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SAMILOW | Cornell is Betraying Its Students

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Cornell students returned to campus last week for the fifth semester of the pandemic era. What’s different about spring 2022, though, is that it is the first semester in which the University has actually gone backward in its return to normal operations. The entirely in-person fall 2021 has given way to a virtual start to the semester. Classes that cost an arm and a leg have been reduced to an experience akin to watching Khan Academy videos on YouTube. Students pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of online school, take-out meals, zero extracurricular activities and half-empty hockey games. 

The University administration has sold these two weeks of remote instruction as a means of minimizing academic disruption for students returning to Ithaca (President Martha Pollack, you see, is really doing you a favor).

coronavirus

History Repeating Itself: Spread of Coronavirus Causes Panic

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As the World Health Organization declared the spread of the coronavirus a “global health emergency,” more people on campus wore face masks to protect themselves from this disease. As of Thursday evening, over 200 people have died and 9,800 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed. While there are currently six confirmed cases in the U.S., there are currently no known cases of the disease in New York state. Cornell Health is collaborating with the Tompkins County Health Department to monitor the new strain of the coronavirus, but many students are still worried. Coronaviruses were first described in the 1960s, and are named after the “crown” of sugary proteins that stick out of them.

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Voting Down the Malware, One Quorum at a Time

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When I finally managed to pull myself out of bed after an epic battle with the flue, an article on CNET caught my eye: Symantec Corporation, the maker of Norton Antivirus, is pursuing a new form of malware prevention that turns the self-mutating abilities of certain malware against itself. The new product is called Quorum. The best part of it all? It’s slated for release on Wednesday, which means if you’re sick with the flu and your computer happens to be in the same boat, then you can take the new program for a test drive.

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Library Website Hacking Arouses Confusion for Site Visitors

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Visitors who searched for the term “Cornell University Library” on Google may have been surprised yesterday to find advertisements for anxiety pills rather than the familiar reference and collection lists.
The top search result read, “Order Xanax for next-day express delivery and free consultation by a U.S. licensed medical doctor.”
Further inspection revealed that the Human Ecology Historical Photographs site, hosted on the Cornell University Library’s server, displayed a listing for an online drugstore selling Cialis, an erectile dysfunction medicine. Visitors were directed to a site that allowed them to purchase the medicine as well as read testimonials about the product’s “benefits.”