Well, it’s another embarrassing day for Cornell.  Christopher Langone, a PhD student at our illustrious institution, recently filed a class-action law suit against rock band Rush for inconsiderately letting their Chicago concert get rained out—and he wants $$$ for those beers he bought, too, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

The band, which Wikipedia terms “Canadian progressive rock,” were supposed to perform in Chicago last Wednesday, July 7, but cancelled due to rain—apparently in spite of ticket stubs which read “rain or shine.”  Langone, who told the Sun-Times that he had flown to Chicago to see the show with old friends, did not take the disappointment gracefully.

Despite calling himself “a lifelong fan of Rush,” Langone has filed a class-action lawsuit demanding reimbursement for the six tickets he purchased (he says he can’t make the rescheduled concert) as well as airfare and other expenses.  And those other expenses include not only his travel expenses but, apparently, the round of beers he ordered at Charter One Pavilion before the concert was cancelled.

Really, Chris?  You want to be paid back for the beers?  I can understand some reasonable frustration at having traveled all the way to Chicago to see a cancelled show, but if you were really meeting up with old-time friends, they must have been pretty disappointing.

And as a “lifelong fan,” I’m shocked you couldn’t give the aging rockers a break.  They make have been some righteous dudes back in the seventies, but they’ve spent the last thirty years in Canada.  And I hate to break it to you, but I doubt a lawsuit’s going to get you the kind of autograph you want.

Langone, 42, is studying for his PhD in the Department of Communication.  I could imagine better PR than suing one’s supposed musical idol over a rained-out concert.

This strange sight was the Black Lantern Processional, a hundred-year-old tradition of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity.

Cornell University’s chapter of Alpha Sigma Phi has been performing the Black Lantern Processional every year as a commemoration of deceased brothers and as an initiation ritual for new pledges. This year and almost every year in the past, the event has fallen on Cornell Days, a weekend when Cornell hosts and recruits prospective students. Supposedly, one year a pre-frosh was so disturbed by the ritual that he decided not to come to Cornell the following year.

The Processional is certainly a strange and very public sight, and the brothers of Alpha Sigma Phi seem to take that very seriously. Older fraternity members were handing out quarter-cards explaining the event, which included a statement denying their association with supremacist or racist groups (many might agree that some of the cloaks are vaguely reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan garb).

The brothers handing out quarter-cards could not divulge too much information about the symbolism of the event, and the cloaked brothers would not even speak at all. Yet, the president of the fraternity was able to explain that at exactly 7:09 pm, the circle of black-cloaked brothers would converge in the center, and the blue-cloaked brother would lead them in a procession back to their fraternity house. Why 7:09? In military time, that is 19:09, the year that the fraternity was founded at Cornell.

And that is exactly what occurred.

Tomorrow (Thursday, April 23) an article will run in the Cornell Daily Sun.  It will showcase the following information.

At the beginning of this academic year I (Chris Donohoe) was asked to step down from my leadership position with a religious organization (Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship) on campus after coming out of the closet.  Although the university is taking aggressive action to address this injustice, it is time for the LGBT community and its allies to unite.

This is more than a slap in the face to one individual, this is a slap in the face to the entire LGBT community–especially those of faith.  Chi Alpha is basically saying that my sexuality–along with the sexualities of every other LGBT community member–is not legitimate in the eyes of God.

Consequently, we have planned a candlelight demonstration the evening of Friday, April 24.  All members of the Cornell and Ithaca community are encouraged to attend this peaceful demonstration.  We will gather in front of McGraw Hall on the Arts Quad from 7:15 until 7:45pm as members of Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship gather inside the building for their Friday night meeting. The event will last only 30 minutes.

Who: The LGBT community and its allies
What: A candlelight demonstration
When: Friday, April 24, 7:15pm-7:45pm
Where: On the Arts Quad in front of McGraw Hall
Why: To show that the Cornell and Ithaca Community is unified in its efforts to promote equal rights for all people.

BRING YOURSELF AND 5 FRIENDS!

Prez D-Skortz on LSD.

