Hybrids. They are all the rage. Between the experiments over at the Plant Science Building, designs for the Auto X Prize Car and interdisciplinary majors, we are inundated with cross-pollination. While one student hybrid, the Cornellian City Council Representative, has received a lot of media (Sun) attention lately, another is too often overlooked; the Ithacan-Cornell Student. Ever since arriving at Mary Donlon Hall three years ago, I have found this particular breed fascinating. As someone that sometimes feels that New York City (the greatest city on Earth) is stifling and claustrophobic, I was amazed to find those Ithacans that opted to stay in Ithaca for college.
In an effort to continue my exploration of our strange perceptions of Ithaca, I asked several Ithacans to help me understand their relationship with Cornell and Ithaca. Are they townies or (please excuse the lame pun) gownies? My first important lesson was that Ithacans divide themselves between Cornell-affiliates and non-affiliates. Implicit in these labels is one’s socio-economic status. As far as I can tell, a Cornell-affiliate refers to a professor or a high-level administrator, not the maintenance or dining hall staff. Like many other universities, Cornell offers affiliates’ children amazing tuition benefits, anywhere from a free-ride to 50 percent off. Even though Kate, one of my interviewees, estimated between 10 percent to 15 percent of her classmates from Ithaca High (“Little Red”) attend Cornell, affiliates are the only Ithacans I know at the University. In fact, when discussing this column with Heather, another affiliate, she specifically asked me to make an effort to find Ithacan Cornellians from blue-collar, non-affiliate families. She was just as interested as I was to know if they exist and how they feel about Cornell.
Even within these Cornell-affiliate Ithacan students there is a very clear divide in undergraduate and graduate perceptions of campus and Ithaca. The grads are able to place Cornell within their larger Ithaca network, while undergrads feel that everything about Ithaca changed once they began Cornell. For Kate, Cornell and Ithaca are two completely separate entities — it is as if she does not go to school in her hometown. The undergrads were highly aware of their peers’ tense relationship with Ithaca. They lamented having a hard time using Ithaca in the same ways they did before and felt Ithaca has much to offer. On the other hand, Brad, a grad student, was quite baffled by the idea that our town-gown issues are different than anywhere else. While the grad students stressed how much Ithaca has to gain from Cornell, the undergrads felt we do not take advantage of Ithaca’s eclectic music scene, unique downtown and alternative lifestyles. However both grads and undergrads cited Collegetown establishments (and frats) as examples of Cornell locales they frequented as pre-frosh which implies that as Ithacans, they view C-town as an extension of campus rather than an extension of downtown Ithaca.
On Nov. 5, the article “Upstate New York Suffers Brain Drain” reported on a seminar addressing the issue. That same day, the editorial “Curbing the Brain Drain” recommended increasing the Ithacan population at Cornell because, unlike the rest of us, they have a better chance of staying in Ithaca come graduation. However the editorial missed something that Isabelle Andrews, one of the interviewees, alluded to in the first article — the difficulty for non-Cornellians to find gainful employment in the region. It is not Cornellians that are having a hard time finding opportunities post-graduation. The children of our professors are likely to attend Cornell or similar schools, and whether they return is probably more related to their families’ ties to Ithaca than Ithaca itself. It is the non-affiliate families that we need concentrate on. These Ithacans bring an essential diversity to our student body, while also representing a promising future for the region. And unlike affiliate kids, they probably have deeper roots in the area.
In addition, these Cornellians (where are you?) could be our greatest asset in terms of more successfully integrating Cornell with Ithaca. But how can we pretend that we can do this without them when the very design of our campus dismisses them? Strolling along the Arts Quad you may have noticed that so many of the buildings beautifully frame our view displaying Cayuga Lake or the hills on the other side of the valley. However, this landscape also cuts out the ugly industrial parts of our surroundings. While I understand the aesthetic value in doing so, it also serves to reinforce an imaginary relationship many of us have with Ithaca — that we are two entities high above and independent from infrastructure, working people and the region.
Continuing this walk over the suspension bridge one will eventually encounter Cayuga Heights, a neighborhood designed for Cornell professors and their families in the beginning of the 20th century, hovering above the lake and disembodied from Ithaca, but intrinsically tied to campus. Proud of its small size, self-contained government and insular amenities, it is unlikely that Cayuga Heights, or its children for that matter, hold the key to greater regional and local integration. Instead we need to set our sights on neighborhoods like nearby Belle Sherman, working-class Fall Creek and sustainable EcoVillage. When we discuss development ideas for the Collegetown Vision Statement, we must remember something that our Ithacan peers have taught me, and is evident by looking at the patrons anywhere from The Nines to ABC Café: that families, with children that one day may be our peers, live here too. The first step towards a Brain Gain must be a combined effort between city planners, the admissions office and the student body to increase non-affiliate Little Reds’ presence on campus and in C-town.
Simone Greenbaum is a senior in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. She can be contacted at sg336@cornell.edu.