Cornell Insider Staff
Oliver Renick
Joe Bonica
Lucia Rafanelli
Hannah MacLean
Peter Bouris
lukepolicastro
zjw5
Anthony
Brendan Patrick Devine
Sam Pell
kmccaffrey
Greg Stein
Michael Alan
nkantro
Alfonse Muglia
Cornell_Karim
R. Patrick McCaffrey
dillonhickman
Jonathan Jaffe
Roberto Matos
Kushagra Aniket
L.R. Conrad
Roshni Mehta
Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on February 15, 2010
Check out our new official website. Here you will be able to read and comment on all the articles that are featured in our bi-weekly publication. Don’t forget that you can email thecornell.review@gmail.com if you would like to receive a notification every time a new issue is released.
Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: Cornell Review | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 15, 2010
This week, Andrew Brokman will be pushing his ‘anti-discriminatory’ proposal through the SA, where he hopes it will have the ability to affect individual groups. Of course, this was expected. But today I have to remove myself from the SA / UA debacles.
What I found as a reading alternative was put in front of me via a MetaEzra link under the label ‘Most. Amusing. Article. Ever.’ I have to agree. The article on crow infestation and bird droppings by Jeff Stein is very entertaining and quite funny in a very dry, seemingly unintentional, Mr. Gnu-ish kind of way. I can’t really explain it, you just have to read it. It certainly isn’t news-worthy or profound, but is a hundred times more entertaining than most articles that grace the Stun pages.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged: Daily Sun | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on February 14, 2010
- A disappointing weekend for Cornell sports, with both hockey and basketball going 1-1.
Still #1 in Ivy Basketball.
- Elie has a cool illustrated post on Cornell Law School selectivity.
- The “New Budget Model” via METAezra.
- Did anyone run into ‘Deadheads’ over the weekend?
- Cornell women’s ice hockey standout Rebecca Johnston had three assists in Canada’s 18-0 rout of Slovakia at the Vancouver Olympics.
- A Cornell senior wins a Churchill Scholarship.
- Maybe I’m just not that good at game theory, but this does not seem like a dominance solvable game.
- More on drinking psychology.
- The Economist leader discusses the new threats to the global economy.
- GMU Law Professor Ilya Somin has an interesting op-ed on political ignorance.
- Krauthammer discusses Russia’s approaching monopoly on rides into space.
Posted in Campus Insiders, National News | Tagged: Cornell Basketball, Cornell Budget, Cornell Hockey, Cornell Law School, Krauthammer, politics | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 14, 2010
According to a recent study conducted by Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, businesses experience greater success if they have a welcoming and diverse working environment. As cited by Lynette Chappell-Williams, associate vice president of workforce diversity and inclusion at Cornell, such a workplace has proven to show significant financial rewards.
“When you have an environment that is truly inclusive, individuals feel comfortable being themselves,” Chappell-Williams said. “They feel more comfortable sharing ideas, and it’s through all these different perspectives that you come up with innovation.”
This doesn’t exactly surprise me – a multiplicity of ideas and perspectives is the most conducive to weeding out bad ideas and pushing good ones forward. Cornell is apparently on the cutting edge of ‘diversity initiatives’ in the workplace (no surprise there, either), and is hosting workshops for companies at the ILR School. However, if this study is in fact accurate, then affirmative action – as defined now – in the workplace should eventually disappear. Companies will no longer need to hire based on a moral obligation, but rather for their own good. We’ll see.
Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: affirmative action, diversity, ILR School | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 11, 2010
[UPDATE]: I realized I just couldn’t let this pass until later. As an update to my earlier post about yesterday’s UA resolution to pass a worthless – in every sense of the word – anti-discriminatory clause, I’d like to present the following to our readers.
For those of you who haven’t read the Daily Stun‘s editorial today, here is an excerpt (the only excerpt worth reading):
…an anti-discrimination clause would inhibit the University’s ability to provide free speech, free association and free expression rights in a manner akin to the federal government….we deny that Cornell should provide such unrestrained First Amendment rights to its students in the first place.
Finally. I can finally give praise to the Stun editors for not restraining their eternal, deepest, most insidious desire to send a giant middle finger to the Constitution of the United States of America. At very last they have come out of the radical closet to admit that they believe Cornell University should have every right to impede upon every student’s free speech, association, and expression. I’m proud to be part of an institution that allows me to print a paper this coming Wednesday that will offer an opinion of reasonable, perhaps intellectual, and stable mind.
