The 2010 Cornellian Yearbook

So, my time at Cornell is wrapped up. It would seem fitting, not only as a graduating student, but for historical reference, to invest in a copy of the 2010 Cornellian yearbook.

Problem is, they suck.

First of all, if someone wanted to preorder, they make it pointless by offering no discount or advantage whatsoever. Not one dime, no personalization of the cover, nothing. There’s no incentive to order early so many people don’t. Of course, they print hundreds upon hundreds of copies anyway because they know over 3500 undergrads are about to graduate.

As Elie already noted, the historical accuracy and the writing are nothing short of atrocious. It would be one thing if they seemed to try at historical accuracy. But the mistakes are glaring, appalling, and most unfortunately, frequent.

I guess what I get hung up on are the photos of the students. Okay, so they sorted them by college (not done in older yearbooks). That’s cute. Rather pointless since everyone has friends spanning all schools and it makes them difficult to look up, but I digress. But it’s just a photo and a name. Could they at least make a half-hearted attempt to capture the glory of the old yearbooks?

The old yearbooks used to give a form to graduating seniors, usually when they had their photo taken, or sometimes submitted separately. The senior would give a very brief summary of their activities and accomplishments, no more than two of three printed lines. It usually went along these lines (and it varied depending on how much the person wanted to include):

HUXLEY, Martha. Ag. Ho-Nun-De-Kah. Cornell United Religious Work. Dean’s List.

HYMES, John.  Arts. Lambda Chi Alpha. Navy ROTC. Scabbard & Blade. Dean’s List. Graduate, Moorestown High School.

In earlier years, they were included in the space next to the photos. In later years, this section was moved to the back of the yearbook. In the past few years, it has been done away with completely. Which is a real shame. One of the things your yearbook should be memorable for is the inclusion of your accomplishments as well as those of your friends and classmates. Take that away and the yearbook loses a lot of its importance (especially to me, someone who would depend on those little bios for historical analysis of individuals).

On that note, the fraternity section — crap. The staff couldn’t get a group photo from each house as they have in almost every year prior? Bullcrap. Photos of the house are token, and all can be collected with a good set of wheels and a good camera within two or three hours at most. At least attempt to get a list of seniors from each house.

The yearbook tries to offset it’s cost (which, since it costs nearly $100, must not be working) by selling back pages to the parents of students seeking to lionize their children. I for one am not a fan of public displays of adulation. I have no desire to see full page ads of your son at ages 3, 8, 12, 17, and now and read about how proud you are. Couldn’t you have just bought a nice card instead? Back in the day, the Cornellian was more reliant on donations for ad space from companies in Ithaca – clothing and other retail stores, restaurants, B&B’s and the like. It was less egocentric and, in my humble opinion, more professional.

The photos in the Cornellian? Nice, but not nearly enough to make up for the steaming pile that comprises the rest of the book. Arguably, they can’t control the lack of hundreds of seniors from the yearbook either (which I felt uncomfortable looking through and not seeing their faces, but it’s their choice whether to get their photo taken or not).

I love history and I believe yearbooks are a valuable historical tool. Cornell has a fine tradition of quality yearbooks that are a great resource for research or even just the merely curious. But this was pathetic and shameful. This yearbook does not deserve to be associated with Cornell University and has diminished historical value.

In conclusion, the 2010 Cornellian Yearbook is absolute crap.

The Rush Week PR Disaster

Pike being booted is bad enough. But it looks like sororities haven’t been able to avoid trouble either.

If anyone has read Ivygate or the Huffington Post lately, apparently Pi Beta Phi’s dress manual for sisters during rush week was leaked, substantiating just about every single embarrassing sorority stereotype known to man. Not that everyone didn’t know there was a dress code, but the shallowness of it all really echoes with the sister who wrote the six-page guide. It’s not something that Pi Phi will get in trouble for since they didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s an embarrassment and a public relations debacle.

Watch out for those dress checks, ladies.

Speaking of which, this puts Greek Life at Cornell in an unpleasant situation. We have Pike and Pi Phi caught committing activities that portray the darker side of Greek Life by exposing some of the excessive drinking and superficiality, the kind that anti-Greek zealots thrive off of.  I know I made the joke a couple of entries ago about how I hope my fraternity sends no one to the hospital during rush week, but this is ridiculous. The goal of recruitment is to invite those interested into Greek chapters, not embarrass ourselves in a stereotypical shit-show that will have repercussions through the system. The reputation of the greek system at Cornell has taken a major hit this week, and Panhel and the IFC need to something, now. Advertising the high points of Greek Life in Sun Articles and OFSA publications is only a small part of the answer. Open and extended discussion of these events will be required at the meetings of the respective councils, and ways to improve upon it. Even if they don’t (which I’m being honest here, and know that things won’t really change), it will offer some good PR.

