It’s difficult to glean any concrete predictions from the task force reports. I applaud the administration for this surprisingly high level of transparency during this process, but some of the ideas being tossed around in the summaries of the reports unsettled my stomach. In Cornell's effort to rapidly streamline our university, I fear we may lose some of the unique programs that make me so proud to be a Cornellian.

Health care is big money. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that health care represents America’s largest industry, providing roughly 14 million jobs. The Bureau goes on to mention that seven of the 20 fastest growing occupations are health related. Here at Cornell, medical research is a huge deal, producing shiny new buildings like Weill Hall, and attracting top professors from around the country. And our top students have always been lured towards medicine as an attractive, stable, intellectually stimulating career option.

But question: Jobs and investments aside, is this approach to medicine effective? Does it produce a healthy, productive society in the most efficient way possible?

A few weeks ago, I picked up The Sun to see yet another attack on Darwinian evolution. Fellow staff columnist Judah Bellin ’12 poo-pooed those of us who detract from evolution’s detractors. He pointed to massive atrocities committed by ruthless dictators in Darwin’s name. He claimed that biologists’ dogmatic support of a single theory is hypocritical. I rushed to a computer to e-mail Bellin my response.

A few weeks ago, I picked up The Sun to see yet another attack on Darwinian evolution. Fellow staff columnist Judah Bellin ’12 poo-pooed those of us who detract from evolution’s detractors. He pointed to massive atrocities committed by ruthless dictators in Darwin’s name. He claimed that biologists’ dogmatic support of a single theory is hypocritical. I rushed to a computer to e-mail Bellin my response.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Department of German Studies commemorated the occasion by erecting a replica of a wall segment on the Arts Quad, and observant students found their friends wearing shirts with the slogan: “Freedom Without Walls.”

I might be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think the plural “Walls” was chosen by mistake.

“It’s also a political symbol,” said a professor quoted by this paper. “There are other walls separating people in this world. I just want people to reflect on the political divisions.”

The subtext becomes explicit on The Sun’s website, where an anonymous comment complains that the news story does not even mention “Israel’s Apartheid Wall.”

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni released a report grading schools on their ability to satisfy core curriculum requirements. Liberal arts programs in 100 top colleges and universities were all scrutinized to see how well rounded their course requirements seemed. Naturally, Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences did not perform so hot.

I visited this subject last semester, specifically targeting science and math education at Cornell, since outside of a few colleges, it’s horrendously lacking. But the argument easily extends to Cornell’s entire breadth curriculum. But how does it stack up to other peer institutions? This leads to a comparison of Cornell to our downstate cousin, Columbia, the other “CU.”

Freshman year can be rough. Everyone experiences some form of severe discomfort during this first baby step towards adulthood. My big hurdle happened to come pretty early on.

I awoke the third day of Orientation after my first night of debauchery at a frat party. I felt a wonderful mixture of discoordination and comfortable grogginess. College was going to be sweet.

I’d like to talk about the poor emphasis higher education has placed on math and science. Before you write this off as another economics column a la mode Thomas Friedman, hear this: I’m leaving the economy out of this one, and instead I’m going to try and convince you merely that your classic liberal arts education has failed you intellectually. Sound good? No comparing paychecks, no “useful” versus “non-useful” or “hard” versus “easy.” We’re keeping this above the belt and speaking solely of intellectual merit. Alright let’s get started.

Here’s my take on stereotypes: If you were to take the Taylor expansion of human behavior, stereotypes would be the zeroeth order term. They neither fail to take into account any variation within the group they label nor do they describe anything dynamic. But you have to admit, they’re often close to the mark.

The fact is, stereotypes are fun, and like amoral social scientists and OCD biologists, I occasionally enjoy a good-ol’ fashion exercise in taxonomy. So I want to talk about the stereotypes of the Cornell University gay scene. Every college or university has one, and within Cornell, each school has one, but are all gay scenes created equal? I think not.

Note: The author of this column is not an economist, a financier, an expert on how universities spend money or even majoring in a field related to anything presented in the following work. Even worse, he’s a physics major, which means people like him caused the recent financial debacle and thus should be the VERY LAST person you should take advice from. To compensate for this lack of expertise, he has attempted to include academic footnotes to make him sound smarter1.