CornellWatch

Cornell.

After the group snowballed up and down the rows, they made their way over to the Review’s table and chanted a little about how Cornell must make them go away. And then some guy with a loudspeaker started talking, but I wasn’t really listening. There was a CoPo keeping the peace WHILE sucking on a lollipop (such talent!), and I tried to take a cell phone picture of him but I fucked it up. Anyway, their specific gripes (which a sweaty guy with a clipboard distributed before the “march” to random tables including Kitsch’s, urging us to fight the good fight with him) are after the jump. Also after the jump: why their gripes don’t really make too much sense.

[UPDATE (9/13): Before I get a flood of angry commenters, I want to let people know that I do not support in any way or form the Review. I am sorry that this post comes off like I’m shitting on activists, I’m not. I respect what you’re doing here but believe that it’s a bit misguided and needs to get its facts straight concerning the Cornell name and ask the administration to do something about the Review with a legitimate claim (aka please check their masthead for a disclaimer, I don’t have a copy handy). Please take this into consideration before you post comments.]

This is the text of the flyer (if you can call it that, it was actually just a Microsoft Word doc) the sweaty clipboard man gave out. On the front side is a pseudo-article citing various shit the Review said in their freshman issue:

“RACISM RUNS RAMPANT AT CORNELL

The Cornell Review says:

“…it’s impossible to ignore the nasty, ignorant, and bitter members of the minority community who constantly whine about the brutal oppression they suffer at the hands of whitey. Apparently, part of this oppression involves their admittance to an Ivy League institution, likely as a recipient of affirmative action and scholarships.”

AND

“These reapers of racial rage seclude themselves inside their ethnic ghettos (be it [program houses] Ujamaa, Latino Living Center, or Akwe;kon.” [I don’t know whose sic that is, but the semicolon should be just a colon.]

AND

“America has bigger fish to fry, like Abu al-Qaeda and Nawaf bin Taliban.”

AND

“Muslim inbredding in Europe may be link to transatlantic flight clampdown.”

AND

“…political ideology is genetically linked…an arranged marriage between families of radical Islamists, who hate everything about freedom and democracy results in offspring who hate twice as much…”

Here’s the second page, where they present their meticulously thought-out argument:

“This is not politics, this is blatant RACISM. The Cornell Review/Cornell American has intentionally and maliciously published racist propaganda during opening weekend that berates, offends, makes insecure, and intimidates students, especially freshmen.”

Did I miss something here? I didn’t see any pejoratives hurled at scurrilous freshmen overpopulating the good streets of Collegetown or even at students in general. (I know it wasn’t only freshmen littering my lawn with discarded Keystone cans.) Don’t they mean that the Review’s speech offends and attempts to intimidate them personally, them being mostly people living at Watermargin co-op and residents of program houses? (They’re the ones who met yesterday to discuss this whole thing anyway.)

“We can not tolerate this on our campus.

Can the Cornell Administration?

Can you?

Enough is enough.

Find the Cornell Review/Cornell American’s table at Club Fest and tell them you DO NOT want HATE SPEECH targeted at or representing the Cornell Community.”

Find me an instance where the Review purports to represent the Cornell community, and I’ll give you a dollar.

“Tell Cornell how you feel TODAY! Email Julie Paige (jlp10@cornell.edu) and Lynette Chappel-Williams (lc75@cornell.edu) to file a bias related incident report.

Cornell University provides specific authorization and written permission to the Cornell Review/Cornell American to use the Cornell Name. Tell Kent Hubbell you are shocked and ashamed of Cornell’s  endorsement of this racism and demand that Cornell Name authorization be revoked IMMEDIATELY! (dean_of_students@cornell.edu).”

Um, okay… I really don’t see the problem here. “Cornell” is in the title of the publication because it’s based at Cornell University and because there are tons of other publications called the Review. The general idea is not that this great and illustrious university is itself licensing their “shameful” publication; the name is there for mainly locational and conventional reasons. (If any commenters yell at me for defending the Review, please die promptly.)

You know, I’ve heard of this other shameful campus publication that uses the Cornell Name too: The Cornell Progressive! Take a look at their Web site–their use of Comic Sans in a headline (bold-faced, no less!) represents ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH THIS WORLD. They are shaming the Cornell Name with their typographical blasphemy!

Anyway, the official policy states that “Use of the name ‘Cornell University’ or ‘Cornell,’ in publication titles or organization names implying or tending to imply some official connection with the university, is prohibited except with the written permission of the university and under such restrictions and explanations as it may impose.” So there you go folks. OFFICIAL CONNECTION. The Review has never purported to be affiliated with the administration or faculty in any substantial way, so I think this claim is kaput. And would the university ever really license itself out to the Review? Srsly? What were their “restrictions”? “Don’t go too easy on them liberals! Yeehaw!”**

But there are other, real things to think about! The Review may or may not receive money from the SAFC (I’ve heard they have rich alums who donate so it might not be necessary), but that money is given out to publications with a VERY SPECIFIC STIPULATION (this is new, too, within the last year or so) that you put in your masthead a disclaimer stating that the views of the publication are TOTALLY not Cornell’s and that Cornell does not review what is being published. When I checked out the “About” page on thecornellreview.com (which by the way does not have any of the new stories up there), there’s no disclaimer. They ought to put that in there if they get money from the SAFC! Also, someone check their masthead, it should be in there too. Email dean_of_students@cornell.edu and let him know if it ain’t.

Lastly, people really ought to be up in arms about what a piss-poor layout the Review has. I’ll scan some and post them at a later date.

*One such sign, constructed on brown cardboard, said “STEREOTYP” on one side, which I thought was odd until I realized the other side said “STEREOTYPES ISOLATE.”

**I emailed the Dean of Students to check this shit out, just to make sure I’ve got my bases covered.

Tags: administration, ARGH ARGH ARGH, liberals, the review

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 at 10:09 pm by D. Evan Mulvihill and is filed under criticism, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.