I know that some of the comments I’ve seen on facebook and other sites question the harshness of immediately stopping Pi Kappa Alpha’s recruitment and kicking them off campus. Let’s be frank – they deserved it. Yes, they sought the freshmen medical attention. Congratulations, by not letting them die they just avoided persecution under NYS law. However, the brothers still let it happen in the first place. Did not monitor the situation, did not prevent the freshmen from drinking to the point of poisoning, did nothing until their lives were actually in danger. The freshmen were stupid, but regardless of that the brothers should have been smart and prevented the situation from occurring. But they didn’t. They deserve every punishment that Cornell, the IFC, their national org, their alumni and anyone else delivers upon them.

The Planning Board’s Lack of Logic

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20090319/NEWS01/903190358/1002

Goody Clancy’s suggested plan:

The recommendations from the planning board

Note the differences. There are many. It’s as if they looked at the $200,000 study, said “it’s nice, but-”, and went the opposite direction.

So, the planning board has not only not accepted Goody Clancy’s advice, it’s doing the reverse – it’s making zoning even more restrictive, and (as suggested) making parking tighter in Collegetown in favor of garages in the city. I’m sure they’re patting themselves on the back for “preserving the neighborhood”. In my opinion, considering the parking and discouragement of multi-unit buildings, this seems to be a not-too-subtle suggestion to students from permanent residents: we don’t want you here.

My suggestion to permanent Collegetown residents: too bad. As Cornell’s class sizes increase, where do you think they’ll move? North is well protected as a historic district (Cornell Heights – and Cayuga Heights has had restrictions in place for years). West is largely undevelopable due to topography and the cemetery. Living outside the close proximity of Cornell will lead to students bringing cars with them, resulting in more traffic congestion, which is (and should be) discouraged.  Students will therefore move to Collegetown, and I’m willing to bet that as opprotunities arise, landlords will buy up the owner-occupied properties and turn them into student occupied houses, since there will be more demand. This may pass for now, but in the long term, the anti-development crowd is going to dwindle down. There’s nothing Mary Tomlan and the planning board can do about that.

Number Judging

I should really make it a point not to go to IFC elections. To maintain impartiality, I will not use the names of any candidates or any fraternities directly in this blog. That won’t stop the curious from going and looking them up, but that’s no concern of mine.

One of the positions I thought could be easier to determine if ones’ vote was the more appropriate choice is for the IFC’s recruitment position. The logic here is that looking at a fraternity’s membership intake over the past four semesters is a strong indicator of their abilities to recruit, what brought these individuals in and what they’ve been doing since then (in this case, one candidate is a junior, and although I can’t find anything on the other candidate’s fraternity website or on facebook, I would at least hope that he’s a junior. Otherwise, we all just made a terrible mistake, because a sophomore is in no way qualified for such a position).

So of course, the new OFSA report has been released [1] (yay!). As for the candidates, well say the first is from fraternity X, and the second from fraternity Y. Here’s their membership numbers:

Fall ’06, Spr ’07, Fall ’07, Spr ’08

X: 18, 37, 32, 45

Y: 40, 63, 44, 59

I’m inclined to think that fraternity X must have tried something new that was successful. I’m inclined to think Fraternity Y did roughly the same program both years, and it didn’t pay off as well last year. (Please don’t bother posting the “smaller number, better quality pledge” argument. We’ve all been around the block enough times to know that with the number of bids fraternities ”bestow”, it becomes a game of chance with other houses and therefore that argument is a load of bullshit). We elected Y. Granted, you can’t exactly pull this information up in the middle of the meeting, and you don’t find out the candidates until the meeting in many cases. I s’pose what helped me make my choice is that Y wants to retry the failed “Meet for Greeks” program that I criticized in a previous entry. In a sense, this is looking back on the decision to see if it was a good one. For the system, it’s increasingly apparent that it wasn’t.

But hey, what do I know? I’m just letting statistics play a role in my judgment.

[1]http://www.lgbtrc.cornell.edu/dos/cms/greek/upload/OFSA-AR08-final.pdf