To the Editor:

Re: “Operating on the Bio Major,” Opinion, Nov. 12

I would like to point out an omission in this editorial, and also make a comment.

The editorial reports the decision has been made to “... scrap the two traditional introductory courses ...” from the biology major, but two other courses that met the requirements of the biology major will also be eliminated: The summer session introductory biology courses BIO 1107 and 1108. BIO 1107-1108 will be offered in the summer of 2010, so they will be the last introductory biology courses taught at Cornell before the shift to the new system takes effect in the fall of 2010.

To the Editor:

Re: “Women: Bearing the Brunt Of Health Care Reform,” Opinion, Nov. 11

The Stupak Amendment to the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is inaccurately characterized and described in this column. First, Hyde Amendment would not apply to AAHCA. The Hyde Amendment, which has been in place since 1976, only applies to appropriations from the Health and Human Services budget. On the most basic level, Hyde protects tax dollars that fund Medicaid from going to abortion — and politicians understood that this amendment was limited to the HHS budget, and that’s why they bothered drafting the Stupak Amendment in the first place.

To the Editor:

Re: “Cheated by the Code of Academic Integrity,” Opinion, Nov. 10

We served on the Academic Integrity Hearing Board of the College of Arts and Sciences for a combined four years. During that time, it was only a rare student, found guilty of cheating, who was “shaking uncontrollably “ or “sobbing hysterically,” as the author has characterized them.

Indeed, by the time a student was brought before the AIHB, he or she had had countless opportunities to set the record straight and apologize. For the most part, the students whose appeals we heard were conniving, impenitent and tenacious in their own defense.

Beauty queens have put world peace on the back burner. In an interview on MSNBC’s Today Show this week, former Miss California Carrie Prejean said that she has been “Palinized” by the media for voicing her opposition to gay marriage during the Miss USA pageant in April. (To be “Palinized,” she explains, is to be unfairly scrutinized because you are a conservative woman. This is not to be confused with “Palinated,” which is to be propelled to the forefront of conservative politics despite being incompetent because you are a former beauty queen.) Prejean’s assertion that “marriage should be between a man and a woman” certainly attracted heavy scrutiny from gay rights activists and left-wing commentators like Keith Olbermann.

9 p.m. Rainy season. Friday night. I was standing in the open air hallway when a mo-ped drove in with a bundle of cloth thrown over the driver’s lap. He jumped off the bike yelling, “Dogo toro” (doctor in the local language). Within the swaddle, lay a two-year-old girl drenched in sweat, barely breathing audibly. We placed her in a bed and I immediately examined her for severe malaria.

One of the most popular majors on campus, biology serves as a gateway to the medical profession, as well as a department for crucial research in areas such as pharmaceutics and genetics. Although we applaud the attention paid to the major in the form of a recent revamping, we are, nonetheless, disappointed with the low level of transparency on the part of the Biology Curriculum Transition Committee throughout the process.

A couple of summers ago, I found myself in the back of my Jeep with a Canadian, rebounding out of a very serious relationship. Things were heating up and hands were starting to venture south. I slowly undid his belt, then the button and zipper on his jeans. I reached my hand inside his pants and grabbed on. But something seemed different … there was a lot of skin down there. I poked around for a hot second, then quickly removed my hand. Being the nice Jewish girl that I am, I went home that night to Google and typed in the nine letters I hoped would prove me wrong: f-o-r-e-s-k-i-n.

There she is again. That girl that you really like. That one you have such a good rapport with, that you see every day in Libe Café when she orders an iced skim vanilla latte (this is me putting a mundane, over-ordered drink by the majority of female café customers to make a random reader think that I am writing this article solely about them … or am I?) or that you share your text message joke-of-the-day with every week at your Cornell Cheese Club Exec Board Meeting.

While the health care plan that passed in the House on Saturday elicited mass celebration amongst advocates of health care reform, for a largely voiceless group of Americans — namely, low-income women — this historic bill hardly signifies a “courageous vote,” as President Obama suggests.

The Faculty Senate will vote today on a measure to support or discourage the University from leasing land to private drilling companies in search of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale. We urge the senate to vote against this leasing and drilling.

While natural gas produces far fewer amounts of pollutants than any other fossil fuel, the risks involved in its extraction are, as of now, far too dangerous. Before the University leases any land for drilling, stringent safety measures must be implemented to ensure that the social, economic and environmental impacts are minimal.