Venables to continue teaching AIS 100 will provide an opportunity for a member of the tenure track faculty, as opposed to a lecturer, to teach the class. One of the program’s primary concerns is that it does not have enough faculty support.

“Providing simply lecturers was shortchanging the program because right now we have zero tenure-track faculty lines,” Mt. Pleasant said.

Venables’ students are outraged that university administration is not allowing him to continue to teach his class and is terminating his contract three years before his scheduled retirement.

“It is unbelievable to sit in his class, which is all-encompassing in terms of the facets of life that it touches,” said Sarah Cabel ’03, a student currently enrolled in AIS 100.

Noah Pollock ’03 said he also feels strongly about the issues surrounding Venables and AIS 100. Pollock took the course during his sophomore year.

“He is a one-of-a-kind professor who brings incredible passion to the course,” Pollack said. “It is a real shame that we are going to lose this great professor. It is a great disrespect to cut him off three years before retirement age. This is not how to treat a professor that has moved thousands.”

Venables’ students believe the passion and experience he brings to AIS 100 is insurmountable.

“I took this class first semester of my freshman year,” said Moss Templeton ’03. “It is still the most inspiring class that I have ever taken at Cornell.”

The AIS program will continue to offer AIS 100 and is currently interviewing faculty for the position.

Gleason notified Venables that he would no longer be allowed to teach AIS 100 after he was already in discussions with the department of landscape architecture.

“[The decision] surprised me,” said Venables. “I thought I would get into the department and the course would be double-listed as LA and AIS.” Venables was informed by Mt. Pleasant that he would be unable to teach the class.

Susan Henry, dean of CALS, and Senior Associate Dean Bill Fry informed Venables that his contract would not be up for review. According to Venables, this came as a shock as he assumed his contract would be reviewed and he would be reappointed.

According to Venables, when he arrived at Cornell in 1988, CALS Dean David L. Call told him he could not put him on a tenure-track position because the AIS program does not exist as a department.

“Call told me, because my work was highly valued, I would be here forever,” Venables said.

“This is why faculty needs tenure,” he added. “I’ve been here since 1988 and I’ve done my best. I’ve had a real impact on Indian country and will continue to have an impact, and what I have brought to the university should be valued. And it has been valued by previous administrations.”

“I think this is being driven at the deans’ level by the economic crisis,” Venables said. “At other levels there are major philosophical differences between director of AIS Jane Mt. Pleasant and myself.”

Venables will continue to teach courses in the department of landscape architecture, including LA 140, Symbols of New York, a cultural landscape history of New York.