Everybody knows “The Economy” sucks. Even David Skorton, our university president (case ya didn’t know), whose Stanford-schooled super-senior son can’t even find employment despite the fact that he took an extra half-year to do an extra major! Sadface. Guess he’ll have to live off the meager $700,000/year salary that daddy earns — but let’s hope he doesn’t have too many coke parties, considering the fact that his noble father hath forgone a salary increase this year. At tonight’s “Senior Presidential Reception,” dapper gentlemen and ladies crowded around our president, trying to get a good word in, or perhaps just to snap a poorly aimed cameraphone picture (see left). And, although Skorton was both drily eloquent and soberly charming when my senior self spoke with him, he didn’t seem to have much to offer in the way of practical advice for seniors who have been fucked in the ass by a shitty job market, one that’s moreover flooded with recent laid-off bitches who are considerably more “senior” than us. “You’ll land on your feet,” he told us right before we toasted the Class of ‘09 with our recently bought $5 champagne glasses. We’ll be fine. Just fine! Right. D-Skortz had earlier told me that I still ought to consider newspapers. (Yawn.) And to talk to University spokesman Tommy Bruce, who I already know. “I often speak fairly unfavorably about the University administration,” I told him. In other words: What’s a brash blogger to do in these days? Skorton said that even critics can get jobs. You know, talking to Tommy might actually be a good option. Damn you and your good sense, D-Skortz. Maybe I will land on my feet. Also: good luck, Class of ‘09. Srsly.

1) Facebook all the candidates and compile an Excel spreadsheet of how many mutual friends (mutches! myootches?) you’ve got in common. Add up the Pres and VP totals, using an Excel formula if you’re extra wily. Make some notes about the 6 friends whose profile pic thumbnails the Facebook God has randomly chosen, why not?

2) Compare the total mutual friends of each Slate and begin to create an arbitrary ranking system. You can even install an optional weighting system with Excel formulas — multiplying by 1.5 if you really liked all 6 of those random thumbnail people, or maybe by 0.1 if the candidates’ FB pic kind of sucked.

3) Decide which Pres and VP candidate to vote for based on who has the highest Excel-calculated number.

Here’s my (unweighted) results, with some commentary and followed by the Top 10 Emptiest Campaign Promises:

1) “Winners”: Chris Basil and Nikki Junewicz (Team “You don’t know us? Do you even go here?”)

2) Runners-Up: Rammy Salem and Ola Williams (Team “Yes we can, Superman”)

3) Bronze: Scott Purdy and Emlyn Diakow (Team “ALL CAPS”)

4) Fail: Tony Miller and Emily Cusick (Team “We wrote our campaign pitch in the third person”)

5) Epic Fail Part Un: Andrew Brokman and Andy Gindy (Team “We recorded a fireside video chat in earnest”)

5) Epic Fail Part Deux: Jeff Rehberger and Ruslan Gudnyy (Team “One of us didn’t even show up to the WVBR debate”)

7) UNSUBSCRIBE: Murtza Manzur and Jon Dobrin (Team “Our 2-ply toilet paper crusade is not a mockery of Cornell’s election system”)

Just FYI: As of 9:19am today, I had 1,117 total friends on Facebook — which is above average in general but pretty subpar if I want to call myself a budding socialgay. Out of that thousand+, 538 (about 48%) are from the Cornell network. Also FYI: I’m going to vote for the toilet paper guys, just because their Youtube video was hilarious and because I like to “subvert” ranking systems — even my own.

TOP 10 EMPTIEST CAMPAIGN PROMISES

10) “If there’s enough money left over, we may just put it toward an underground tunnel system (but don’t hold us to that one).”

9) “A vote for Tony Miller and Emily Cusick is a vote for the best candidates.”

8) “Address student life issues such as the Ithaca Noise Ordinance and develop a Leasing Policy for students in Collegetown.” (Sadly.)

7) “ensuring a free SPORTS PASS for all undergraduate students”

6) “Integrating Cornell with the Ithaca community”

5) “Free Bus Pass to All Cornell Students”

4) “creating a CAMPUS PUB for interaction beyond the classroom”

3) “I have a voice.”

