To the Editor:

Re: “The Berry Patch: Get the Heck Out of Cornell ... All of You!,” Opinion, March 11

With all of the controversy surrounding the recent Ann Coulter ’84 article I would just like to make a few clarifications. Ann Coulter claims that the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a State School. CALS is not, I repeat, not, a State College. It was created under the Land Grant Act to teach Agriculture, unlike SUNY Schools, which are founded, funded and regulated by the State of New York. CALS is just as much an Ivy League school as any other college at Cornell.

With regards to Ann Coulter’s statement that the acceptance rate to CALS is “1 of every 1.01 applicants” and that Arts and Sciences is “1 in 6 applicants” — If you look at my freshman class’ admissions statistics, you will find that Arts accepted 18.35-percent (roughly 1 in 6) of its applicants and CALS had a 21.89-percent acceptance rate. This is a slightly higher acceptance rate, far from 1 of every 1.01 applicants. CALS is in fact the third most selective college of Cornell, Arts is second, Architecture, Art and Planning is first with 15.48-percent of applicants accepted.

Also, in regards to The Berry Patch in yesterday’s issue. As one of those “dairy farms and plant growers,” we are students being educated in highly profitable fields that I would argue are a little more essential to our nation (no farmers, no food) than Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies or Theatre, Film and Dance Studies. And lets not forget the scores of Pre-Vets, Pre-Meds and Bio Engineers at CALS that have way more challenging course loads than most Arts and Crafties.

Sean William Donegan ’12