Archived article by Sarah Workman

Residents Meet to Discuss Southside Development

By wpengine December 2, 2002

On Saturday residents and business people from Ithaca’s Southside neighborhood — the area bounded by Spencer Road, Route 13, State Street and North Geneva Street — attended a summit to share their visions of specific neighborhood improvements. Many attendees were pleased that the meeting had been organized. “I think it’s needed because as cities grow, and this one is growing, there has got to be some planning ahead of it,” said Southside resident Gloria Landes. Residents found this meeting particularly exciting because it solicited the input of Ithaca residents. Members of the Ithaca community and Cornell’s city and regional planning department organized the summit. Attendees were organized into eight groups to discuss major areas of local concern: traffic, park space, local economic development, housing stock and Southside’s community center, youth development, resident diversity and public safety. These groups brainstormed for two hours, coming up with between two and four dozen projects each. Three planning professionals then gave feedback regarding how feasible these plans were. Each group then identified three goals: an immediate project that could be organized using just volunteers, a short-term project that would take two to three years and cost up to $50,000, and finally one long-term project that would cost up to $300,000 and involve hiring full time employees. This scheme was designed to give residents a chance to prioritize their ideas. Some of the ideas that came out of the meeting included developing a neighborhood watch program, creating a neighborhood newsletter, writing a home-ownership handbook and inserting “traffic calming” devices, such as speed bumps in residential areas. The Southside is a particularly diverse neighborhood. “The Southside neighborhood was predominantly black, now there is a significant Latino, Asian and Eastern European community, as well as graduate students and professionals from Cornell University.” said Prof. Ken Reardon, city and regional planning, and a summit organizer. Residents would like to promote bringing these groups together. One of the ways in which they wish to do this is by utilizing the Southside Community Center. Eleanor Roosevelt gathered the initial funds for the Community Center and granted it to “people of color” in Tompkins County. However, the Center needs some more financial and participatory support from the community. “Although it’s no fault of the community, there has been weakening between the center and the community,” Reardon said. Residents also want to improve housing stock by making more renters into homeowners. This would mean assisting these renters with down payments on homes. Aside, from increasing the value of houses, residents believe that making more renters into homeowners will increase the stake they have in the community. Ithaca’s crime prevention program depends heavily on communication between the police and the community. Recently problems of illegal substance abuse have re-surfaced. Residents have also been concerned about trying to mobilize the community’s resources to expand programs offered in schools. Cornell has been instrumental in helping the community realize some of its goals. Its city and regional planning department has made a five-year commitment to help organize and plan for the summit and develop the resulting ideas. Students taking Community Service Fieldwork in the city and regional planning department have functioned as the “arms and legs” of the planners and residents. They have conducted pre-summit meetings among residents, surveyed open spaces, collected and organized a 40-page data book. In the spring 12 of the 30 students in the class intend to continue working on this project. This is the second year of the five-year commitment. Last year, a different group of students helped organize a summit for the Northside community and will work with another community next year. Cornell also intends to lease 75 percent of the space in an eight-story building to be built downtown on the corner of Seneca and Tioga streets. This will provide a stable University presence on the Commons and further connect Cornell to the city. “This reflects an awareness of how complex these problems are and the need for a long-term partnership, from the drawing board to the ground wire,” Reardon said.Archived article by Matthew Vernon
Spotlight On: Campus Memorials

