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There’s a great line in the movie Dazed and Confused, when Matthew McConnau-ghey’s character, much too old to still be hanging out with high school kids, says, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, but they stay the same age.” It’s with that same mix of nostalgia and wonderment that my parents speak of my current professors at Cornell: while the elder Fishmans have long since graduated, their favorite teachers are still lecturing up on The Hill.

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Back in the good ol’ days (circa Y2K), e-privacy was just a right-click away. Digital detritus evaporated in the Trash Can, and troublesome instant messages vanished with a quick stroke of Ctrl + Q (in the orotund AOL voice: Goodbye!). But nowadays, the World Wide Web casts a world wide net, and your computer’s contents are only as private as some tech guy in the Ag Quad’s Computing and Communications Center sees fit.

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The end-early-admission bandwagon is circling the Ivy League. With Harvard conducting, and Princeton playing first trumpet, Cornell is already said to be polishing its piccolo. But as the Cayuga’s Waiters melodiously remind us, “We didn’t go to Harvard” — or, for that matter, Princeton. If we’re looking to walk to the beat of anyone’s drummer, I suggest that we turn instead to a small liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon.

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In his monthly column last week, entitled “Student Diversity and the Campus Climate,” President Skorton wrote that when it comes to diversity, “perception is reality.” All too true, but for those of us who meander through campus each day, the reality we perceive contradicts Skorton’s optimistic take on campus life: there’s a whole lot of polarization, and not much diversity to speak of. Skorton’s article continues in a long tradition of misunderstanding diversity as a function of numbers and figures, rather than as an ideal of mutual understanding.

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Stand at the intersection of College Avenue and Dryden Road — the crossroads of Collegetown’s major artery and its busiest branch — and, in the four surrounding corners, you will find three vacant lots. All along College Ave., the phosphorescent proclamations of “Open for Business” have dimmed out, replaced by block-lettered “For Rent” signs. With its primary focus on on-campus construction, should the University be doing more to halt the rapid retrogression of the so-called gateway to Cornell?

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In his Inaugural Address last week, “Dance,” President David J. Skorton envisioned Cornell as a series of rhythms, choreographed by its many participants. For Skorton, dance was important as a “primary, not a derivative” experience; action, rather than reaction or inaction, was hailed as paramount. Prior to the Inauguration, one of Skorton’s first steps was to divest the University’s interests from Sudan, where genocide has ravaged the Darfur region. But according to one Cornell professor, Skorton — in his first major initiative — is dancing around the issue, rather than confronting it directly.

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When President David Skorton delivers his inaugural address tomorrow — the second such ceremony in less than three years — he will address the student body, faculty and alumni before our 64-member Board of Trustees, a powerful council “vested with ‘supreme control’ over the university,” according to the University bylaws. In preparation for this historic day, we should consider the words of two former Cornell presidents, whose estimations of their own relations to the Board might prove telling in coming years.

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Cornell makes a major push each year to admit a diverse student body, a fact that is constantly trumpeted by its published admissions statistics. Yet a funny thing happens between admissions and arrival on campus: a considerable number of minority students reject the randomly sorted dormitories and opt to live in race-based program houses. In light of Cornell’s support for these houses, I wonder if the University’s policies undermine the spirit of diversity and even run afoul of the Constitution.

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For all the emphasis that’s placed on a fun-filled, academic-free Orientation Week, Cornell students seemed to be doing a lot of theorizing and postulating this past week. The topic at hand? Why we weren’t having a fun-filled Orientation Week. From poor weather, to a “lame” freshman class, to an unfortunate alignment of the planets, explanations for Borientation Week ran the gamut.