Over on a popular message board for high school students, admitted students are eagerly trying to make their decision about which school to attend, and this post is really quite illuminating:

*Sigh*

Cornell grant aid: $2,000/year

Princeton grant: $32,000/year

Harvard grant: $35,000/year

...The sad thing is, I totally would've gone to Cornell over Harvard and Princeton if the financial aid was in any way decent. But with this kind of difference, it's goodbye Cornell.

But why would the student voluntarily choose Cornell over Harvard and Princeton? Well, in the student's own words:

I'm from NYC, but still working class, and Cornell felt comfortable in a way others didn't. Cornell's "any person, any study" thing did actually seem to be reflected in the students I met there, and it's an idea I like. The math department was very friendly, and after talking to several profs about math excitedly for a while I got the notion that prof interaction would, in fact, be possible as long as I seek it out. I like Ithaca and outdoors stuff, and I figure I have plenty of time to live in a city after college. The presence of the state-funded schools seems to give more academic/career goal diversity to Cornell than those other places, and it felt more down-to-earth.

Wouldn't it be nice if the student could choose between Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell without factoring cost into the equation? Isn't that one of the underlying ideas behind the Ivy League? The issue is already posing a big threat to Ivy League Athletics, and it looks like its going to inform the decisions of a lot of common admits as well. Cornell has enough to worry about in competing with schools that offer merit based financial aid packages... like Tufts, Emory, Vanderbilt, or WashU.

It's clear that the time has come for the University to take more creative steps towards financial aid for undergraduates.

How would a tuition discount but pledging a certain percentage of future income work out for students? Or what if the University was able to convince 200,000 alums to donate $1,000 each (or more) for financial aid purposes. That would net at least a $200M endowment, or at least $10M a year for financial aid. Perhaps this type of policy, in conjunction with some other innovative policy ideas might help to bring Cornell back to a proper competitive level.

But in another development on the financial aid front, it seems like Cornell's Financial Aid office has run into some trouble calculating financial aid packages for all accepted students. Three weeks after students have received their acceptance letter, and a week before they need to make one of the biggest decisions of their life, a fair number of students have not received their financial aid information.

That is a little troubling, if you ask us.

As a Cornell undergrad in spring of 2003, I attended a talk by Dr. Charles “Chuck” Bardes, Dean of Admissions from Weill Cornell Medical College. Dr. Bardes was a man in his mid 50’s with a jovial, soft-spoken personality whose most striking feature was a prominent bow-tie -- an appreciation for which I am slowly developing. He spoke to a room filled with anxious pre-meds looking how to customize their medical school applications to admission officer’s standards.

All of my peers were asking: “What does a medical school look for? What do you as a Dean of Admission want from a medical school applicant? What can I do to improve my odds to get into medical school?”

But through the whole session, I don’t recall once hearing about the specifics of Weill Cornell. What makes Weill Cornell…Weill Cornell?

This was a tough time financially not only for the medical college but also New York Hospital, the teaching hospital of the Medical College. The physicians at New York Hospital generate the largest slice of the revenue pie for the medical college and thus are integral to the financial stability of the medical college. In 1996, Presbyterian Hospital -- affiliated with Columbia Medical School -- was in even worse financial condition, and consequently set up a merger with New York Hospital.

With Sandy Weill’s gift and the merger of New York and Presbyterian Hospitals, Cornell University Medical College found itself back in the black and with the resources to regain its stature. To honor the Weill’s $200 million gift, the medical college was renamed at the time to Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University (now known as Weill Cornell Medical College). At the time, it was the largest single donation made to a medical center.

With the medical college back on its feet, it was no longer a financial sinkhole for the university. As a result, the ties between the Ithaca campus and the NYC campus strengthened. Money is the quickest way to make friends.

In 1997, Weill Cornell brought in Antonio Gotto Jr. to take over the deanship of the college. As the former Chairman of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, he was known as a leader in cardiology and well equipped to take Weill Cornell to new heights. One of Gotto’s primary strengths is raising money; he has been instrumental in leading Weill Cornell through a number of “strategic plans” – all of which have been initiatives to raise additional resources for the College.

