The Week in Kitsch: Sagas Galore
EXHIBIT A: Ithaca Monorail? The Saga Begins.
Just when the Daily Sun had you convinced that Ithaca was becoming a crazy fascist anti-drunken college party state, the New York Times reminds you that they are in fact just a crazy socialist anti-gas guzzling SUV city. Last week, there was a conference held here to look into whether Ithaca could be a test site for a new commuter technology called “pod cars,” which are basically mini-monorails from Sweden and would cost the City a cool $100 mill. Which is probably about the amount of money they’re raking in from noise violations, so it all works out in the end. The idea is admittedly kooky, but it’s not the brainchild of some head-in-the-clouds faculty member: it comes straight from the files of Jacob A. Roberts, a failed Green Party candidate and canned Ithaca Festival director whose business acumen ended up landing Ithaca Fest $150K in debt. And some people, including Ithaca and Tompkins community members and a New York Times reporter, are falling for his pod car crazytalk despite his previous travesties!
One community member from a neighboring town enthusiastically forwarded a quirkily punctuated email from Roberts in which he hyped up the pod cars conference, saying “various Industry leaders, International PRT NGOs, and even other US city Mayors are already supporting Connect Ithaca* and its effort to situate Ithaca, NY and Tompkins County as the testing, development and manufacturing hub of the first major North American PRT network. Very exciting, indeed!” It would be very exciting, except for the fact that none of these PRT supporters are named. Very convenient, indeed!
EXHIBIT B: First Day of Battle Looms on GXC
We looked pretty good before on GXC, but now Cornell looks like it needs to get its act together. The only consolation is that Harvard is sucking hard.
EXHIBIT C: The Cornell Review Saga Continues
The activists who condemned the “extremely offensive, ignorant” speech of the Cornell Review’s orientation issue have formally lodged their complaints with the Student Assembly. While this is all legitimate, past attempts to censor the Review through administrative action have largely proved unsuccessful. And, just to clarify, we here at CornellWatch in no way support the inflammatory speech of the Cornell Review; we simply want to see the issue dealt with in a way that respects freedom of speech and does not attempt to silence voices even if they are horribly horribly racist unpopular ones.
If the Cornell name is taken off the Review, they may still choose to publish (or reprint) bigoted articles. Does anyone seriously believe that the Review represents an official arm of the University? Does anyone actually confuse their views as those of Cornell University? Again, I ask readers to go check their masthead out (especially the Orientation Issue one) and make sure that they include a disclaimer. As a Registered Student Organization, they have to abide by this rule.
*Wtf is Connect Ithaca? Here it is straight from the snake oil salesman’s mouth, since their Web site is currently down:
* Connect Ithaca* aims to facilitate a partnership among municipalities, campuses, and local neighborhoods to create high-quality vibrant and pedestrian friendly urban villages served by multi-modal transport systems that eliminate many of the negative effects of car-based, fossil-fuel dependent, sprawl development.
Admittedly, I have very little more than Internet research to go off, but * I call bullshit.* This isn’t the first time PRT has been touted as a transit panacea — former Minneapolis City Councilman Dean Zimmerman, a Green Party member like Roberts, hyped up PRT during his days in the political fray. He’s now serving a 30-month for receiving bribes from a developer who wanted help rezoning — the conviction apparently has nothing to do with PRT, but it bespeaks Zimmerman’s shady character. Locals ought to take lessons from history and at least watch out for Roberts.
Tags: cornell review, GXC, Ithaca, pod cars, tWiK
