Poor Cornell. All we want is a little love -- a little recognition -- a little boost in the rankings -- but those very public yearnings only rankle people, inspire ridicule and provide fodder for blogs. Oh well. Whatever we've lost in Ivy League respect, we seem to have gained in street cred -- specifically, urban street fashion as seen in hip-hop videos. IvyGate tags a New York Observer piece on the growing trend of young, urban black and Hispanic men donning Ivy League regalia. We may not have gotten a huge boost in the U.S. News rankings, but we sure come out near the top of the heap in modern hip-hop fashion: Sadly, even this modest victory for Cornell is tinged with irony. Looks like we need to work on our name recognition, too.
“The No. 1 seller of 2006 would have been Dartmouth,” he said. “And Cornell was very, very popular.” In the 2007 video for rapper Mims’ recent song “This Is Why I’m Hot,” a young man is completely accessorized in Cornell University gear.
A worker at a hip-hop clothing store named Morlee’s in Jersey City showed me a fitted Cornell hat ($25, plus tax) and chuckled that the kids thought it was for the Cincinnati Reds (which it does resemble). I asked him what the hat did represent. “Some college team,” he said. “Clemson, I think.”
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