2) “If elected, I promise to make the club funding process easier and more comprehensive [sic: comprehensible] so that any freshman can understand it. Vote Brokman and Gindy. We’ll get you your funding.”

1) BB2P

For those actually wanting to engage in a dialogue, meaning the Islamic Alliance for Justice (IAJ), Hillel, Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee (CIPAC), and the Daily Sun herself, a real panel discussion was held the next day in the same exact room (Lewis Auditorium), one in which the panelists (gasp!) seemed to know what they were talking about.

The discussion was the brainchild of Kitsch’s favorite Sun editor Leigha Kemmett ’10, who said that it was “in response to Skorton’s column a few weeks ago, in which he suggested that the student body engage in a dialogue.”

She continued: “He didn’t make any actual suggestion on how to do it, though. I figured that we’ve written a lot of editorials about engaging in a dialogue, so I thought we might as well try to spark a real conversation that wouldn’t polarize either side.”

After her opening remarks welcoming the panelists, Cornell Professors David Patel, Government, Matthew Evangelista, Government and Peace Studies, and visiting Professor Sanford Gutman, History and Jewish Studies, she allowed the other co-sponsors to introduce themselves and the event as well.

Tara Malik ‘09, President of the IAJ, briefly prefaced the event by saying that the IAJ is co-sponsoring the event because they have been grossly misrepresented in biased articles and opinion columns in campus publications regarding the events in the last few weeks. (She’s referring to the vandalism of the flags on the Quad, in case you’re a zombie Engineer who never sees the light of day.) Hillel President Jacob Shapiro ‘10 followed up with an introduction which was, in my memory, diplomatic. To be honest, I missed most of it because my pen died and I was scrambling for another one. Burn in hell, bic! Then the panelists took the floor.

The first was Patel, who explained that events like these need to be thought of as puzzles, phenomena in which the only way to solve them is to grasp as many pieces as possible, rather than cherry-picking facts. After this, he worked his way through various possibilities as to why, after six months of a pretty peaceful ceasefire, Hamas dramatically increased their rocket fire, and why Israel reacted in the way it did.

With regards to the first puzzle, Patel speculated that it “has less to do with Israel and more to do with disagreements within Hamas,” and that the sudden increase in rocket attacks was not a unilateral decision on Hamas’s part but rather one made by factions within Hamas disagreeing with how they are running the government. The second question? Patel said that the particular way Israel launched attacks on Gaza suggested a desire to weaken the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, perhaps in order to allow members of Fatah, the political party preceding Hamas, to reclaim Gaza.

The following panelist, Gutman, essentially said similar things in a less articulate way, adding that the Israeli and American elections played a crucial role in the timing of the attacks, that it’s worth noting that Israeli Jews almost unilaterally supported the incursion in Gaza until some people started speaking out, and that Hamas felt they didn’t get anything from the ceasefire.

Evangelista, the last panelist, analyzed the claims regarding war crimes coming from both sides, claims that account for much of the emotion (and much of the flag stomping and rearranging) that has occurred in recent weeks. He broke it down (by which I mean talking, not break dancing) by describing the distinctions between different frameworks people use to interpret and classify the rules of war. He then talked about proportionality, what it means, and what conceptual frameworks both sides have used to interpret issues of proportionality in different ways.

By the end, the walls seemed to be clear of slung shit and the CU policeman standing in back (who was probably itching, just a little bit, for a riot) did not seem to be needed. There was a bit of heat in the question and answer sesh, especially with a couple of sharply articulated questions, one of which regarded D-Skortz’s decision to not divest from Israel after the conflict in Gaza. By the end, though, it became clear that the panelists weren’t there to state opinions but to state facts and speculations, which, I guess, are important too.

I asked Khullat Munir ’09, former president of the IAJ, after the discussion if she was satisfied by how it turned out.

“Not really,” she said. “I think it brought out a lot of objective points and good analysis, which, don’t get me wrong, is very important, but I also got the impression that the panelists were trying to make a point, almost getting to a point, but then falling short.”

