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March 2006
Big Red All The Way To The Frozen Four?
Well maybe, but first they are going to have to get past Colorado College and No. 1 seed Wisconsin in the Midwest regionals this weekend in Green Bay. Reports U.S. College Hockey Online : While the location may be frustrating, if Cornell focuses on the Badgers then it will have overlooked the very real challenge posed by Colorado College. Few teams in the country will be able to challenge the Big Red's weaknesses better than the Tigers, who present an interesting contrast. Cornell excels on defense and special teams, and relies heavily on the play of netminder David McKee to protect leads. Colorado College, on the other hand, is led by two of the most talented forwards in the nation: Brett Sterling and Marty Sertich, both finalists for the Hobey Baker. The key for Cornell may be how successfully its defense and its penalty kill can control Sterling and Sertich. The Big Red has the sixth best defense in college hockey, allowing only 2.24 goals per game, and the nation's No. 7 penalty kill. And while Cornell's offense may at times struggle, the Big Red's power play remains potent. The top unit is led by forwards Matt Moulson, who has scored 11 of his 17 goals with the man advantage, and Byron Bitz, who's tallied six of his 10 scores on the power play. Matthew Nagowski | March 24, 2006 (#) Cornell Freshman Found Dead at UVA The Daily Sun reports: Campus police said the cause of death was unknown, but that there was no evidence of foul play. Pearlstone was visiting a friend at UVA during Cornell's spring break. Howard Pearlstone, Matthew's grandfather, told the Associated Press his grandson had been out "partying" the night before he was found dead in a bed in Cauthen residence hall. The state medical examiner in Richmond will perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Pearlstone, who was a computer science and electrical engineering major at Cornell, was originally from St. Louis. He was a member of the Cornell University Autonomous Underwater Vehicle club and was named to the Dean's list. Before graduating from Ladue Horton Watkins High School, he was a marathon runner, captain of the swim team and a member of the varsity water polo team. He was also an honor student, a National Merit finalist, and a National AP Scholar. UVa's student paper has some more on the story. Given the ineptitude of the Daily Sun's investigative reporting as of recent (Andy has more here), this is probably the best information we are going to get on Pearlstone's death. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pearlstone was at a fraternity party during the course of his last evening alive. Matthew Nagowski | March 21, 2006 (#) Economic Diversity Across Cornell's Colleges Do Cornell's contract colleges add to its socio-economic diversity? Matthew Nagowski | March 07, 2006 (#) Our Facebook Prez I've just become "friends" with Cornell's new president, David Skorton. No, we didn't meet in person. We met on Facebook. Skorton has 4,308 friends at the University of Iowa, some of whom are none too thrilled to see him leave: "What's this about you leaving! You can't leave! I won't allow it. I forbid you to go!" writes one on Skorton's wall. "is there anything we can do to convince you to stay?" pleads another. But, alas, the deal has been made and soon Cornellians will be graced with the good Doctor's arrival in Ithaca. And, being the welcoming community that Cornell is, 137 students have already become "friends" with the university's new president. Now, who's going to be the first to poke him? Marc Zawel | March 07, 2006 (#) No College Student Left Behind? The New York Times recently reported (in an article that is now only available to TimesSelect[tm] members) that education secretary Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education has until August to deliver recommendations covering accountability and quality of teaching. Educators nationwide received this news with a collective shudder: what's next, No Child Left Behind, College Edition? Indeed, there is great potential for this initiative to approach serious government interference. While the chair, Charles Miller, claims that he is interested in pursuing the viability of nationwide college-level standardized testing for informational purposes only, anyone with a view of history knows that pretexts change, and a testing regime ostensibly intended merely as public knowledge will someday morph into mandatory goals and funding tied to arbitrary requirements. The Affirmation of Solomon The Supreme Court just ruled unanimously to uphold the Solomon Amendment, which has been interpreted to require schools accepting federal funds to allow military recruiters onto their campuses. This mostly affects law schools, whose