Currently, while Cornell University is amidst a $4 billion campaign, Weill Cornell’s part of the campaign totals $1.3 billion, which is the largest campaign taken on by a medical college. With the daunting task of raising $1.3 billion ahead in October 2006, Weill Cornell was in need of many transformative gifts similar to the one Sandy Weill made in 1996.

Sandy didn’t disappoint. In June 2007, a press conference was held at Weill Greenberg Center in NYC to announce a cumulative $400 million gift made to Weill Cornell. The break down was $250 million from the Weills, $50 million from Hank Greenberg and the Starr Foundation, and $100 million from an anonymous donor. Coincidentally, $50 million of Sandy’s gift would be earmarked for the Ithaca campus for the New Life Sciences Building (now Weill Hall) as part of a move to bridge the campus divide.

At the press conference, we heard from a number of Cornell’s leaders including Pete Meinig, David Skorton, and Antonio Gotto. Finally, we got to hear from Sandy Weill.

I’m not one for sappy speeches. And I’m also skeptical of people that claim recognition for their support. Often times I’m more impressed by Mr./Mrs. Anonymous’s donation than the larger donation made by a big shot. So as I sat there waiting to hear Sandy’s speech, I was ready to be under whelmed – anticipating yet another cliché speech by another one of Holden Caulfield’s “phonies”.

I listened as Sandy began talking about the importance of the medical community and the need for support of great medical centers such as Weill Cornell. And after talking about all the wonderful support Weill Cornell has garnered and the need to maintain medical care as a priority, Sandy began talking about something closer to his heart… something real.

He started describing Weill Cornell’s international endeavors and specifically the development of the Weill Bugando Medical Center in the heart of Tanzania, a product of will and support. As he started talking about Bugando his tone and demeanor changed right away. The most noticeable difference was the transformation of his carefree smile and expression to an indescribable somber expression.

He spoke about the condition of Tanzania’s health programs and the deplorable 1:20,000 ratio of doctors to inhabitants in the country. He stressed the need to support their medical education programs as the key to fixing many of the issues associated with healthcare in Tanzania. He gave accounts of his personal experiences in Tanzania and acknowledged a current Tanzanian medical student named Stella, who has become a close friend to mine over the course of many months.

And then he began to cry.

I should have taken a picture since it was probably the only time I’ll see a CEO of a company equivalent to Citigroup cry.

As the press conference died down, I realized how much Sandy Weill has done as Chairman of the Board of Overseers. He has been there to lead every meeting and has the impeccable ability to ask all the right questions. He’s able to translate his business cunning to become an astute medical and educational inquisitor. It’s all about asking the right questions, and Sandy knows which ones to ask.

The most important thing I realized was that he really cares. It goes beyond managing a business for Sandy, and he realizes the fundamental nature of medical care requires empathy. Empathy isn’t just important for the doctors and nurses directly responsible for patient care but also administrators and overseers that strive to make a medical center reach its full potential. In Cornell University Medical College’s history, no one has shown more empathy than Sandy Weill, and it is fitting that Cornell’s medical college bares his name. The Weill-Cornell Medical College.

The Cornell MineSweeper Project is a student-initiated effort to design and fabricate a low-cost, autonomous robotic vehicle to accurately detect landmines and facilitate their clearance. Cornell Minesweeper utilizes technologies in the areas of Machine Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Mechanical Design, and Landmine Detection. Our goal is to construct a robot that will become central to humanitarian demining missions. The robot will perform, with high efficiency and safety, the hazardous task of identifying the exact location of mines without risking human lives. This capability will benefit commercial, military, government and community interests across regions facing landmine infestation challenges.

The project has already earned accolades from Nobel Peace Prize winners as well as numerous campus prizes. We expect to hear even bigger things coming from the organization in the future, and it will be interesting to see if they team up with any International Relations majors to focus on marketing and deploying the project.

Coincidentally, this isn't the first time that minesweeping has been associated with Cornell. Last year, a sketch comedy group, Elephant Larry, out of New York City, made a splash with a trailer for a fictitious movie - Minesweeper: The Movie.

Now, you may be wondering what this amusing sketch has anything to do with Cornell:

The five young men of Elephant Larry all met at Cornell University as members of the sketch comedy group, The Skits-O-Phrenics. Alex and Stefan graduated in 1999, moving to New York City shortly afterwards. Four years later, Jeff, Chris, and Geoff did the same, and in the summer of 2002, Elephant Larry was born.

Cornell University: Minesweeping on both the Engineering Quad and the Arts Quad.

A pioneer in establishing the Graduate Community Initiative, a plan to better address graduate students’ needs, Mike Walsh grad was elected student trustee on Saturday. He is the first graduate student officially elected to the graduate seat on the Board of Trustees, after the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly and Student Assembly delegated one trustee position to undergraduate students, and the other to grad students last year.

Walsh said some of the key issues he will address are building a cohesive community amongst graduate students, housing, transportation and sustainability. However, he explained, one of the biggest challenges in implementing these goals lies in Cornell’s administrative structure.

“Navigating the Cornell bureaucracy will be difficult,” he said.

A quick read of Mike's biography indicates that he is a quintessential Cornellian:

At Colby, Michael was a three season athlete in cross country and track, specializing in the distance events and the steeplechase. He studied environmental chemistry and did research on summer eutrophication of Maine's lakes. He graduated in 2005 with Honors in Chemistry.

After graduating Mike worked as a teaching intern at Saint Paul’s School Advanced Studies Program, a summer school for the top rising seniors in New Hampshire. He assisted in teaching a course on ecology that took the students on an overnight canoe trip down the Merrimack river.

Currently Mike is studying for the Ph.D. in Biological & Environmental Engineering. He researches marine algae that play a substantial role in the global carbon cycle and climate. He hopes to become a professor at a small liberal arts college and research local and regional environmental problems.

But it appears that he also had the chance to become a Cornellian as an undergraduate:

After three semesters at UNH he decided to transfer for a more challenging academic program. The decision to transfer was a difficult one, especially when he received acceptance letters from Cornell and Colby College. Both schools offered tempting opportunities, however the financial aid offerings made it clear, Colby's aid package was much more competitive than Cornell's, and Red would have to wait for grad school.

Would it not have been nice if Mike could have made his transfer decision without having to take financial aid into consideration? Perhaps Mike will be able vocalize his experiences to his fellow trustees.

Mike also knows how to foster support -- by supporting the Big Red teams himself:

Unfortunately, the election was not without controversy:

However, Walsh’s victory may be short lived. Runner up Shawn Kong, grad, and a Sun columnist, told The Sun he planned to challenge Walsh’s win to the University Ombudsman...

Of course, one doesn't have to be a trustee to facilitate meaningful change on campus, so hopefully Shawn will find a productive use for his energies.

His brother also went to Cornell, as did their father, Milton, a lawyer. His brother said of their father, “We could go to any school we wanted, he said, but the only one he would pay for was Cornell.”

Of course, back then tuition wouldn't cost you an arm, leg, and the kidney of your firstborn child.

[Says Pauu]"We can probably make more cash if we license to more foreign companies, but is that the right thing to do in light of the regional needs? I not only want to take the results of our research and turn them into useful products and services for the public but also use them to help regional economic development."

Such a strategy still can pay off in the long run, he added, pointing to his nine years as assistant vice chancellor for technology transfer and intellectual property services at the University of California-San Diego. "When I was at UCSD the goal was never to make money," he reported, "but the program is now financially pretty rewarding."

So Paau has made CCTEC more business oriented, forging connections with local and regional companies and creating new programs to encourage local startups and draw in venture capital.

He uses workshops and networking to encourage Cornell researchers to launch their own startups. A monthly seminar and social event draws up to 30 science and engineering researchers and MBA students from the Johnson School. A short presentation focuses on an exciting new invention, but the emphasis is on lots of mingling before and after, in hopes that would-be entrepreneurs will partner with inventors -- ideally, to start new companies nearby.

"Johnson School alumni become very successful globally," Paau said. "Can we create an opportunity for them to stay here?"

Sometimes new companies grow for a few years and are then bought out by a big company. If the buyer moves the operation out of Ithaca, it's not the end of the world, Paau said. Either way, the buyout can be cause for celebration. "The inventors, entrepreneurs and local investors have all made some money, and now they're talking to us to do something again," he explained. "If we had licensed the technologies to outside companies at the beginning [we'd have made some money], but most of the value wouldn't have stayed in the community.

"We are still doing a lot of licensing to existing companies, but it is more strategic," he added. "We try to go to existing companies in the region first."

Paau also hopes to develop an "ecosystem" like one in San Diego, which includes specialized legal talent and local offices of outside venture capital firms, with the university as the hub.

A quick note on developing more international business linkages. One of the things we are trying to do here in Buffalo is to develop a true international airport in Niagara Falls, with weekly flights to both Asia and Europe. The thought is that between Niagara Falls tourism, the six million people in the Toronto area looking for cheaper air flights (many of whom are already traveling out of Buffalo), and higher landing fees in the coastal hubs, Buffalo can carve out a niche in the international airline industry. Having support from institutions like Cornell would just be a bonus. But after all, Cornell is two and a half hours from Buffalo, but five hours from JFK.

Doris Davis, associate provost for admissions and enrollment, could not offer an estimate of Cornell’s expected yield — a percentage of accepted students who matriculate — but stated that the admissions office has made “estimates based on the number who have enrolled in previous years.”

Well, the university targets an incoming freshman class of 3,050. And if the University accepted 6,730 students this year, of which 1,139 were accepted early, that leaves 5,5591 students to fill the remaining 1,912 open slots. So the implicit expected yield is 45 percent, and 34 percent for regular decision applications. Last year total overall yield was 47 percent.

But we do get a glimpse at Doris Davis's philosophy when it comes to admissions:

However, Davis stated that Cornell’s admit rate reflects the University’s attempt to admit the greatest number of students that it can.

“Essentially, Cornell tries to admit as many students as we can without over-enrolling,” she stated. “I think some of the peer schools try to admit as few students as possible.”

Additionally, Davis asserted that the admissions office admitted more students this year in an effort to accept fewer students from the wait list. Last year, according to Davis, Cornell accepted over 100 students from the wait list.

The exact number of students Cornell took off the waitlist last year? 279. At least according to the Common Data Set. Obviously, Cornell is having problems landing common admits, presumably due to financial aid packages. This is reflected in the lower expected yield for this year's class.

We also get the first glimpse at how the primary/secondary college application system worked out:

Twenty-two percent of applicants applied to two colleges, according to Davis. Ninety-eight percent of all admitted students were accepted to their first choice college, while only two percent were accepted to their second choice.

That's 135 lucky kids. Although it remains to be seen whether or not they are just going to immediately transfer back to the primary college to which they applied to through the Internal Transfer Division.

And this:

Across the undergraduate colleges, acceptance rates ranged from 15.3 to 32 percent.

Our hunch? Arts and Engineering, respectively.

Then there's the unfortunate chart that accompanies the Daily Sun article. Apparently 33,011 students applied to Cornell this year. But the chart only claims 30,011 students did so. Maybe the student designer had a prelim last night and was pressed for time?

Finally, to continue the conversation started last week on the gap between the reported number of students rejected, accepted, or waitlisted and the number of students who applied to Cornell, we have some follow up information to share.

It seems that the gap is explained by the students who failed to complete their applications, as thought. More generally, most schools are guilty of these types of practices. It most generally occurs at schools where students need to select a college (e.g. Cornell, Penn, Northwestern), but every school has to deal with students who, for instance, withdraw their applications due to an acceptance into another school's ED program.

And from what I have heard out of Cornell's admissions office, Cornell is generally more on the ball on these issues than most other schools. Cornell actually goes out of their way to call students who have incomplete applications and reports the number of students who don't designate a college.

Unfortunately people tend to get hung up on the acceptance rates, even though they don't tell us much.

Our first impressions? Well, the aesthetic design is a lot crisper. And the site now also offers alums the opportunity to comment on articles. So we'll see how that goes. There's also a newly launched blog, RedAllOver, which is appealing as it means that content might be updated on the site more than six times a year. We're also a little bit humbled, as CAM is now linking to MetaEzra over on their sidebar.

The new blog gives us something to be excited about it, as with the additions of the Kitsch blogs and the Quad Blogger, it seems likes Cornell's encountering a blogging renaissance these days. The Sun has had a group of blogs for a while, but they never seem to be Cornell related.

Complaints? Well, we always have a couple. First, the site is taking a ridiculously long time to load. But we trust that will get ironed out. Secondly, the navigational interface is a bit clunky. The front page is a weird hybrid of the magazine's actual content, the new blog, and something referred to as 'Top Stories' -- which seems mostly to link to stories at news.cornell.edu. Thirdly, we may be missing it, but we're no longer able to access the letters to the editor.

But the big issue is that the Class Notes are no longer available online; you need to subscribe to the actual print magazine to get what is surely the most compelling feature of the publication to most alums. And I think this just hints at what is an underlying sore point for many of Cornell's alums. Cornell is one of the few top private universities not to provide a free subscription of its alumni magazine to all alumni, and it's shooting itself in the foot as a result. Only 28,000 alums, of over 200,000 living alumni, receive the magazine. Beyond the lost giving opportunities, it's just a bad way to treat alums and denies the University access to one of its strongest resources.

This has been discussed before. And frustrated explanations have been trotted out, namely, "What Cornell doesn't control it doesn't want to circulate."

Ultimately, I think it reflects a smallness on the part of the University Trustees; they're unwilling to sacrifice a little bit of public relations control for a more vested and engaged alumni base. And it's everybody's loss. The funny part in all of this is that Cornell's already subsidizing CAM to a great extent: The University has already been giving the magazine office space, assistance from the Alumni House staff, and access to its alumni database and employee benefits program. And with the launch of the new website, they have benefited from "a generous subsidy from the Cornell administration"

Cornell recently hired a new Director of Alumni Affairs. He comes to Cornell from the enlightened institution of Lehigh University, where, shockingly, all alums get a free subscription to the Lehigh Alumni Bulletin, but have the opportunity to pay a 'voluntary subscription'. Let's hope he can talk some sense into the Cornell administration.

Myself? Well obviously I'm an avid reader of all things Cornell related. But it looks like I'll have to forgo the Class Notes for now. While I annually donate some of my relatively meager to salary to Alma Mater for programs like the Cornell Tradition and Cornell Outdoor Education (not to mention the non-trivial cost of running this website), I'm still holding out for a free subscription to the alumni magazine.

On Monday, the official mailing date for the Ivy League, the undergraduate admissions selection process for Cornell’s Class of 2012 was finished.

Cornell received 33,011 applications for freshman admission, an all-time high. This number represents a 9-percent increase over last year’s class, and a 17-percent increase over the past two years. Overall, there was a 20.4 percent admit rate for both Early Decision and Regular Decision applicants combined, a decrease from last year’s 20.5 percent rate.

In addition, 3,432 students were offered a place on the waitlist, an increase from last year’s 3,223 waitlisted students. There were also 19,305 students who were denied admission, up from 18,419 students last year.

Of 33,011 applicants, if 19,305 students were denied admission and 3,432 were waitlisted, that means that 10,274 were accepted.

But 20.4 percent of 33,011 is 6,734.

Something is wrong here.

What may be happening is that the difference between 10,274 and 6,734 -- 3,540 or the number of students neither rejected, accepted, or waitlisted -- represents the number that never indicated which college at Cornell that they were applying to. But that number seems a bit high to us, as in recent years around 1,000 students failed to indicate a college.

So let's assume that the 20.4 percent number is right. Back in January, MetaEzra forecasted an acceptance rate of 19.3 percent. Then it seems like Cornell is anticipating a lower regular decision yield than we expected. Last year, Cornell had a yield of 37 percent, and we anticipated a yield of 36 percent this year. But it seems that Cornell has admitted enough students this year to fill the class with a 33 percent yield.

Presumably this is due to the fact that some schools have started foregoing early admission as well as concerns that the University will not be able to offer competitive financial aid packages.

The other thing to consider is how the adoption of the primary/secondary application system will affect the results. It's possible that a fair number of students were rejected from their primary college (e.g. Arts) but accepted by their secondary college (e.g. Human Ecology?), but the Human Ecology admissions committee is expecting a low yield on these applicants. So naturally the overall expected yield on regular decision students would decrease.

All of this is getting complicated, so we'll just have to wait until the University officially releases their numbers.

Manjoo has been a staff writer at Salon.com for years, and more recently he's set up Machinist, a blog at the online magazine devoted to trends and observations about technology. His new book, True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, is already getting lots of press. MetaEzra chatted with him (over e-mail, of course, in short bursts) about technology, the truth, the Hill, and what was up with the McGraw pumpkin, anyway.

What's your favorite gadget, and do you actually use it in your life?

Hmm. Kind of depends how you define a "gadget," I suppose. There are a lot of kitchen tools I'm in love with, but if you mean things with buttons and lights, I'd say it's my Nintendo Wii. I "use" it often, but with some guilt.

What did you major in at Cornell, and did that help you develop your interest in technology?

I majored in economics, but I don't think that had anything to do with my interest in technology. I like following technological trends for the same reason I like following all news, I think, which is my interest in the future. I like what's around the bend -- or at least trying to predict it. Technology is more future-focused than most other subjects, but of course all the news -- think about politics, for instance -- is really about what's going to happen. That's the part of the story I'm always interested in.

If you compare where you are now with your goals as a college senior, how do you stack up?

Oh, probably not too well.

What did being a Sun editor teach you about the media world you're in now?

To work hard. The Internet rewards diligence.

When did you start to believe we live in a "post-fact" society? Did any particular experiences in college or at The Sun inspire your thesis?

No, not much of my experience at the Sun inspired my thesis; at the Sun, people cared about facts. The idea I explore in my book -- that human psychology and technology are conspiring to loosen our grip on objective truth -- really came about in the last four years or so, as I was reporting on the 2004 election and conspiracy theories that swirled out of 9/11. Once I saw it there I began to notice the same thing everywhere: More and more, these days, we fight about facts, not opinions (i.e., what's really happening in Iraq, the real facts surrounding climate change, etc.).

More after the jump....

Machinist is a small piece among many other small pieces. I write it that way: It's more commentary and second-day reporting than breaking news, covering technology, politics and Internet culture, plus whatever else I find interesting. Of course I try to stand up as a bulwark against the forces I describe in my book -- many journalists do -- but the battle often seems a losing one. Still, it's a good gig.

So, do you think it's possible in the abstract for two people to fundamentally disagree on an issue even if they agree on all the facts? Or is it just that those kinds of disputes are less common today?

Right, I think those kinds of disputes are less common today. In my book I argue that more often our disputes involve competing "versions" of facts rather than opinions. Think of the global warming debate, say, or the debate over the war in Iraq. One side says the facts support Position X, while the other side says the facts support Position Y. When you look at the "facts" in question, though, you find each side believes different things. People who support the war these days do so because -- according to facts they're receiving about it online, on cable, and the radio -- it's going well. People who oppose it, meanwhile, know that their opposition is justified because the facts support their side.

And speaking of facts -- really, who was behind the McGraw pumpkin?

Good question. The pumpkin appeared on the tower during my sophomore year, and three years later, during my senior year, we ran a piece noting that it was still a mystery how it got up there. A Cornell employee read the article and contacted me, saying he knew how it was done. I spoke to him at length one late night at the Sun. He wouldn't give me any names, but said that a former neighbor of his had done it, with the help of three friends. I still consider the thing unsolved: I didn't get any real proof, but this fellow's story made for quite a piece in our senior issue.

So, advice to aspiring journalists in college or recently graduated: Should they be striving for newish online publications? Is newsprint dead?

Yes, newsprint is dead, but I don't think that means all newspapers are. So my advice: Consider the future of the outlet you're joining, which I suppose is what you do for any potential job -- I'm simply urging greater-than-normal scrutiny. Understand that the field you're entering is unbelievably unstable. It's one of those great once-in-a-millennia shake-ups, on the order, some would have you believe, of what happened in Gutenberg's day. Be wary.

If you could liveblog any event, future or past, what would it be?

Oh, I don't liveblog -- I don't see much point in it, really, especially since any event worth live-blogging has others there doing it too, so why not let them? But if I had to choose I'd pick the Gettysburg Address. It was quite short, you know. And you'd be fine limiting your commentary to, "OMG, I'm speechless."

In email correspondence with the editors, Andy Noel, Director of Big Red Athletics, claims that "This was something that we have been considering for a long time. After Harvard, Princeton, and Yale basically started offering free tuition to their athletes, we knew we couldn't compete with them in terms of athletic recruiting. But the breaking point came with our NCAA tournament losses to Stanford and UConn. The faculty, students, and alumni of this University will just not tolerate those types of losses again, so we're going to need to start offering athletic scholarships.

