Recent Contributions from Gabriel Arana

Progress and Prop. 8

Gabriel Arana — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In discussing race relations or feminism my students often say that things are getting better, frequently as a preface (e.g. “Even though race relations have improved, we must still … ”). It is a general assumption that U.S. social history is a story of progress. There are temporary setbacks, but the trajectory is upward: We are better today than yesterday, will be better tomorrow than today.

On Finding a Job

Gabriel Arana — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I have been dreading, since deciding to quit grad school to pursue journalism, the ego-crushing task of finding a job — the unreturned calls and emails, submitted résumés lost to the abyss of corporate career sites and the self-doubt and desperation that come with rejection. Given the economy, perhaps now was not the best time to make this decision, but one of my personal traits is a penchant for deciding on a course of action with only minimal consideration of its feasibility. Perhaps this (naïve but motivating) faith in my ability to accomplish things is what made looking for jobs so discouraging the first time I did so.

‘Veritas’ Nos Liberat

Gabriel Arana — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I have written before about “intellectual diversity,” which presupposes a sweeping view of American intellectual history in which a “nutritious” diet of Great Books was hijacked by liberals in the ’60s and replaced with feminist and race studies. In this nostalgic fantasy, students in crisp button-downs discussed the Aeneid en plein air until, at midnight on December 31, 1959, they metamorphized into bra-burning protest fanatics.

Hispanics Overlooked in Affirmative Action

Gabriel Arana — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Discussions about “affirmative action” tend to revolve around the same scenario: two applicants to a single position, identical down to the last detail except that one is black and the other is white. They tend not to go beyond the answer to the question, “Is it fair for the black applicant to be admitted over the white one?” Nor does the scenario ever seem to involve a white and an Asian student, or a black and Hispanic pair. In fact the participants seem to ignore altogether that the only “fair” outcome — if one concedes that race should not be taken into account — would be to admit neither candidate and find a more qualified applicant to break the intractable deadlock. Or to hire or admit both.

False Bravado

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

For 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Over 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0400

For 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

What 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Criticizing 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

For 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

It 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

The 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

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Under 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.

In Defense of A's

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Underlying the discussion about grade inflation is the almost Calvinist suspicion that students are getting away with something, the echo of an avuncular “in my day” admonition. That grade inflation exists at universities in the U.S. is not in question. According to a 2003 study that included 80 institutions, grades have risen at a rate of 0.15 on a 4.0 scale per decade since the ’60s. And at Cornell, the percentage of As handed out has more than doubled since 1965.

The Professional Frump Factor

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Working as a legal assistant in New York before grad school, I remember the elegant procession of pressed pants, suit jackets and skirts as I exited the Wall Street subway station every morning. The suit-and-tie uniform seemed incongruously conservative by modern standards of dress, but it manifested the basic marketing maxim that presentation matters, that it reflects the product.

The Frat Anti-Defamation League

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

In writing a few weeks ago about homophobia in fraternities, I made the passing comment that parent organizations invariably shield fraternity chapters from criticism, preventing problems with fraternity culture from being addressed. No sooner had The Sun gone to print than the wheels of the frat anti-defamation league began to turn. I do not want to revisit the issue I addressed in the original article, but to state more forcefully the criticism that any critique of fraternity culture is met with categorical denial and sidesteps. The Intrafraternity Council and those who responded to the article resemble the Bush Administration: they operate under the logic that something is only true if they acknowledge it as such.

I'm Not a Feminist, But...

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

For college-aged women, “feminism” has been a bad word for some time. As columnist Maureen Dowd put it, “the triumph of feminism [lasted] a nanosecond while the backlash lasted 40 years.”

It conjures up not the highfalutin ideals and aspirations of the ’60s, but a caricature: a woman harping on about gendered pronouns and “patriarchal societal structures,” insisting on the spelling of “womyn” and derogating “housework.”

College girls do not want to be this person; it’s not sexy.

Ithaca Road Rage

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

I cannot count the number of times I have waited at a stoplight in Ithaca in the middle of the night, not a car in sight. And I always wonder why my hometown — with a smaller tax base than Ithaca — can afford sensors and pressure plates while this city cannot. My natural inclination is always to treat these as stop signs and go through them, but as you might have noticed, Ithaca is a police state; I have had five parking tickets since I came a year ago, had a cop follow me after giving up on parallel parking in a tight space and had another yell at me for being on a cell phone at a stoplight. (Maybe Ithaca police officers should be given Sudoku puzzles to keep them busy.) Depending on my mood, I either go through the lonely intersection at 2 a.m.

Frasculinity and Homophobia

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

When I started graduate school here and added Cornell to my list of networks on Facebook, I received a “poke”— a flirtatious or friendly signal depending on its source — from a member of a fraternity largely comprising athletes. The guy’s profile said he was interested in men. Under activities, he had listed various sports. His photos: vertical striped shirts, popped polos, board shorts, flip-flops, beer-in-hand shots with groups of guys.

I ignored the poke. A day later, the joke had blown over. The profile was changed back to “interested in women” and a smattering of goading posts appeared on his wall: “interested in men eh ... [I] always knew there was something a little off about you,” for instance.

‘Ivy Envy’ and the Rankings Game

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

If you ask an admissions office about college rankings, you’ll get a version of the brush-off response: “We don’t think an education at our school can be summarized by a ranking system” or “We don’t pay attention to rankings.” Yet year after year, Cornell compiles and submits its statistics for the rankings whose importance it will ultimately deny.

This is because, in spite of the fact that the rankings may not be indicative of the quality of education at a given institution, they matter to high school students. They matter to college students. And they matter to Cornell students most of all.

What Atkind ’07 Says About Us

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

To some in the Ithaca community, the problem with Alex Atkind ’07 is the problem with Cornell. In posts on newspaper forums and in discussion threads on Craigslist, the case of the Cornell “dog torturer” has come to reveal the resentment felt by Ithaca denizens toward Cornell students. Some mention the alcoholism encouraged by the Greek system, but fundamentally, the comments are about social class, about privilege, about the way it’s granted and the way it’s taken for granted.

The Speciousness of Ideological Diversity

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 01:00:00 -0400

In a Sun column some time ago, a graduating senior prided himself on having gone through Cornell and having remained a “conservative” — one of the few on a campus that pushes the “liberal agenda.” Reflecting on his experience in the community, he lamented that while racial, ethnic and sexual diversity are plentiful at Cornell, the campus is unfortunately bereft of “ideological diversity.”

While this paean to diversity invokes all the positive associations of the term, “ideological diversity” is at heart deeply anti-intellectual.

Gannett's Gaffe

Gabriel Arana — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:00:00 -0400

It has been a year since Gannett began charging $25 for standard HIV antibody testing, a policy which continues despite resolutions by both the Student Assembly and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, as well as the Center for Disease Control’s recommendation that all Americans should be routinely tested for HIV. Of course not all services can be free at Gannett, but HIV testing is free at the vast majority of university health departments — including many of Cornell’s Ivy League peers — for the following reasons: