Opinion

GUEST ROOM | Keep Your Virtual Celebration, and Give Me $20

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You lied to us, President Martha Pollack. In an email you wrote to us on March 20, 2020, you promised us that we would have our commencement, and, in your own words, that: “It will be a joyous one!…It will take place in Ithaca.”

And yet I awoke Wednesday morning to an email from Michelle J. Vaeth, associate vice president for alumni affairs, effectively crushing any hopes of the in-person commencement that had been promised to the accursed Class of 2020. (Seven hours later, presumably at the end of the workday, you deigned to tell us yourself). 

In lieu of an in-person celebration, you offered — no, you told us — that we would instead have a virtual celebration as a part of the Cornell Reunion. If the past year has taught me anything, though, it’s that virtual celebration is an oxymoron. Haven’t we been subjected to enough virtual happy hours and hangouts in the past year to learn that they just don’t work? 

At best, the virtual celebration will be mediocre.