Columns
SCHWARZ & SPARACIO | The Issue of Grade Inflation
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Is the Ivy league handing out too many A’s? Columnists Daniel R. Schwarz & Rebecca Sparacio discuss the nature of grade inflation at Cornell and academia at large.
The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/pandemic/)
Is the Ivy league handing out too many A’s? Columnists Daniel R. Schwarz & Rebecca Sparacio discuss the nature of grade inflation at Cornell and academia at large.
Cornell settled an April 2020 class-action lawsuit by agreeing to pay $3 million towards a compensation fund for students impacted by online classes in the Spring 2020 semester.
Fall 2023 TCAT services will include increased routes and a new fare collection system.
Every graduating senior knows some version of my story at Cornell. The class of 2023 is unique, and unified, in our trials and triumphs through COVID-19. We alone have seen the before and after. We are the class that watched Cornell fall apart, and we are the class that rebuilt it — preserving and restoring the traditions, cultures and communities that make this place worthwhile. For once, I write not to break news in The Sun, but to express generational solidarity. Our class, despite all odds and administrative difficulties, saved Cornell.
To the editor:
Last week, Cullen O’Hara ’23 wrote a Letter to the Editor claiming that two Cornell Daily Sun journalists, in their article “Three Years Since COVID-19 Lockdown, Cornellians Reflect on Pandemic,” failed to fairly represent the beliefs of the Cornell population. I would like to argue against O’Hara’s claims and articulate a defense for these two journalists.
O’Hara argues that these two journalists intentionally shed a positive light on Cornell’s COVID-19 policies and failed to include opposing viewpoints. However, in accordance with journalistic standards, Eicher and Rubinson conducted interviews through random sampling. On a campus that is composed of a liberal majority these two writers penned an article that is representative of the beliefs of Cornell’s population — even if it is not the view that O’Hara aligns with. If Eicher and Rubinson had interviewed an individual with a viewpoint that criticized the University’s policy, they would have included that in the piece.
In the article “Three Years Since COVID-19 Lockdown, Cornellians Reflect on Pandemic,” authors Aimée Eicher and Sofia Rubinson interviewed several students and a professor regarding their COVID-19 experience at Cornell. The Cornellians they selected had nothing but fawning praise for Cornell’s pandemic policies, and Eicher and Rubinson failed to include a single criticism of Cornell’s restrictions.
Worse, one student, Ceci Rodriguez ‘26, made demonstrably false assertions in a ludicrous argument for reinstituting masking, but Eicher and Rubinson made no attempt to contextualize or disprove her claims. Considering how willingly the Cornell administration trampled students’ rights in the name of COVID-19 absolutism, The Sun has a responsibility to call out flimsy COVID-19 rationalizations.
The monkeypox vaccine arrives in Ithaca this month less than a month after three cases of monkeypox were reported in Tompkins County, adding monkeypox to the list of pandemics students face this fall. As of Sept. 6, 3,326 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in New York State.
“Being a first-year graduate student and coming from a large public university in Texas, the difference in COVID-19 responses between there and [Cornell] has been night and day,” said Matthew Dew grad. “At times it can feel like a bit much, but on the whole, I think they’ve done a pretty good job.”
While I finally feel that I am back to normal life, it is undoubtable that reality and “normalcy” have altered. At such an impressionable point in our lives, it seems probable that the pandemic will influence us psychologically, mentally and developmentally — something we may not uncover for years to come.
International students at Cornell face unique challenges, especially during the pandemic, but the University’s diversity of students makes the campus feel special to these students.