Cornell Blog: An unofficial blog about Cornell University

I was reading Mao Ye’s dismal exhortation to the new freshman class when I realized that it doesn’t actually offer any insight into what being a Cornell student is. Ignoring for a moment the egregious abuse of style and grammar, One University, One Dream does little more than arrogantly brag about the author’s personal successes and throw down a few pseudo-politically correct platitudes about diversity and inclusiveness. The following is representative:

Last year, I was preparing to be interviewed by the Chinese Central TV station, the biggest TV station in China. I struggled with how to best express Ezra’s dream to millions of Chinese audience members. At last, I came to an epiphany: I could use two famous quotes related to the ancient Chinese thinker Confucius.

I wonder why Mao didn’t paint a more realistic picture of Cornell University, balancing his glowing report with such facts as:

• Only 85% of freshmen will graduate within four years, and your chances are lower if you’re not white or asian ^src
• We’re not the best university in the US, just the 12th best ^src
• There’s crime; more than you might think in a place where you should feel safe ^src
• Ithaca is in the middle of nowhere; it gets old fast ^src
• Your grades are inflated ^src, especially if you’re not in engineering ^src
• Harvard’s endowment grew in the last year by the size of ours ^src
• The only well-read college newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun, is a hack ^src

There are also tons of positives (without citation):

• Cornell is beautiful and large
• Many of the faculty are world-renown in their fields
• TAs are plentiful and eager to help
• You can get involved in hundreds of clubs or research groups from day 1
• There are about 3,000-4,000 others in your class to meet

So freshmen, welcome to Cornell University. Enjoy the people, your courses, Ithaca, our beautiful campus, hotelies, the gorges, dining halls, fraternities & sororities, west campus, our lovely c-town, the (relatively) new starbucks, allnighters, and the craziness. Expect a few highly publicized crimes/suicides/eco-protests/scandals, and make sure to fit in time for your education (that’s why you’re there, right?) in between playing xbox with the dudes and beer pong.

Now when you take the T-CAT bus around Cornell University and Ithaca they’ll be watching you through their new card-reader system. Of course, they claim that data will only be collected in the aggregate, but without independent verification I refuse to believe them (on principle, of course):

Lieb said riders should not be concerned about privacy issues — TCAT will only collect the aggregate data (how many riders get on at each stop, whether they are students, staff or faculty and if they are OmniRide participants). “No personal data is being transmitted,” he said. “The reader is checking whether or not a particular card is valid at that place and time.”

The CU ID FAQ tries to explain this with different wording:

TCAT will collect ridership information from the stop locations where CU ID cards have been used, but the information is confidential. No personal information is collected, stored, or transferred to TCAT.

I actually feel confused–”TCAT will collect information but no information is collected to TCAT” is what that says. Well, you know that when the next big Cornell crime occurs the police will subpoena TCAT for information about which bus you took at which time, powerful evidence for firming up a time line.