Softball Takes Two From Ivy Foe Yale

By | April 25, 2006

The softball team picked up a huge two-game sweep of Yale (27-19, 2-8 Ivy) yesterday, putting the Red (24-21, 9-3) in great position to hold onto second place in the Ivy League race.

Princeton (26-15, 12-2) clinched first place yesterday with a sweep of Dartmouth, ending the Red’s title aspirations.

Although yesterday’s games had originally been scheduled for Sunday, rains across the Northeast pushed the twin bill back a day. The Red, on the strength of a 5-3 win in the first game and a 4-0 shutout in the second, were able to shutdown the Bulldogs on their own field.

In the first game, junior Lauren Battaglia’s pinch-hit two-run homer in the top of the seventh broke a 3-3 tie and propelled the Red to a 5-3 win. Freshman Hailey Mirrer (7-7) pitched a gem, weaving together a four-hit shutout to lead the Red to a 4-0 victory in the second game.

The opener was delayed 20 minutes because of rain, but it did not slow the Bulldogs bats early. Cornell sophomore Jenn Meunier (13-8) hit the first two batters she faced and followed up later with the inning by a passed ball and another wild pitch. Yale led 2-1 after the first, but Meunier settled down to earn the win, striking out seven while going the distance.

The Red tied the game in the second on freshman Jessica Berkey’s third home run of the season. However, Yale responded quickly and regained the lead in the third on junior Meredith Park’s sacrifice fly.

After the early offense, Meunier and Yale senior Peggy Hunt calmed down and did not allow any more runs – that is, until the seventh inning. With Yale leading 3-2, senior Caitlin Warren led off the inning with a single. Berkey followed with a double that scored Warren and tied the game. After Hunt recorded an out, Battaglia stepped in and launched a home run to left field to give the Red the lead. Yale had the tying runs in scoring position in the seventh, but Meunier prevailed to seal the game. The complete game was Meunier’s 13th of the season.

The second game was all Cornell, as the Red scored one in the first and three in the second to take an early 4-0 lead. Cornell’s three-run output in the second was sparked by RBI singles from Battaglia and sophomores Jenna Campagnolo and Samantha Hare. That was all Mirrer would need, as Yale was able to muster just four hits the entire game.

Cornell returns to action on Thursday when it faces local-rival Ithaca College at Kostrinky Field.

Archived article by Jeremy Drucker
Sun Staff Writer

LaFeber Gives Last Lecture

By April 26, 2006

NEW YORK – “Welcome to Bailey on Broadway,” quipped Andrew H. Tisch ’71 as he introduced Prof. Walter LaFeber, history, to a crowd of almost 3,000 Cornell alumni who convened on New York City’s Beacon Theatre last night to hear the professor’s final public lecture prior to his retirement later this spring. The event, billed as “A Special Evening With Cornell’s Walter LaFeber: A Half-Century of Friends, Foreign Policy and Great Losers,” celebrated the foreign policy expert’s 47-year career on The Hill.
Calling LaFeber a “legend in his own time,” Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings III made the evening’s opening remarks, adding that “scholarship and teaching are what Cornell is about, and it is rare to find both in a single teacher.”
LaFeber, the Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor, began his talk by thanking his wife, Sandy, as well as former Cornell presidents Dale Corson, Frank H.T. Rhodes, Rawlings and Jeffrey S. Lehman ’77 for their contributions to Cornell. Both Rawlings and Lehman were in attendance.
He continued to thank many colleagues and alumni, adding that “Cornell alumni in a variety of ways are truly extraordinary people.”
Speaking in his trademark fashion – without prepared notes – LaFeber continued his talk by teaching generations of Cornellians about Wilsonianism and by tracing motivations behind 20th century foreign policy and the expansion of democracy.
Beginning his lesson in Revolutionary times, he joked that “the generation of the United States that knew most about democracy and how well it traveled were the founders. This was the one generation in American history when the intellectuals and politicians were the same people.”
He continued by discussing Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams and pointed out that throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the people in power who cared deeply about the United States were not sure that democracy traveled well. LaFeber said that this ideology changed with President Woodrow Wilson.
“When Wilson came to office in 1913, he said, ‘It would be a great irony of my presidency if I had to concern myself with foreign policy,’ because he was more interested in carrying out progressive reform at home. But of course, irony struck,” he said.
He explained that Wilson had to handle the Mexican, Chinese and Russian Revolutions, along with World War I, during his tenure as president. LaFeber concluded his remarks by mentioning the disillusionment of young American liberals, who felt that Wilson did not understand compromise and did not make the world safe for democracy as he had demanded when he spoke to Congress prior to entering WWI.
The event was initially scheduled for New York City’s Museum of Natural History but was quickly moved to a larger space to accommodate the overwhelming demand from alumni, friends and former students to attend.
After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, LaFeber came to Cornell in 1959 and joined the history department. In addition to teaching, he has authored several award-winning books that have made him a giant in the field of foreign policy, including The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898; The Clash: U.S.-Japan Relations Throughout History and Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America.
Archived article by Erica TemelSun Columnist
Seminar Promises Intelligent Design Discussion

By April 26, 2006

Prof. Allen MacNeill, biology, will be offering a course about Intelligent Design, entitled “Evolution and Design: Is there a Purpose in Nature?”. The course will be offered seminar-style over the summer of 2006, through the ecology and evolutionary biology, history and science and technology studies departments as well as the biology and society program.
The syllabus requires texts from authors both for and against intelligent design and includes optional texts, one of which is by Charles Darwin.
MacNeill first came up with the theme for the seminar when brainstorming with Prof. Will Provine, ecology and evironmental biology, for topics for this summer’s seminar class. MacNeill says that the idea was inspired by the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, in which the Dover Area School District in Dover, Pa. was sued for requiring the teaching of intelligent design in high school science classes.
“Given the Dover case, [Provine and I] thought it’d be interesting to teach [this year’s seminar] on Intelligent Design,” MacNeill said.
MacNeill labels himself a “very vehement critic” of intelligent design but hopes to inspire debate and controversy in his classroom.
“I’m hoping I get people from both sides so that the discussion will be animated. The worst thing you can have is a dull seminar, which is what you have when people have the same belief or don’t believe in anything,” he said.
As part of the attempt to present both sides of the issue, MacNeill has also invited Hannah Maxson ’07, president of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness club, to help with the class. Questions from the students about books by Intelligent Design proponents will be fielded by Maxson. The class is currently capped at eighteen to keep it discussion-based, not a lecture, says MacNeill.
It appears that this is not MacNeill’s first delve into the topic of Intelligent Design. MacNeill is also on the IDEA list-serve, keeps consistent email correspondence with the club, holds debates about the issue and has invited the IDEA president to give a lecture in one his classes last year. MacNeill describes his relationship with the IDEA club as an “agreement in a very courteous manner to disagree.”
“I’m glad it’s being offered,” said Maxson. “Intelligent Design needs to be discussed more in academia and not just [as] some ‘frightening political movement’ that needs to be stopped.”
Hannah is currently working with MacNeill to pull together intelligent design articles for the reading list. She’s also been invited to the discussions once the class starts to help “provide a cogent case for Intelligent Design theory.”
IDEA Executive Director Seth Maxson also gives approval, saying that this “is an example of Intelligent Design being accepted as an intriguing scientific theory by the wider academic community.”
Enrollment prospects are also looking up. Seth claims to have already talked with a few students who plan to take the class.
“They all seem very excited,” he said.
Despite said excitement, MacNeill appears to have been met with some skepticism from colleagues. Since announcing what his class will be about, MacNeill has received many questions and comments both from students and professors via his personal blog. “Evolutionary biologists tended to be more negative about the course [than Intelligent Design advocates],” MacNeill said.
MacNeill also said that two colleagues have stated that the course shouldn’t be offered in biology.
“I respectfully disagree,” he said. “Most people in biology have a strong opinion on this, mostly negative. The knee-jerk response is to call the other side ignorant or dishonest; my experience is that that doesn’t address the issue.”
Though MacNeill claims to be “strongly skeptical of Intelligent Design, at the very least”, he says he is not worried about one-sided enrollment.
“What’s exciting for me is people taking strong positions. I hope students who haven’t made up their minds make up their minds on the subject.”
The class will require a detailed research paper in which the student must argue his/her position on the matter.
“Personally I believe if you do that you reject the idea,” he chuckled. “But I find sometimes that that’s not the case.”
MacNeill has no immediate or definite plans to continue this class in the future, claiming that he would like to do other topics such as ethics and the question of free-will. However, there is some room for compromise.
“As long as Intelligent Design is in the news, maybe it makes sense to continue to do this,” MacNeill said.
Archived article by Nadia Chernyak Sun Contributor