If you agree with the editors at the Cornell Daily Sun that you are smarter, wiser, more prudent, and more visionary than all of the following men, then support their movement. Or, if you are rebellious enough to embrace the belief that the following men had something good going on, or if you just enjoy your liberty, I desperately ask you to make yourself known. Write Skorton. Write the Review. Write the Stun. Write on your blog. Post a comment. Be heard.
People the Stun thinks are baffoons:
1 Washington, George
2 Read, George
3 Bedford, Jr., Gunning
4 Dickinson, John
5 Bassett, Richard
6 Broom, Jacob
7 McHenry, James
8 Jenifer, Daniel
9 Carroll, Daniel
10 Blair, John
11 Madison, Jr., James
12 Blount, William
13 Dobbs, Knight
14 Williamson, Hugh
15 Rutledge, John
16 Cotesworth, Charles
17 Pinckney, Charles
18 Butler, Pierce
19 Few, William
20 Baldwin, Abraham
21 Langdon, John
22 Gilman, Nicholas
23 Gorham, Nathaniel
24 King, Rufus
25 Johnson, William
26 Sherman, Roger
27 Hamilton, Alexander
28 Livingston, William
29 Brearley, David
30 Paterson, William
31 Dayton, Jonathan
32 Franklin, Benjamin
33 Mifflin, Thomas
34 Morris, Robert
35 Clymer, George
36 Fitzsimons, Thomas
37 Ingersoll, Jared
38 Wilson, James
39 Morris, Gouverneur
Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: Code of Conduct, Constitution, Daily Sun | 6 Comments »
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 11, 2010
Any form of an anti-discrimination clause is a bad idea. They’re overly broad, ambiguous, and in practice usually accomplish nothing. Of course, some students on the Stun, Student Assembly and University Assembly fervently disagree. They propel their idea by the tactic of labeling their opposition as being discriminatory bigots. Nobody wants to be that one guy who disagrees with ‘the rest.’ So, the proponents of such legislation are experiencing some success. Today that team, led by Andrew Brokman, has managed to encompass all of the properties of a typical discriminatory clause (see: broad, ambiguous, useless) and passed Resolution 14 (PDF of Res – please read). Among other issues, this resolution will literally change nothing. Brokman is quoted in the Stun saying “it puts people on notice that if you harass someone…then there will be consequences.” Profound.
Now Brokman is often on the same page as we at the Insider but we’re reading completely different books on this one. Because he wants to take it one step further, and extend the resolution’s words to apply to individual organizations. As of now, according to the Stun, the UA cannot interfere with individual cases; Chi Alpha would still rightly be able to remove Donohoe from leadership. So what has the UA accomplished as of yet? About as much as Rammy has by proposing elimination of the swim test. Right now the two assemblies are struggling for relevancy. If there’s nothing good to be passed, they shouldn’t pass anything – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are times when idle legislators are more insightful than active ones. If the members of the SA and UA are really getting this jittery in their seats, they can come help me with my engineering homework.
More to come…
Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: Andy Brokman, Code of Conduct, Student Assembly, University Assembly | 5 Comments »
Posted by Oliver Renick on February 10, 2010
Yes, once again, I have referenced my favorite line (kinda) from Ace Ventura. But who’s looking for Sarah Palin, and consequently, clean shorts, you may ask? The answer: the Left. The other answer: because she absolutely scares the daylights out of the people who hate her.
Day in and day out, you can find some frightened liberal ranting about how stupid she is, how subversively she acts, and how our nation’s imminent doom comes hand in hand with her popularity. Let me set the record straight: I do not favor Sarah Palin as a politician or conservative leader. I think she is rather dull. I think she is under-qualified to be president. I think she is a good person, she’s hot, and I’d love to hunt small animals with her. And every time I hear her assailants launching into another spiteful, awful diatribe against her, I cringe in my seat. Yet I have to bear it, because the diatribes only contribute to the illegitimacy of the speaker – every hateful comment is a self-inflicted wound that drives them deeper into insignificance. But regrettably, this also drives more followers to the Palin political bandwagon.
If only they realized this. If the Left could only control their bitterness, just hide it for two more years. Yet they betray their own creed of being the most intellectually superior and better human beings by being blind to these repercussions. While they smash Palin for being “foolish” (Matt Rothschild, The Progressive), or “having nothing going on mentally” (Chris Matthews, Hardball),” they are in fact promoting her success, and consequently their own failure. But that doesn’t surprise me, because Matthews is a moron. But our own too-cool-for-school Daily Stun writers fall in the same trap, calling Palin’s success a “steaming pile of ****” and saying she “wages war on thoughtfulness.”
