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Cornell Vet Turns Rhino Transport on its Head

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Prof. Robin Radcliffe, wildlife veterinarian and director of the Cornell Conservation Medicine program, and his team were recognized for taking wild rhino transportation airborne with the Ig Nobel Prize, which celebrates “scientific achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

Columns

JOHNS | To Codify Its Values, Cornell Needs an Honor Code

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In her annual address to Cornell staff last Thursday, President Martha Pollack spoke about the many challenges confronting this institution, from the ongoing endeavor to expand University mental health services to the administration’s efforts to mitigate the inconvenience caused by the construction of the North Campus Residential Expansion. Although many undergraduates may have found the speech routine, Pollack highlighted an underreported development: this year’s ratification of a core values statement, a brief set of ideals intended to define the University’s 21st century mission. The statement correctly underlines the importance of “free and open inquiry and expression” as a means toward “purposeful discovery,” a laudable theme that this column repeatedly has argued is indispensable to the integrity of any university. In Thursday’s address, however, President Pollack noted that it is now time to go a step further — to use the statement to ensure that “as a community of faculty, of staff and of students, that we live the core values” the University has outlined. This is an important step, and she is right to call on Cornellians to realize and represent the institution’s stated values in the campus community.