Dear Professor Temperley,

We are sorry that the urge to engage in sexual intercourse came upon us while we were pet-sitting your pet chinchilla. In our defense, Preston began braying in the most unusual fashion, and, seeking to calm its fears, we both began to stroke its small, but supple, body. In addition, we put on some Ke$ha because that normally has the quite interesting effect of soothing Preston. Before we knew it, we began passionately kissing in the way that mainstream pop music lyrics encourage us to.

We have arranged for a furniture refinishing service to come and repair the varnish that may have been stripped away by our super-strength lube.

Best,

Tim Topper & Billy Bottem

P.S. Don’t blame us, blame Ellis Hanson’s porn-pushing class.

Anybody have any more details about the act, the “interruption,” or the note? Send it along to d.evan.mulvihill@gmail.com

An artist's rendering of the general flavor of this article.

If you have ever had your moments of doubt about the so-called liberal media, look no further than yesterday’s above-the-fold cover story in the esteemed Cornell Daily Sun. The article describes the pain, dismay, and utter, utter misfortune that 25 prospective students endured at the hands of the evil (Evil?) Office of Financial Aid. What happened was this: FinAid accidentally sent out a high-five e-mail to those 25 students, who had already been mercilessly rejected. According to the article, “Students who received the article said they were confused, disappointed, and outraged.”

Except it only quotes one of the Misfortunate Twenty-Five, whose bitter dejected/rejected ass obviously whines about what is really just a fairly excusable administrative error. Quoth the sore loser: “I can’t believe Cornell would be that irresponsible.” ∆∆∆∆∆∆∆∆dpwFN C

Oh sorry, just fell asleep on my keyboard. Where were we? Oh, right. The story continues on Page 4, with the wonderful new headline: “Rejected Students Outraged Over Financial Aid Office’s E-mail Debacle.” Chocolate outrage, y’all. De-BAC-le. Outraged author Lucy Li goes on to describe a far more colossal fuck-up on the Left Coast:

Cornell is not the only school that had issues with e-mail regarding applications and admissions this year. The University of California, San Diego, mistakenly sent acceptance e-mails to all 46,377 students who applied for admission, including the 29,000 applicants who were rejected, according to NBC San Diego.

I trust NBC, even though they’re totally owned by General Electric, but I don’t trust any news outlet in San Diego after that eye-openingly revelatory documentary Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. In any case, the climactic editorialization of a sentence:

These 29,000 students’ brief moments of bliss [because U.C. San Diego is HEAVEN ON EARTH] were crushed [CRUSHED!] when UCSD emailed [sic: you've been using hyphens all along! between the "e" and the "mails." consistency fail.] out their rejection letters two hours later.

I’m glad we have these sorts of tragic news stories to keep us from thinking about, you know, real tragedies like Darfur and Rwanda and starving kids in AfriChina. Also, like how the Green Cafe didn’t have ANY milk to serve my friend when she went there at 5am this morning. Seriously, I’m not fucking kidding you. I feel for her. I feel CHOCOLATE OUTRAGE for her.

While we’re at it (read: actually reading the Sun), there’s a purposefully hilarious story on Page 5. Headline is “Bowling Green State University Bans Art Depicting Oral Sex.” YES. I’m copying it here so it will live in PERPETUITY.

“Sami Drops a Deuce,” “John Put His Head in the Oven” and “The Man Who Hasn’t Seen His Genitals in Years” are just some of the titles of sculptures Bowling Green State University senior administrators deemed “appropriate.” However, roughly two weeks ago, those administrators removed a sculpture from an exhibit on the university’s Firelands Campus titled “The Middle School Science Teacher Makes a Decision He’ll Live to Regret,” sparking a heated controversy surrounding issues of art censorship, freedom of expression and child pornography.

According a news release from BGSU, the sculpture “graphically depicts a female middle school student, on her knees, performing oral sex on a standing male middle school science teacher.”

On March 17, David Sapp, an art professor at BGSU Firelands and director of the Little Gallery, was asked by Firelands Interim Dean James Smith to take down the sculpture because there were complaints that Smith worried would result in “problems with the press” or “legal” issues of the sculpture being labeled as “child pornography,” according to a memorandum Sapp sent to all faculty and staff at BGSU Firelands.

After Sapp refused to remove the sculpture, BGSU Interim Provost Mark Gromko directed Smith to remove the artwork.

According to Sapp, the sculpture was “near the window of the gallery, but could not be seen unless you walked into the gallery.” However, BGSU administrators were concerned that children attending the McBride Auditorium, located adjacent to the gallery, “may have been directly affected by the specific criminal act depicted.”

“As an institution of higher education, Bowling Green State University strongly supports the right of free speech and artistic expression. However, we also have a responsibility and obligation to not expose the children and families we invite to our campus to inappropriate material,” the news release said.

Despite the administration’s concern, Sapp said the McBride Auditorium is not exclusively a children’s theater and he had asked the director to keep the door locked and the gallery closed during children’s theater productions.

Sapp said the art exhibits at the Little Gallery are meant to “promote thought, discussion and a meaningful visual experience in a responsible way,” and he urged his colleagues to be aware of the “visceral force” and “tone” of the administrators at BGSU.

“The dean has established a very dangerous precedent for censorship in the Little Gallery and within every part of the college,” Sapp said in the memorandum. “The dean has severely undermined the very nature of the learning environment at Firelands College.”

After administrators censored the sculpture, Sapp closed the entire exhibit of 13 sculptures and is considering resigning from his position as director.

Other sculptures in the exhibit titled “A Bakers Dozen” depicted events or situations connected with the artist’s life, such as his wife combing his daughter’s hair, personal friends who committed suicide or social issues such as obesity.

“Each one is telling a little story, and this was just a series of little stories about people I know, things I’ve read, my family; they’re basically domestic stories in many ways,” said James Parlin, the exhibition’s artist and chair of the art department at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania.

Parlin said it wasn’t necessary for BGSU administrators to remove the sculpture and he supported Sapp’s decision to close the exhibit entirely. The aluminum sculpture in question is about “moral decision making,” Parlin said.

“The intent was to show someone making a bad decision, and I showed the man staring forward at his future of disgrace. In other words, it’s about a bad choice and the consequences of that bad choice,” Parlin said. “I was blindsided by this whole thing; I never expected anything like this in a million years. I didn’t plan this, for god’s sake.”

Parlin said he was not notified before the sculpture was removed, and he said it would have been easy to restrict access to children while still allowing adults to view the artwork. According to Parlin, American society benefits from freedom of expression and institutions of higher education such as BGSU should be environments that “honor that principle.”

“I like to be able to read what I want, listen to what I want, see what I want, and I don’t like other people making that decision for me,” Parlin said. “I think it’s an enormous mistake when we let other people decide that for any of us. Now protecting children is a different issue; I protect my own children.”

The controversy surrounding the sculpture is surprising because so few people have actually seen the artwork, Parlin said.

“This whole controversy is about a piece that virtually no one has seen. It’s not about the piece of sculpture; it can’t be because no one has seen it,” he said.

Nathan Trask, a junior majoring in liberal arts at the BGSU Firelands campus, said he saw the exhibit in its entirety and participated in protests following the administration’s decision to censor the sculpture. Trask said the exhibit wasn’t “overly impressive.”

“It was really more the social ramifications that were involved, the girl giving oral sex to a teacher and a few people committing suicide,” Trask said.

According to Trask, public institutions shouldn’t have the ability to censor art and the ramifications of BGSU censoring artwork reach far beyond Parlin’s sculpture.

“Institutions are supposed to further emotional and social and all sorts of learning, and to tamper with this side of learning, you cannot get the overall learning experience that you’re supposed to get from a state university,” Trask said. “People are careful what they say all the time; they’re careful what they write; they’re careful what they create in art classes because they don’t want all this outrage happening, and it really should be the opposite way.”

Tom Lingeman, an art professor at the University of Toledo, said the BGSU Firelands situation is “clearly” an example of censorship. Lingeman said he can’t be sure about anything specifically because he hasn’t personally seen the sculpture, however, “as far as [he] can tell there is a child sensitivity issue.”

Lingeman said he believes the BGSU administrators have to consider child sensitivity, but other choices could have been made to prevent closing the entire exhibit.

“If indeed the proximity of this to the involuntary viewing of children is a problem, then that needs to be considered,” Lingeman said. “In certain cases, censorship can protect those people who do not have the capability of accurately rationalizing what they see.”

According to Lingeman, the exhibit should have featured a warning label just as films or television shows feature parental guidance warnings.

“Censorship is practiced every day, and we don’t raise eyebrows about it all the time,” he said.

The exhibition policy at The Center for the Visual Arts in Toledo “promotes freedom of expression without restriction on content or form. The views expressed … are those of the exhibitors and may not be those of the department or the university.”

Lingeman said it is UT’s policy not to censor, and students are encouraged to freely express themselves through their artwork. In addition to encouraging UT students, Lingeman said he thinks Parlin should “make sculptures of whatever he wants and to show it. … However, the viewer should be warned that others have looked at the work and deemed it to be potentially … sexually explicit or violent.”

Sapp and BGSU administrators could not be reached for comments beyond the official news releases.

Dear Seniors,

On behalf of the 2009 Convocation Committee, I am pleased to announce that Mr. David Plouffe, Chief Campaign Manager of Obama for America, President Barack Obama’s historic presidential campaign, will headline the Class of 2009’s Convocation Ceremony on Saturday, May 23, 2009.

Our committee sought an individual who has had a profound impact on the society that our class has been prepared to enter. Mr. Plouffe was the mastermind behind one of the most significant and groundbreaking elections in our nation’s history.  His insights and leadership helped transform a little known state senator from Illinois to the leader of the free world.

President Obama, in his acceptance speech on election night praised Plouffe as “the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best political campaign in the history of the United States of America.”

The 2009 Senior Class Convocation will take place at 12:00pm on Saturday, May 23, 2009, at Schoellkopf Stadium on the Ithaca campus of Cornell University. The event is scheduled to last one hour.  No tickets are required at the event and seating is based on a first come, first serve basis.

I wish you the best for our final three months as Cornell undergraduates and hope you and your family will join us on May 23.

Very Truly Yours,

C.J. Slicklen
2009 Convocation Chair

Since Peter Fritch and I have already covered the ongoing campus debate about the recent flare-up in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict here and here, we’re going to present the following pictures of the new, “pro-Israel” Arts Quad display without comment. A note: I’m not sure if I got all of the signs, but my fingers were about to freeze off and lose grip of my precious, precious camphone, so take it or leave it.

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.