CornellWatch

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). Read the rest of this entry »

Most of Cornell’s class-attending pedestrians have encountered the earnest appeals of various student groups’ clunky quad displays. I, for one, have calmly settled into the habit of taking their message to heart, and then promptly forgetting it sometime during my requisite mid-lecture nap. After all, it’s a little unrealistic to envision a talking fetus named Elena, especially one giving you facts about her developing organs that she wouldn’t learn until at least ninth grade biology class.

When the encounter involves some 1,300 black flags commemorating the deaths of those killed in the most recent flare-up of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as it did this Monday morning when they were installed, it’s a little harder to criticize the reality of the message or to exorcise it with a nap. Adding fuel to the fire, the flags’ accompanying signs — statements from the UN and Amnesty International about casualties and humanitarian aid — were vandalized by three seemingly “pro-Israel” students later that day. While that situation was quickly rectified and the signs restored, the worst was to come Wednesday night, when the flags were transfigured into a Star of David under cover of darkness, finally garnering the attention of President David Skorton. Here’s an excerpt of the statement he released this afternoon, which neglected to mention the whole, um, Star of David thing:
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Since I’m really into alliteration and forcing myself to do things on a weekly basis, I’m introducing ‘Malgam Mondays. This start-off-the-week-on-the-informed-foot feature will, with a few exceptions, be a regurgitation/reanimation of the stuff I’ve starting posting to the News Ticker, which shows up on CornellWatch itself on the top right side but not on the main Kitsch-Ka-Blogs page. This way I can wipe it clean each week. Here’s the best of the boring things that happened since I started the Ticker. Click on for even more boring stuff.

Least appreciated Cornell alum in hot water over technicality: Ann Coulter voted in Connecticut while living in New York. In other news, no one really cares. Except maybe the person who photoshopped the image at left. [Cornell Insider] P.S. We apologize to any Nazis offended by the image.

Milstein hits new roadblock: The plans for the construction of Architecture building Milstein Hall have already taken 10 years to push through. But no! It must not go forward, claim annoying profs like Vincent Mulcahy, who doth protest the lack of accessibility to differently-abled persons: “A handicap [sic] person who might want to study architecture here, it’s impossible.” [News 10 Now]

The nerve!: Either CornellWatch is too young, too unread, and/or too unfabulous, or we got SNUBBED by USNews.com in their “Best Alternative Media Outlet 2008″ contest. Whatever. IvyGate is in dead last, so we’re going to try to be schadenfreude-y about that. [USNews.com]

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