Columns

ROSENBAND | Public Shaming: Mourning Cornell in Real Time

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I’m a junior now, but the room key to my Collegetown apartment still hangs from the distinguishable lanyard I received when I moved into Dickson Hall as a freshman. If you were smart, you probably discarded it right when you got it, trusting that your amateur status went in the bin with it. Maybe it has stayed with me more as a matter of convenience, but I continue to cling on to that bright-red rope that pulls me right back into the heart of freshman year as a souvenir from a past life — a time when I felt as if I existed in the cross-section between 22 Jump Street and Pitch Perfect. I expected Cornell to change me in a humongous, colossal, monumental, *insert superlative* way, and although it probably has, this mid-pandemic existence forces me to not only mourn the life I lived, but mourn the place I hold dearest even as I’m walking its campus. Even if you’re technically a senior, this year we all start over as freshmen: Overwhelmed, paying too much attention to the little details, fearful of not meeting new people and just generally confused at how this is all going to work.

Columns

YAO | Cornell Study Abroad: Home Edition

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For the first two months of summer, I didn’t even entertain the idea of staying home. Even as the nationwide case count skyrocketed, my friends and I discussed what in-person lectures might entail and made plans to meet up once classes started. The little town of Ithaca lodged in my mind as a refuge, where I would finally be free from the horrors of reality. Then August came, and the blows began to rain down. Cornell announced that it didn’t have the means to quarantine all the students from states on the New York Travel Advisory list.

Columns

GUEST ROOM | Students Will Not Bear the Greatest Cost of a Shutdown This Semester

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Despite the overwhelming awareness that this could all be over in a matter of days and despite the best efforts of students online to publicly shame those who break the rules, Cornell was moved to threat level yellow after a mere two days of classes — not by a group of students who contracted the disease in spite of Cornell’s ample countermeasures, but by a group of students who willfully ignored them.  I am sure these people understood the risk to themselves and, given the well-expressed fears by their fellow students online, I’m sure they understood the risk to the student body as well.  And, while I would like to believe the event that caused this cluster was an isolated incident, a rare deviation from the straightforward and essential guidelines we’ve all agreed to follow, frankly, you’d have to be living under a rock to believe that. We can all hear the music. So, if the judgment of your peers, the requests of your university and the very real danger to the health of you and your friends are insufficient motivators to keep you out of a party this semester, then please consider the people who rely on Cornell for employment. Because the fact of the matter is, a few more “get-togethers” gone wrong, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people here are unemployed overnight. Yes, unemployed. Without a job, without a stream of income, a.k.a. something necessary to feed, clothe and house oneself when one’s parents do not do so.

Columns

GUEST ROOM | We’re Not Just Being Set Up to Fail, We’re Being Set Up to Blame Each Other

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On July 21 The Atlantic published an article indicating that colleges were readying themselves to blame students for failed campus re-openings. Inevitable parties and quarantine breaches would be registered as violations of some form of a Behavioral Compact, allowing universities to lay blame directly upon their students. Increasingly, however, Cornell has succeeded not only in creating metrics to blame students directly for the spread of COVID-19 but has leveraged the Compact so that students will blame one another, shielding administrators from much direct responsibility for the campus reopening. Such internalization of responsibility and blame works in predictable ways if you understand the nature of power. The first step is an exertion of force — compelling students to sign the Compact — softened by the fallacy of choice.

Columns

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Re: ‘The Paradox of Fall Semester’

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To the Editor:

Sun writer Anil Oza quotes from President Martha E. Pollack on the scientific basis for opening Cornell and Andrew V. Lorenzen highlights some important issues with that decision in his column.  On a broader scale, science often involves making a model and testing it. Cornell leadership has, under very difficult circumstances, overseen the development of a COVID-19 model and plan in which the Provost and President strongly believe. As many Cornell students are taught, confidence in a model depends on how well predictions of the model have been tested and supported. The Cornell model has not been tested, but the first test involving all of us is imminent. Maybe the outcome will be in accord with the model (hopefully!) and maybe not.