Columns

GUEST ROOM | ON MEMORIALS, DEMOCRACY & OUR ‘FIERY TRIAL’

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If not now, when… for Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman? Our hyper-polarized nation is once again passing through what President Abraham Lincoln called a “fiery trial.” To state that democracy itself is under attack is no longer a hyperbolic, polemical, or rhetorical sentiment. In a few short years, we’ve adopted state-level photo ID voter suppression laws, have had politicians attempt to nullify certified election results and witnessed an open insurrection against our Constitution and democratic way of life. Over winter break we all watched as a violent mob stormed the Capitol. Does anyone believe we’ve seen the last of this?

Columns

GUEST ROOM | Cornell’s Silence Was Heard on 9/11

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The most impactful event that has happened in my lifetime is one I don’t even remember. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was nearly one year old. Any adult can tell you where they were and who they were with when the largest terrorist attack on American soil occurred. Sept.

Columns

GUEST ROOM | Being a Cornell Alumnus Is Harder Than Being a Student

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“I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain’t never been seen by this generation.”
—Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige (1906-1982)
As a lifelong active Cornell alumnus who attended the Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference, I have been following The Sun’s coverage and op-ed pieces about Paul Blanchard ’52, the alumnus who gave an acceptance speech that included a description of Satchel Paige as a Negro Baseball League pitcher. The Sun’s “Mind the Gap” editorial called for “preventative measures” to avoid a recurrence of an alumni event offending student guests. Sun columnists Laura DeMassa ’21 and Canaan Delgado ’21 called for “disrupting the structural manifestations of discrimination” within Cornell’s alumni organizations. Cornell Alumni Affairs will convene a task force “of students, alumni and staff in response to the incident to ‘develop productive new ways for Cornell’s different generations to work together with even more mutual respect and understanding,’” The Sun reported.

arts

GUEST ROOM | Valuing Our Interdisciplinary Programs

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I believe deeply in the value of these programs. As research enterprises and educational units, these programs greatly enrich the College of Arts & Sciences. In the context of the curriculum review we are currently endeavoring in the college, our faculty have affirmed the value of such considerations with the proposal to add a “human difference” category to the breadth requirements. If we are to prepare our students to be good global citizens and navigate an increasingly heterogeneous world, then we must prepare them to understand how social categories are created, and the implications that this has for our society more broadly.

CGSU

GUEST ROOM | CGSU’s Constitution is Neither Fair nor Democratic

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simple analysis (see table below) reveals that students in the some disciplines get more than twice the representation as compared to students in the Engineering, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences. Given that it is the Negotiation Committee that will sit at the table with Cornell to strike a bargaining agreement, I am very concerned about this discordance between the number of members in a constituent discipline and the representation they receive.

Arts & Entertainment

GUEST ROOM | Vaporwave and Memes for Valentine’s

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Many people feel sad on Valentine’s Day for a great number of reasons. Is it legitimate sadness or is it normalized, commercial sadness? We’re all witnessing the slow rise of Vaporwave and “sad boy” memes. Does this mean that we’re aestheticizing  sadness and trying to normalize it or is this all another big joke? I’ll admit that at first I thought it was all one big joke, but I keep seeing more and more people share those “aesthetic” Simpsons clips featuring something along the lines of Yung Lean or Macintosh Plus music.