It's yet to be seen who will fill Cornell's role in the Group of Eight, but sources at Harvard and Yale are telling our editors that it is likely to be either Rutgers or SUNY-Stony Brook. Apparently they want to ensure that their fans will continue to have one team to taunt with chants of "State School".

When reached for comment, Junior All-American Max Siebald, captain of the Men's Lacrosse team, was elated. "This is great," he said, "Now we won't have to worry about playing six meaningless games each year where we automatically know we are going to beat every other team in the Ivy League. Playing Duke, Maryland, Virginia, UNC, and North Carolina every year is a much more preferable option for our lacrosse program."

Why is this significant? University libraries have long been ahead of the game when it comes to developing new technologies for scholarly research. Kenney is "an internationally respected expert in digital library development," and that means extending Cornell's already formidable leadership among research libraries to the kinds of information technologies that will redefine what it means to "go to the library" in the coming years.

A quick glance at Kenney's publication record makes it clear that her expertise in digital collections will serve Cornell well. I'm not sure if Cornell's deal with Microsoft (instead of Google) to digitize many of its holdings will matter all that much to the library's innovation efforts, since I think in the long run, it will be university collaborations and open-source tools that will drive a lot of this development ... as it has so far.

The answer was correctly questioned, thank goodness.

So one might think that this would be the first time Ezra's University would have ever been referenced on Jeopardy, but think again. Cornell has actually been referenced 29 previous times in questions, twice in Final Jeopardy.

The answers seem to be pretty well-rounded, most referencing Cornell in the Ivy League and as a land-grant university, but some deal with such topics as Keith Olbermann, Bill Nye, and the colors of a Campbell Soup can.

The hardest question I found?

Older than his classmates, Cornell football player & future coach Glenn Warner got this nickname

Which stumped me.

What's a bit harder to track down is how many Cornell alums, students, staff, or faculty have appeared on the venerable quiz show. The J! Archive indicates that at least one individual has appeared on Jeopardy as a Cornell graduate student, and one teenager indicated he would like to attend either Cornell or BU. Let's hope he chose the school with the better hockey team.

And for those of you keeping track at home, here's how Cornell stacks up against the other Ivies in Jeopardy references:

Harvard -- 154 Questions, 25 Contestants
Yale -- 136, 8 Contestants
Princeton -- 76 Questions, 6 Contestants
Cornell -- 30 Questions, 2 Contestants
Columbia -- 24 Questions, 8 Contestants
Dartmouth -- 16 Questions, 2 Contestants
Brown -- 12 Questions, 5 Contestants
UPenn -- 10 Questions, 10 Contestants

Penn and Brown might be a bit harder to identify in the archive due to the somewhat generic nature of their names and the need to also search for 'University', and it's impossible to know how many contestants have appeared without referencing their alma mater.

With the win, Cornell became the first school in the Ancient Eight to send both their men's and women's team to the tournament in the same year.

And the men just got seeded to play against powerhouse Stanford in Anaheim this Thursday, who apparently have two seven foot monsters that are known for getting into academic trouble. We all know who the team of true scholar athletes is.

Somehow, Cornell got a 14 seed, whereas fellow Upstate team Siena drew a 13 seed, even though we beat Siena. Why does the NCAA always shaft Cornell? First the miserable No. 4 seed in lacrosse last year, now this.

But what with the hockey team's advancement to the ECAC semifinals last night with a win over Union, it's still a good time of year to be a Cornell sports fan.

Dragon Day 2008. The Sun adds an entertaining article about the affectionately named 'Nerd Walk' that the Architecture students use to poke fun of the engineers in the days leading up to the parade:

The Nerd Walk officially began with one solitary girl, Jae Hee Lee ’12. Lee had been wearing her outfit — a blue jumpsuit, sleaves and pant legs rolled up, rainbow-colored socks, gigantic dome-shaped earphones resting around her neck, goggles on top of pig-tailed hair, an iPod securely clipped to her belt — since she arrived at the design studio earlier that day. And understandably so; she was the focal point of the architects’ initial assault. She needed to be in character.

Lee skipped through the atrium, music blaring through her headphones, pumping her fists in the air and squealing with glee. When she reached the main sitting area, she stopped, looked around and began dancing uncontrollably, complete with the occasional pelvic thrust.

The room, which mere seconds earlier had been buzzing with conversation, was absolutely, completely, 100-percent silent. So much for blending in.