Heroes and Villains
October 9, 2008 - 11:00pm
It was a day very much like this one in October of 1868. Thursday night, Zinck’s had been shut down by mounted agents of the New York State Division of Alcohol and Beverage Control after a nearly-fatal table dancing incident left hundreds injured. The Cornell Copperhead — a conservative newspaper that remained sympathetic to the Confederacy three years after the end of the Civil War — nearly had “Cornell” removed from its name because of an article it published making light of the death of Abraham Lincoln. And, speaking of presidents, Republican Ulysses S. Grant was in a battle-to-the-electoral-death with Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour.
In the midst of all this sturm und drang, two bros had had enough. They’d had enough of the politics, they’d tanked on Cornell’s very first ever prelims, and besides — Zinck’s was closed for the weekend. So Andy and Ezra escaped from the Hill to get some fresh air and a much-deserved rest from founding the greatest university the Finger Lakes region had ever seen. And Andy and Ezra invented fall break, and it was good.