Amy Pearlman ’09, former president of Hillel, agreed, but was nevertheless satisfied. She said, “I think that a couple of the professors were holding back on their opinions of right and wrong, for the sake of academic discourse. I think the censorship on their part was, if anything, more of a benefit than a detriment.”

Both the current presidents of Hillel and the IAJ avoided me like the plague after the discussion was done, but I just now (Literally, just now!) received an email from both Malik and Shapiro which I will post below (Don’t worry, I extracted all their lol’s). Here’s Malik’s:

Hey Peter!!

I’m so sorry for having to leave when I was talking to you! I am so sorry, I’ve just been drained this whole week, so much work to do! But sure, I can certainly tell you my take on tonight’s event.

First, I am glad that the event did happen in light of the events that have happened on Cornell campus the past few weeks. I know that I certainly commend any form of constructive dialogue and discussion, and especially on a topic that I feel is so important to so many students on campus. Furthermore, the fact that it was an academic discussion with Cornell Professors who provided a historical context to the situation and critical thinking in assessing the events of Gaza with the history in mind, it really was informative and I think a lot of people walked away with gaining more knowledge, insight and history. There were also many good questions that engaged the audience and addressed an array of topics from why professors hesitate to discuss the Israel/Palestinian conflict in a panel like today’s, to if the professors’ thought that Israel and/or Hamas accomplished their goals with their actions within Gaza in December and early January.  I think that today’s panel was successful on educating people about the topic, and it’s a good beginning to other discussions and dialogues that can occur in the near future as well!

Here’s Jacob’s second email:

sorry, made two typos! fixed it!
Hi Peter,

I thought the panel was terrific, and I thought it was an appropriate response to the embarrassing debate that happened yesterday. I was proud to be a part of the co-sponsorship of it. I thought each question was dealt with thoughtfully and from different view points, and I felt that I came away having learned a lot from the discussion. I’m proud of the Cornell Daily Sun for creating the space necessary for this type of thoughtful, educational dialogue, and I hope in the future the University sponsors events similar to this one rather than supporting events that serve only to polarize and spread misinformation as happened last night. I quoted Alan Bloom at the start both symbolically and because I think what he said was true — reason is truly the only way to liberate minds from prejudice. We took a step towards that liberation tonight.

Let me know if you need anything else,
Jacob

Given a sideways smiley face on Shapiro’s part, and an egregious excess of exclamation points on Malik’s, I’d venture to say the panel went well.

It was just one of those moments. Time stood still, and everything began anew. Long before midnight, just seconds after the polls closed in California, Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States of America. As I stepped onto College Ave., car horns were honking, strangers were hugging, and fireworks were sent loudly into the sky. Half an hour later standing in one of Collegetown’s many half rate bars, we all crammed around the television as Obama took to the stage and gave a beautiful and beautifully orchestrated victory speech.

It was, of course, hardly a victory speech. It was a presidential speech. The Obama campaign would not let anyone into the park with an Obama sign. You were only given an American flag or nothing at all. The stage had no symbols from his campaign but merely a stoic line of Old Glories.

The speech weaved and bobbed through history, touching on our past and our present. It was a reminder that the president-elect will be the head of all 50 states, not just the blue ones. As his words crashed down, and the Motown picked up, the nation sighed a sigh of relief – relief because the election was over. Two years on both sides of rage, race, and ruckus was now a park full of Americans dancing to Stevie Wonder.

It was amazing to me how real and imperfect Obama seemed on that stage. He seems so tangible and human. MLK, Gandhi, Mother Teresa never seemed real to me. They were beyond reality. Obama looks like you should be having dinner with him, not listening to him give eloquent speeches. His persona and his story are so much larger than larger than life, yet his personality is so simple.

Here we are just over two weeks later, and the world has quietly been turned on its head. For most of America we returned to our lives. Washington has erupted into pious power jockeying… no surprise there. So as Obama’s various constituencies line up and demand him to pony up, let’s join to course, Cornell did vote overwhelmingly blue – didn’t we?

