The main appeal is that he is offering a 25:1 maximum leverage on your donation. If you donate $1, Martin Tang will donate $25 to your alma mater:

If you make a gift now at www.giving.cornell.edu/give, I will give $25 to support the Annual Fund for undergraduate scholarships.

To maximize this, simply go and donate $1 recurring for 1 year, and realize a $52 donation for Cornell. If all of the class of 2006 (3238 students) donate $2, Cornell would get the whopping sum of $168,376, thanks to the power of trustee leverage!

Elliott Bäck, a Cornell alumnus whose once-controversial campus blog I previously profiled in this magazine, collected data on the hub before graduating and last September posted to his blog an analysis. Bäck found over 19 terabytes comprising about 2.5 million different files shared between more than a thousand users at any given moment. (Apple’s popular—and legal—iTunes store currently has more than 6 million songs, but not even close to the over 200 thousand video files on DC++ at any one time.)

Unfortunately, the article is also heavily pro-administration and pro-RIAA, with a few ridiculous statements like:

• “When presented with a court-ordered subpoena, Cornell has little choice but to hand over this information.”
• “[A]ll Cornell can do is step back and stay as uninvolved as possible in the conflict between the entertainment industry and students.”
• “Mitrano says she has processed over 1,000 takedown notices.”

Nowhere in this article do they suggest that these things are in fact bad. For example, Cornell is able to block copyright holders from identifying alleged music pirates by filing a motion to block or quash the subpoena. Cornell also could, like Professor Charles Nesson at Harvard, actively refuse to help the RIAA’s police mission. As he points out, the purpose of a University is to teach, not enforce an archaic notion of copyright.

I’m disappointed that Rob didn’t quote my response to one of questions:

(4) As you acknowledged in your coverage, the RIAA has not sued a Harvard student yet. Is there anything Cornell can do to protect its students?

Fire Tracy Mitrano. Instead of writing memos like www.cit.cornell.edu/policy/memos/dcplus.html when she receives a request to police the Cornell LAN, she could write a letter categorically refusing to do so, as is the University’s right under the safe-harbour provisions of the DMCA.

It was designed to spark a little outrage and to highlight the fact that she’s not doing her job, unless her salary is coming from the RIAA and MPAA. Note that I am not a lawyer, and in no way this post should constitute any sort of legal advice.

Update: Hurray, I’ve been misquoted by Tracy Mitrano who writes in today’s Sun that “a DC++ posting”–hey we call that a blog entry–concludes with the statement “Fire Mitrano”–which as you can see it does not. It actually concluded with “Fire Tracy Mitrano,” an error so severe given the ready access to the source material above, that I’m not surprised the article offers no insight into what happens when Cornell actually receives a subpoena, or what Cornell is doing to protect its students from predatory lawsuits.

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.

The Cornell Cronicle describes Keeton’s career:

Keeton taught at Cornell for 22 years, from 1958 until his death at age 47 in 1980 from a heart condition. An extraordinary and popular teacher as well as an accomplished scholar, Keeton revolutionized the teaching of biology in American higher education. His research centered on avian orientation, including pigeon homing and navigation.

I’ve seen students climb up on bridge railings at the CTown Cascadilla gorge or Thurston Ave gorge, and I always wondered when one drunk sorority girl would lurch the wrong way at the wrong time, or a sudden gust of wind would push the Titanic-esque wannabe off the precipice.

Standing on the edge of the gorge is just not a good idea, unless you want to risk your life. It’s just not safe. Maybe only 1 in 1000 of the people that do it fall off, but there’s real, physical danger there. You want a thrill, go skydiving.

c.1275, from Anglo-Norm. beute, from O.Fr. bealte, earlier beltet, from V.L. bellitatem “state of being handsome,” from L. bellus “fine, beautiful,” in classical L. used especially of women and children, or ironically or insultingly of men. Famously defined by Stendhal as la promesse de bonheur “the promise of happiness.”