Stun writer Cody Gault accuses “pseudo-anti-intellectuals like Harvard-educated Bill O’Reilly and Cornell-educated Ann Coulter” of promoting the “notion that being smart and sophisticated is un-American.” As people like Cody jump at the opportunity to make their articles more venomous and their malevolence more obvious, the line at the Going Rogue book signing gets longer. Calling people simple and dull for liking someone doesn’t bring them to your side. When you insult Palin, you insult her followers, and you push them closer towards her. When has that ever been a strategy to bring people to your cause? Perhaps, gentleman, it’s time to try a different approach to shutting down the Palin power machine?
But Matthews and Gault are too trigger-happy at the prospect of condescension. They are unwilling to exchange their contemptuousness – their scorn – for what they supposedly want: an insignificant and powerless Palin. Wise up, ‘pseudo-anti-intellectuals,’ stop being pinheads.
Posted in Miscellaneous, National News | Tagged: Daily Sun, Palin | 4 Comments »
Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on February 9, 2010
Former Cornell Professor Thomas Sowell writes about an absurd proposal at Berkeley that would cut several science positions in order to save money for programs that help underachievers. Here’s a short excerpt:
The point is to close educational gaps among groups, or at least go on record as trying. As with most equalization crusades, whether in education or in the economy, it is about equalizing downward, by lowering those at the top. “Fairness” strikes again!
This is not just a crazy idea by one principal in Berkeley. It is a crazy idea taught in schools of education across the country. A professor of education at the University of San Francisco has weighed in on the controversy at Berkeley, supporting the idea of “projects designed to narrow the achievement gap.”
He goes on to discuss how liberals have utilized the the term “privilege”- equating it with success in every arena of life- to evade “the question [of] whether individuals’ own priorities and efforts affect outcomes, whether in education or in other endeavors.”
This particular proposal has received some national attention, but perhaps it is only an isolated incident. I would be interested to know how other schools have redirected funding away from or towards these special programs during the inevitable budget reviews of the past two years.
Posted in Campus Insiders, National News | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on February 9, 2010
Yes, you heard it right- all of you who said Cornell should be grateful for getting a #25 ranking in the ESPN/USA Today poll and shouldn’t expect to move any higher- we’re now up to #22! We’re also a few votes away from cracking the top 25 in the AP poll.
On a related note, check out this interesting article from The Dartmouth on Ivy basketball and the possibility of an end of the year Ivy League basketball tournament. I like the author’s idea, but I do disagree with this part:
If Cornell were to stumble in an Ivy League tournament, maybe with a fluke loss to Columbia or even Princeton, and lose the automatic berth, the selection committee probably wouldn’t jump at the chance to use up an at-large bid on a second Ivy League school at the expense of a big-name program. Instead of sending a potential nine-seed (or higher) with a ton of upset potential, the Ivy League would be left with a high-teens seed waiting to get steamrolled, as usual.
While I would be legitimately concerned about a deserving team not making it to the NCAA Tournament because of an upset in an Ivy tournament, I doubt this would be a problem for a team as strong as this year’s Big Red. I simply can’t envision the selection committee not giving an at-large bid to a team ranked #22 in the nation (or higher), Ivy or not.
Posted in Campus Insiders | Tagged: Cornell Basketball | 2 Comments »
Posted by Cornell Insider Staff on February 7, 2010
- Months later, Maine highlights the underutilization of our emergency alert system.
Lego competition in Duffield.
- The Ivy League is apparently immune to such problems, but here’s an analysis of what happens when you have a 60-40 ratio on campus.
- Another big weekend for men’s basketball, while hockey goes 1-1.
- Two Cornell professors discuss gender equality in engineering.
- This was from last week, but in case you didn’t hear, tuition is going up. (Via METAezra).
- How did I miss this?
- New Pew research says blogging is down among young adults.
- Our friends at the Stanford Review blog cover an interesting on-campus debate about Christianity and capitalism.
- Another reminder that Cornell’s fraternity mishaps pale in comparison to the stuff that unfortunately goes on at other schools.
- It’s an old story now, but kudos to Pi Phi for getting their fashion guide picked up by… Fox News!
- Some sort of spiderman device, brought to you by Cornell researchers.
- Stephen Hayes argues that the White House is politicizing intelligence.
- We might have two more sets of confirmation hearings on our hands in the near future.
- Finally, I can’t help but pass along this fascinating bit of experimental research. Hat tip to JP.
Posted in Campus Insiders, National News | Tagged: Cornell Basketball, Cornell Engineering, Cornell Hockey, Greek Life, Obama, Stanford Review, Supreme Court | Leave a Comment »