Barack Obama as President could have an incredible impact upon colleges such as Cornell. For starters, I believe Obama’s Washington will become a hotbed of activity and jobs. I suspect Cornellians, who dreamed of shaping policy will find far more opportunities than under the Bush administration. Following the election of FDR, Washington became a beehive of college graduates, helping investigate and crunch the numbers on what became the New Deal. With the increase in think tanks, this should only be greater. Furthermore, with the crash of the stock market many economics and finance students might want to turn their dreams from Wall Street to K Street.

Beyond jobs in Washington, Obama wants to increase service opportunities. I bet we will find Teach For America, the Peace Corp, and other new programs well funded.

Obama has pledged to invest in research, and Cornell, undoubtedly, will find its already deep pockets further padded during this process. Bush has been unbelievably good at cutting funding for science. America uniquely teaches its students to be creative, and this has facilitated our dominance of science for years. But over the past few years, our students have had to become far too creative as they attempted to reach for the stars with no money. I believe engineering, space studies, agriculture, and economics in particular will find funding easier to come by.

Most importantly, Obama’s tax plan stands to save students thousands of dollars a year. His tax plan, for the first time in history, will offer up to $4,000 in tax breaks for families sending their children to college. He also hopes to end our disastrous experiment with privatized student loans. Opponents of this plan call it socialism, but it is the current system that most resembles the Soviet Union. Under our current system, the federal government will pay student loan companies back if students default on loans. So the loan company jacks up the price in order to make sure students default on their loans, because they know the government will pay the inflated bill.

Sadly, an Obama presidency will most likely result in less material for comedians. Gone are our days of stopping our homework at 11:00 PM to snuggle up to our John Stewart to get our requisite half an hour of Bush hating. Let us just hope foreign leaders can ante up and cover our humor deficit.

Beyond Cornell, Washington has been shuffling people faster than you could imagine. Rahm Emanuel? Really? the chorus of pundits and insiders cried. Emanuel has been chosen to be Obama’s Chief of Staff. Now this is the most important secretarial position in the country, a position which on the surface sounds boring at best. Emanuel is known as “The Bulldog” and is known to have a vast vocabulary of four letter words. This, many feel, goes against Obama’s image. Now, people… people, people, people… Obama ran for president on a platform of cotton candy and rainbows. Washington is made out of blood and destruction. Emanuel was a signal to Pelosi, Reid, unions, civil rights groups, women’s groups, and anyone else who thinks they elected Obama, that they are not in charge. Any other choice would have been unwise and irresponsible.

We have already seen them lining up at Obama’s door. Pelosi thinks she can move hard left suddenly, and Harry Reid forgot that he needs 60 votes to pass anything and is trying to force Lieberman out of the party. Unions want labor law reform, day one. Women’s groups want greater protections for abortion. Immigrant groups want amnesty. It’s insanity, and if Obama is not careful he will be rendered useless sometime around February 1st.

This does raise an important point. Obama will not be all puppies and rainbows, or even change and YES WE CAN. By the end of January – just 10 days into his term – I bet that most of use will be upset with something he did. Columbia Free Trade Agreement? Sorry unions. Complete National Health Care? Maybe not. Quick withdrawl from Iraq? Maybe next year. For those who could not keep their heads on straight and believed that Obama is the second coming, you will be sorely mistaken… and for that, I am sorry.

It has been wonderful to watch how quickly the world has fallen back in love with us. We are (yet again!) the land of opportunity. I think we should all take pride in the fact that we are the first country to elect a national minority as head of state. Iraq’s government on November 5 told the New York Times that they are excited because Obama will actually respect their withdrawal time table. Since 9/11, we have forgotten the power of peace, we have forgotten the respect and power that comes from silence, and we have forgotten what it means to be a citizen of this world.

This next year will be rocky; it will be exciting; it will frustrate; but most of all it will be different. As we take solace in victory over race, let us not forget Barack’s own warning, “This election is not about me; it’s about you.” Good luck to those who do not react.