TRUSTEE VIEWPOINT | Three Things I Learned From Virtual Cornell

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Cornell’s campus closure. Since then, the University community has learned to adapt to the COVID-19 world; Daily Checks and surveillance tests are now  second nature. And with a federal directive to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May, it finally seems that the end of the pandemic is near. Quarantine, for me, was a time for introspection and growth. Staying at home with family gave me a chance to deepen my relationship with my siblings.

ONONYE | A Year Later, The Most Relatable Quarantine Moments

I am writing this column on March 13, 2021, which marks the one year anniversary since President Martha Pollack’s infamous email. The content of that email sent us home for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester and was my first real introduction to the severity of the pandemic. After her email was sent out around 1:30 p.m. on March 13, 2020, I packed up my life in Ithaca and got on a flight to Southern California less than 17 hours later. Looking back, I had no idea what we were in for. I can shamefully admit that I was even a bit excited for an extended spring break.

YAO | Read All About It

Back in ye olden days, I spent my afternoons maxing out the book limit at my local library and my evenings traveling to Oz or Narnia for hours at a time. The table by my bed perpetually labored under a precarious stack of novels that always seemed to grow higher. But soon enough, that library card spent more and more time inside some drawer or another before I eventually misplaced it. My nightstand heaved a sigh of relief as the pile of books dwindled to nothing. 

Somewhere between sixth-grade’s The Giver (which I enjoyed) and twelfth-grade’s Hamlet (which I skimmed before the exam), I put down leisure reading for good. There was no more time for such things, I reasoned.