The time is ripe to talk about Teach For America. A couple of weeks ago TFA held an on-campus information session. The photos, the data, the stories … the whole thing made me want to stand up and salute something, anything, with a lone tear running down my cheek. On Monday night, I attended an address by Michelle Rhee ’92, D.C. School Chancellor and former Baltimore TFA corps member. Despite the September info-session’s plentiful pizza and pictures, Rhee won the contest for most inspiring hour — ever. She’s amazing, but more on that later.

Fearing for his and his family’s lives, artist and activist Irakli Kakabadze fled from his native country Georgia. Now a visiting scholar at Cornell’s peace studies program and writer-in-residence of Ithaca City of Asylum, Kakabadze spoke last Saturday at the Unitarian Church of Ithaca to emphasize the importance of art and writing as an instrument for peace building.

Kakabadze says he believes artists — especially in countries like Georgia — unmask the unknown situation that is hushed up by the government to the public. They then became well known performers in Georgia and, as a result, victims of attacks from the state government.

People put a lot of weight on last words.

So I’m going to do it too, running the incredible risk of doing something that’s been done before — something that a columnist must never under any sane circumstances do — because I’m in an altered state of mind. Altered, mind you, because of words. I watched the sunrise through the blinds and I have yet to go to sleep and it is all words’ fault.

Under sane circumstances, I myself am fascinated by the idea — what are the last, and I mean the Last, words I want to spend my ultimate breath on? The ones that will just hang there, in the air, until someone opens a window or maybe writes them down and they live on, for a little longer at least?

Curfews and parties were the subject of this 1958 student protest where students struck fear into the heart of the administration by throwing eggs and waving flags. Sun File Photo.

It’s a hot, hazy night at Cornell University. It’s May 1958. An effigy of President Malott is burning in front of Sage Hall. It’s hanging from a thick-branched American-elm tree, and it’s labeled “No Ban” and “This Ain’t Ezra.” There is a mob. A huge mob that eventually breaks up on central campus. Some members go to The Palms to get beer. Others trek a mile to Malott’s house. The marchers are armed. They are angry. They are armed with eggs and rocks. They aim at a single target: the president. Divestment Protest: Student activists in the 1985 divestment protests. Sun File Photo.

“There’s not much dialogue on campus,” said Khullat Munir ’09, outgoing president of the Islamic Alliance for Justice and one of the organizers of the Arts Quad display. “We wanted to get out awareness.”

— “Protest Gone Wrong: Gaza Display Ruined,” News, The Sun, Feb. 9

I had originally intended this piece to be a point-by-point refutation of the “facts” displayed at the now-infamous “black flags” display. However, I concluded that there are larger issues at hand than Israel’s reputation.

HAVERHILL, N.H. (AP) — A county treasurer who lost her bid for a fourth term last week to a 20-year-old Dartmouth College student from Montana blames her failed candidacy on "brainwashed college kids."

Republican Carol Elliott said students just voted for the Democratic ticket, which included Dartmouth junior Vanessa Sievers. Sievers won by nearly 600 votes out of 42,000 cast after targeting voters at Dartmouth and Plymouth State University through a $42 ad on the Web site Facebook.

"It was the brainwashed college kids that made the difference," Elliott, 66, told the Valley News of Lebanon. She said she had little faith that Sievers will fulfill her duties adequately.

On Nov. 4, Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. A key contingent of Obama’s support base was the nation’s youth — most recently termed Generation O — who campaigned across the country for “The Change We Need.” Now that the American citizenry has voted in favor of Obama, the question remains as to what will happen to the student activism.

While Prof. Theodore Lowi, government, called the increase of student activism “impressive,” he sees it as a unique phenomenon.

College students pride themselves on being the most optimistic, innovative, and take-action demographic in this country. Our generation in particular is said to be more committed to solving social injustices than any generation before us. Yet it seems as if Cornell students, for the most part, have lost their giddy enthusiasm and unrelenting optimism. Despite the abundance of student organizations committed to service, a sense of apathy and a degree of ignorance seem to dominate the campus atmosphere.