By wpengine December 2, 2002

A simple gray granite bench, situated along Olin Library’s northern walkway, lies low to the ground, hardly noticed by passers-by. The inscription — “In memory of Steven D. Gaynor ’64, 1942-1961” — beckons observers to uncover the mystery of what caused the 19-year-old’s premature death. Dedicating a bench has become a traditional way of remembering young Cornell students who have lost their lives during or soon after their undergraduate years. One of the oldest campus memorials is a stone bench placed on Libe Slope by Prof. Bernhard E. Fernow (for whom Fernow Hall is named) in memory of his daughter Gordon, who died one semester before her graduation in 1902. Most recently, the family of Michelle A. Evans ’01 dedicated a memorial bench in her name on Stimson Hall Plaza, one year after she was killed by a bus while crossing Wait Avenue. University Archivist Elaine D. Engst has wondered why benches are generally used as memorials for students who died during their Cornell years. “I’m not sure quite why a bench is a fitting memorial to a young person,” Engst said. According to Inge T. Reichenbach, vice president for alumni affairs and development, “Memorials are always initiated by family or friends of the deceased.” She explained that is why not everyone who dies has a memorial. “And it is family and friends who decide on the kind of memorial they would like to have,” she added. “Benches, obviously, are very popular.” Their popularity may derive from the relative cost and ease of approval of installing a bench versus some other marker. Reichenbach explained that costs of memorials are paid for by the friends or family of the deceased, “and the gift has to be large enough to cover the initial costs as well as the ongoing care for the memorial.” Each request must also come before the University’s Committee on Memorials and Named Facilities, Reichenbach said. That goes for requests to name a building or any other space, or to erect a memorial. Reichenbach chairs the committee, which also includes two faculty members, the provost or her delegate, the Vice President for Administration or his? Her? delegate and the director of University development. “The persons who would like to establish a memorial provide the committee with the proposed wording and the design. The committee’s job is to make sure that the wording is appropriate for Cornell and the occasion and that the designs are consistent across the University,” Reichenbach said. Her committee meets four times a year but addresses pressing requests via mail, e-mail or phone, she explained. The designs and the inscriptions for the memorial benches vary widely. The Sheldon Memorial Exedra, for example a white marble seat shaped in a semi-circle around a sundial is far more elaborate than Gordon Fernow’s stone block tucked into Libe Slope downhill from Morrill Hall. And the words carved into the bench remembering Lauren Pickard ’90 are far more descriptive than those inscribed on a bench for Gaynor. Fernow’s memorial remembers a robust, athletic young woman who, after a brief stay at the University infirmary, died of septic fever (similar to blood poisoning) on January 3, 1902. She was 21 years old. The inscription on the stone has been beaten so badly by Ithaca weather that the words “Gordon Fernow, KKG [Kappa Kappa Gamma], To all lovers of nature,” are hardly visible. The simple ornamentation and inscription, however, suit her personality. Fernow was an avid lover of the outdoors. At her memorial service, Prof. G.L. Burr remembered “how, in a four-mile lope through the Adirondack woods roads, I found Gordon Fernow my full match. This endurance was both outcome and condition of her boundless love of out-of-doors. True forester’s daughter that she was, no tramp could weary, no roughing daunt her.” The Sheldon Memorial Exedra, in contrast, was placed by Charles Lacy Sheldon in honor of his two sons, Franklin Lacy Sheldon 1892 and Charles Lacy Sheldon, Jr. 1901, M.A. 1902. Franklin died in 1895 and Charles, Jr. followed in 1908. The younger Charles Lacy Sheldon was a member of Psi Upsilon Fraternity and, according to his alumni file in the University Archives of Kroch Library, became the manager of Sheldon Court and owner of the first-story Triangle Book Shop in 1902. Around the sundial is written “As a shadow, such is life.” According to Elaine Engst, University Archivist, the Sheldon Memorial Exedra “was actually restored when Kroch Library was built between 1990 and 1992.” One of the more descriptive inscriptions rests on a stone bench surrounded by rose bushes on Libe Slope, to the left of the subterranean reading room or Cocktail Lounge. Written in memory of Pickard, it reads, “Her joie de vivre heightened the senses of everyone she touched. We embrace her always in our hearts.” Gaynor’s modest bench leaves more to be discovered. Newspaper accounts from December 18, 1961 tell how Gaynor was killed the day before in a car accident when his sports car was hit from behind by a tractor trailer. The driver of the truck had fallen asleep at the wheel at 4 a.m., as Gaynor, a pre-med student majoring in zoology and his friend Hanley M. Horwitz ’64 were driving to Buffalo to visit Horwitz’s parents. Gaynor died instantly of a fractured skull, and Horwitz was treated for facial lacerations and abrasions at Brooks Memorial Hospital in Buffalo. The driver of the tractor trailer, 24-year-old Albert Gardner, was unhurt. “He was charged with reckless driving, fined $100 and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. A charge of criminal negligence is pending investigation by the state police,” the newspaper said. A more visible memorial bench, made of wood and flanked by evergreens, sits behind Day Hall on the path between Sage Chapel and the Campus Store. It reads, “Dedicated to the memory of Clay Johnson, Jeffrey Melvin. Sigma Nu. They live within us.” Johnson ’79 and Melvin ’81 were fraternity brothers who died on March 3, 1979. They were driving back with four other Sigma Nu brothers from a party in Cortland when their car was hit by another vehicle carrying a young couple. The couple’s car “was traveling north on Route 13 when it crossed into the southbound land, colliding broadside with the car full of fraternity brothers, driven by Johnson, which was traveling south,” said the report in the Syracuse Post Standard. The newest bench remembering a young Cornell student was dedicated in 2001, “In loving memory of Michelle A. Evans ’01,” and is located in front of Stimson Hall. The plaque tells of Evans’ aspirations, reading, “February 8, 1979 – March 16, 2000. Devoted premedical student and dedicated biology major. She wanted to make a difference and she did.” Cornell’s first president set the precedent for dedicating benches in scenic locations when he chose the summit of the Libe Slope for his sitting legacy. Andrew Dickson White and his wife would sit for hours behind the University Library, now named Uris Library, enjoying the view of Ithaca’s western hills and Cayuga Lake. They marked their favorite spot behind the University Library with a stone bench in 1892, inscribing it with the words, “To those who shall sit here rejoicing, to those who shall sit here mourning; sympathy and greeting; so have we done in our time.” Archived article by Heather Schroeder