students are the prime targets, yet most colleges today have nondiscrimination policies that are in direct conflict with the military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule. In my days at The Sun, I wrote two editorials on this issue. While I still agree with their spirit, I have come around to realize that the Supreme Court's decision is entirely correct. My argument went like this: nondiscrimination for gays is essential; the military undermines this through its policy on homosexuals, which, although a step forward at the time, is not sufficient; ROTC, as a necessary and important part of Cornell's legacy, as well as a military institution, also has a problematic stance regarding gays on campus; the problem is not Solomon itself, which is smart legislation, but "don't ask, don't tell"; still, the Cornell Law School should take a stand and file an amicus brief against the Solomon Amendment on principle. The Stabbing and Power-Law Distributions It occurred to me, in thinking about Cornell's stabbing incident, that there might be a better model with which to analyze and discuss the alleged racist violence. I've argued that the problem is one of bad apples, rather than a rotten orchard with deep-seated roots; mainstream campus opinion (or, more accurately, vocal campus opinion) holds that the stabbing was merely a symptom of broad-based, systemic racism. Where else to turn in such dilemmas but our friend Malcolm Gladwell? One of his latest articles explores "power-law distributions," which explain everything from automobile emissions and police brutality to homelessness. Power-law distributions are situations in which the majority of a given phenomenon can be explained by a small minority of outliers at the extreme. Example: most harmful car exhaust comes from just a relative few offenders. Similarly, LAPD corruption could be traced to just a few bad apples who racked up the vast majority of bad behavior logged by the department. The problem is, such explanations don't satisfy the "systemic" crowd: those who want to see a massive expansion of the welfare state to feed the homeless; those who want deep structural overhauls in police departments; those who want to rearrange the foundations of academia to eradicate its racist core. That's because the problem isn't the system itself but those relatively few people who don't follow the rules of that system. It becomes a problem of compliance rather than policy. And that's what I see in the case of Cornell. Instead of passing Student Assembly resolutions or requiring superfluous courses on racism, this paradigm suggests that there needs to be harsher penalties for violent and/or hateful behavior on campus. This presumes, of course, that Cornell's judicial structure is fair, and that the student is found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law -- something which has not yet happened. My question is: Should the University intervene in cases where the local police and judicial system are already involved? (Crossposted: the guess pulpit) eCornell and Access to Higher Education I recently encountered an interesting article by AOL concerning online learning in the Ivy League. The article mentions Cornell's online learning a fair amount: Matthew Nagowski | March 03, 2006 (#) |
-- WSJ: Cornell Wins NYC Tech Campus Bid (EBilmes) -- Barrier Update: City Approves Nets (DJost) -- Big Red Cymbal Guy (Nagowski) -- New York Times Survey on Campus Recruiting is Flawed (KScott) -- Barrier Update: Legal precedent suggests City of Ithaca will not be held liable for gorge suicide (DJost) -- Despite MSG Loss, Big Potential for Big Red Hockey (EBilmes) -- City Council Will Vote on Suicide Nets (DJost) -- An Encounter on the Upper East Side (Nagowski) -- Showing Off Your School Spirit (Nagowski) -- Chipotle Ithaca? (KScott) -- Cornell at the ING NYC Marathon (KScott) -- Crossing Over a Fine Line: Commercial Activity on Campus (KScott) -- Milstein's Downfall (Nagowski) -- Can any Cornell-associated organization really be independent of the University? (Nagowski) -- Slope Media Revisited (EBilmes) -- Slope Media Group Approved for Byline Funding (KScott) -- Occupy AEM? (KScott) -- New campus pub to be good for both Greeks and non-Greeks (Nagowski) -- Gagging the Election (Nagowski) -- The Changing Structure of Rush Week (Nagowski) -- Ivy League Humility in the Midwest (EBilmes) -- Of Median Grades and Economics Minors (Nagowski) -- Homecoming Recap (Nagowski) -- My Cornell Bookshelf (Nagowski) -- The Sun's Opinion Section Has Suddenly Gotten Good (Nagowski) -- Remembering the 11th (Nagowski) -- Cornellian Tapped as Top Economic Advisor (Nagowski) -- Cutting Pledging, and the Good Which Comes With It (EBilmes) -- Why Cornell Should Not Close Fall Creek Gorge (Nagowski) -- Welcome to the Class of 2015 (Nagowski)  |