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False Bravado
May 1, 2008 - 12:00amFor three years I had weekly sessions with Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, president of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Dr. Nicolosi thought that homosexuality was a pathology, a sublimated desire to reconnect with one’s lost masculinity. The theory: under-attentive fathers and over-attentive mothers create gay children. The purpose of therapy was to put me in touch with my masculine identity and thereby change my sexual orientation.
Jocks, Queens and Leather Daddies
April 17, 2008 - 12:00amOver the summer, when members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested the “perverts” employed by Cornell and accused the University of “trying to make fags and dykes out of all of their students,” the Queer Resource Center held a counter-protest. University officials gave speeches, protesters held signs and cheered. I clapped politely: while I supported the cause, the theatricality of rallies has always made me self-conscious.
Silent on Suicide
April 3, 2008 - 12:00amFor all the emphasis that Cornell administrators put on mental health and suicide prevention, when a student does commit suicide the community is surprisingly tight-lipped about it. Between 1996 and 2006, 21 students at Cornell committed suicide, averaging about two suicides per year, which is close to the national average. However, The Sun only reported three of these.
When former Cornell student Ash Thotambilu ’06 committed suicide in 2006, the paper dedicated a mere 62 words to the story, shorter than the length of this paragraph. In 2000, two students committed suicide over the summer: The Sun reported that Jun Wang died after jumping into Fall Creek Gorge, but did not bother to reveal the name of the graduate student in mathematics who had done the same.
Fake Controversies
February 28, 2008 - 1:00amWhat struck me about Officers Brian Page, Bryan Miller and Richard Brown’s column in The Sun last week was their open criticism of the segregated military. And alongside it, their “personal opinion” about “don’t ask, don’t tell:”
“If you are asking us to come out and say that the law is wrong, then our response to you is that as Army officers we follow the laws that are given to us. As citizens, we look to see where our congressman stands on the issue and make it a consideration on election day.”
‘Dont Ask, Don’t Tell’ Hurts ROTC, Too
February 14, 2008 - 1:00amThe debate about ROTC’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on campus flares up and dies down periodically, and is basically the same each time. The arguments are typically orthogonal: military service is noble, provides students with funding for college and teaches valuable lessons; discrimination is bad and should not be tolerated here. While most of Cornell’s peer institutions have done away with on-campus ROTC, the University is in a unique position given its land-grant status; it cannot simply ban ROTC unless it forfeits crucial State funding. Thus, the fact that Cornell professes a commitment to inclusiveness and the flagrant exception to this in ROTC policy is a consistent source of tension.
Skewering Skorton
January 31, 2008 - 1:00amCriticizing President Skorton feels like criticizing a friendly neighbor. His avuncular air of approachability is perhaps a welcome change from Jeffrey Lehman ’77, who mysteriously left Cornell citing “irreconcilable differences” with the Board of Trustees (and was paid over a million dollars his last year, which some suspect was “hush money”). Every so often Skorton’s cheery face looks up at us from his guest column in The Sun, usually dedicated to praising the Cornell community on some point or another. We also get periodic emails from him touching on current events or issues in academia — Virginia Tech, Martin Luther King Day, diversity at Cornell, etc.
Thank You for Smoking
January 17, 2008 - 1:00amFor all that is good about Ithaca, it is affected by the peculiar liberal preoccupation with smoking. The City of Ithaca, after banning smoking in restaurants and bars in 2003, is considering extending the ban to all public places, most notably the Commons. Supporters have cited the environmental impact of cigarettes and the health effects of second-hand smoke as motivating factors. Last week, Wegman’s announced that it would stop selling cigarettes (this decision will affect all Wegman’s stores, not just the one in Ithaca).
In Defense of Anal Sex
November 29, 2007 - 1:00amIt is an enduring sign of moral torpor that social conservatives prefer that women in Africa contract HIV rather than risk promoting “promiscuity” by telling them condoms prevent it. This perverted hierarchy of values prizes the trivial over the consequential, counting the regulation of human sexuality among the primary goals of government and society. Insidious in its vacuity, it led President Bush to propose the Defense of Marriage Amendment to the Constitution in the midst of the Iraq War. Two weeks ago, it led the Cornell College Republicans to protest a lecture about anal sex — Anal Sex 101: Everything You Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask — funded in part by the Student Assembly.
The IPD Babysitting Service
November 15, 2007 - 1:00amThe Ithaca Police Department keeps the city’s inhabitants safe from an array of criminal minds. The press sometimes notices its work. On the local page of this weekend’s Ithaca Journal is a (side-lead) story about Lisa Nembhard, 44, whom police apprehended in the parking lot of CVS Pharmacy with over 100 bootlegged DVDs and CDs; this puts an end to “Lisa’s World”— a freefall of mendacity and home-labeled jewel cases. The District Attorney here recently dismissed drug charges against Robert Gelinas, 61, who had transferred his anti-anxiety medication from large prescription bottles to smaller, portable ones that did not have the pharmacy label. Gelinas learned his lesson: “Now I carry the original pill bottles with me in the car,” he said.
Copywrong Policy
November 8, 2007 - 1:00amUnder threat of legal action — and a $30,000 fine — universities have become extended arms of publishing companies and the Recording Industry Association of America, taking up the responsibility of ferreting out and penalizing instances of copyright infringement among students and professors. Some university administrators complain that these groups have unfairly targeted universities to make an example of them, but RIAA President Cary Sherman ’68 has said the approach is valid given that copyright infringement is especially prevalent at universities.