The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/communication/page/2/)
McComas’ new responsibilities after July 1st will include serving as an advocate for Cornell’s role as the land-grant university for New York state, monitoring and collaborating on responses to the governor’s initiatives in higher education and economic development, and representing the university’s four contract colleges in dealings with the State University of New York.
Remember those rainy days in elementary school? Sitting in your assigned desk and staring at the clock, counting down the minutes until lunch. Suddenly, the door swings open and an assistant teacher wheels in the TV cart. The classroom instantly fills with excited chatter. The mood lifts.
In the early 1980s, plant to plant communication was a controversial topic of research because well, suggesting plants can talk is rather absurd, right? Apparently not. According to Prof. Andre Kessler, ecology and evolutionary biology, plants issue chemical warnings that help their colonies survive pest attacks. “At my Ph.D., we were already looking for volatile compound emissions. These are emitted in response to some sort of damage.
I became unstuck last Wednesday in the shadow of Franny’s food truck. I knew something was off as soon as the cashier handed me my order. We had smoked a bit of pot earlier, but I wasn’t hungry. My head felt like a half-screwed light bulb, synapses firing in new and altogether unfamiliar directions, sending tingles down the nerves in my arms. Gripping the delicately prepared Vietnamese sandwich, I approached my friends, who were caught up in a discussion of who had, and who hadn’t, figured out where they’d be after graduation. I distinctly remember feeling at that moment that if I loosened my grip on my sandwich, I’d disappear.
“I definitely think everyone in the communications department is going to grow closer and more connected to each other,” said Elizabeth Villedrouin ’19. “The Hub allows us all to relax and chat in our own, collaborative space.”
While reading through my group chat notifications the other day, I noticed a little scuffle building in one of the groups chats that I was in: What had begun with a playful changing around of group nicknames soon escalated to personal jabs at different group members and real life drama. And at this I scoffed. For someone to be actually hurt by something said in a less-than-half-serious online space where memes, stickers and other online shenanigans run rampant is absolutely childish, no? Possibly, but reflecting upon my own experiences, this isn’t the first time, nor the first group chat that I’ve been in that’s had its online problems leak into the real world. Experiences like these that have led me to question: Is there something more to group chats?