For there to be an idea of beauty there has to be an idea of ugly. The distribution of “beautiful people” in the world is probably Gaussian normal. Most people are of average beauty, while some are exceedingly beautiful, and some are quite compellingly ugly. To say that all are beautiful is to redefine the word in such a way that it has no distinguishing meaning, because no matter whom it is applied to, it has the same meaning. Thus, it becomes not an adjective, but a participle. Meaningless.

I write this in academic protest of the “True Beauty” exhibit in Willard Straight Hall which will be showing shortly. You can go read Jenna’s announcement, but the summary is:

We’re promoting positive self-image among women at Cornell with one message: you’re beautiful.

Practically, if you look at a photo of two people like the below, won’t you agree that one is more beautiful than the other?

True, this example is just physical beauty. But the same rule applies even for mental beauty, or beauty of the soul.

In 1980, if you’d put $1000 into University, you’d now be paying $5905.50. Inflation inflates your $1000 to $2452.37, while the Nasdaq rakes in $5436.02, the Dow $9063.03. Cornell tracks strongly with other University rates, returning $5561.72. The graph makes one thing clear, though–Cornell’s tuition is quickly outstripping inflation, and tracks suspiciously with the higher order return rates common in the stock market. It’s almost like the inexorable rise of our tuition is a hedge against bad investments in the endowment.

In 2020, Cornell University tuition will have skyrocketed:

Right now we’re paying $32,800. In 2020, we’ll be paying $82,440 but our $32,800 will only be worth an $49,613. That’s another $30,000 of 2020 dollars or $20,000 of our real dollars. Therefore, I make this proclamation: In 2020, Cornell University will charge students $53,000 for a year’s tuition–51% more than today!

Since the Campus Code of Conduct and related disciplinary processes affect all members of the Ithaca campus, it is important that there be opportunities for members of the university community to comment on the proposed changes. For that reason, I ask that you read these materials with great care and be prepared to join President-elect David Skorton and others, in the fall, in discussing the recommended changes before The Board of Trustees is asked to take any action regarding them.

Luckily for us busy alumni bloggers, they provide a summary of major changes, which I will trust for now:

• The Office of Student affairs will lose its independence from the university administration
• Off campus “misconduct” can now be considered directly by the Office of Student Affairs
• Evidence must be a “Preponderance (more likely than not)” rather than “Clear and convincing”
• Accused loses the right to remain silent; compelled to cooperate with the Office of Student Discipline
• Accused loses the right to appeal a decision

I am including this reworked Cornell University logo so that it’s clear that I think these Code of Conduct changes enable a police-state controlled by the current administration.

This should be a bigger deal that it is. The changes implement a “guilty until proven innocent” judicial ideology, tie Cornell’s judicial branch directly to its internal management, allow consideration of “off campus character” in determining on-campus justice, and force the accused to testify against himself. All the proposed Krause changes need to be entirely perfect is the following change:

Before: The Cornell University campus is policed by the CUPD.

After: The Cornell University will be patrolled by heavily armed men wearing black coats, body armor, dark glasses, and earpieces. Students found violating the code of conduct will be discretely “dealt with” efficiently so as not to pose further threat the Cornell community.

Each year, the East Asia Program must report the number of students who took at least fifteen credits in courses containing East Asian content to the U.S. Department of Education as a part of the funding requirements for our National Resource Center grant. You are receiving this letter because your registrar reports show that you have taken a minimum of fifteen credits in such courses, which makes you eligible for a East Asia concentration.

I suppose I also could qualify for a concentration in English, since I took at least another 15 credits in that area–more if you count the courses under the 300 level.

There are two types of student lending available in the United States:

• Federal Student Loans, which can be made to students or parents
• Private Student Loans, which can also be made to students or parents

Federal student loans in the United States are authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, and have a six month grace period to begin repayment after graduation. The loans may be subsidized or unsubsidized, meaning that interest will accrue will in school. Clearly, having the government pay your interest is a good thing!

This July, there was an impending interest rate hike. For those of us whose Federal loans were variable rate, it was a good idea to consolidate loans and lock in the lower interest rates. The two best resources for applying for loan consolidation were:

• Direct Consolidation Loans
• Sallie Mae

It will be a while before you need to do this, but keep the following in mind–for half an hour of your time filling out forms, you could save thousands of dollars in interest repayments!