Columns

SCHECHTER | Tough Love

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The three best speeches I’ve ever heard have been given by presidents: former President George W. Bush’s 2021 address at SMU; former President Barack Obama’s keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention; and Martha Pollack’s 2023 convocation address.

I have seen twelve-years’ worth of boys-schools’ convocations, which left me with limited expectations on the Sunday after O-Week. As President Pollack began her speech, though, comfortable behind her wooden Cornell University podium, I knew she was confident in her message. As her speech unfolded, I felt myself filled with hope. Hope for my future here. Hope for my classmates’ futures. Hope for the future of the school. And hope in knowing through all of Cornell’s rigid toughness, my classmates and I will make it through.

Opinion

GUEST ROOM | Keep Your Virtual Celebration, and Give Me $20

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You lied to us, President Martha Pollack. In an email you wrote to us on March 20, 2020, you promised us that we would have our commencement, and, in your own words, that: “It will be a joyous one!…It will take place in Ithaca.”

And yet I awoke Wednesday morning to an email from Michelle J. Vaeth, associate vice president for alumni affairs, effectively crushing any hopes of the in-person commencement that had been promised to the accursed Class of 2020. (Seven hours later, presumably at the end of the workday, you deigned to tell us yourself). 

In lieu of an in-person celebration, you offered — no, you told us — that we would instead have a virtual celebration as a part of the Cornell Reunion. If the past year has taught me anything, though, it’s that virtual celebration is an oxymoron. Haven’t we been subjected to enough virtual happy hours and hangouts in the past year to learn that they just don’t work? 

At best, the virtual celebration will be mediocre.

canada

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The ‘Reasonable’ Far-Right Comes to Cornell?

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To the editor:

Time and time again, centrist media pundits have used their platforms to bemoan President Donald Trump’s crudity. They wax nostalgic about the good old days of “respectable Republicans,” harking back to a fictional recent past in which “honorable men” from both parties ruled the country. Such venerable men include the likes of war criminal former president George W. Bush, America’s Butcher of Baghdad. At least this good Christian man didn’t spew vulgarities and tweet-storms while authorizing massacres in the Middle East, right? When the Cornell Republicans announced their intent to invite former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to campus, we can’t say that we were surprised.