Far Above Cayuga's Waters There's an Awful Smell
SOME SAY IT’S CAYUGA’S WATERS, SOME SAY IT’S CORNELL
I’m a Cornell University Alumnus and I’m proud to say I’ve never donated a red cent to my Alma Mater.
But don’t get me wrong ─ I had a great time during my four years as a Cornell undergrad.
I entered the college as a lonely young nerd straight out of the Bronx High School of Science. Upon completion of my tour of duty at Cornell I was discharged as an older but no wiser nerd after which, almost immediately, I was sucked into the loving maw of the U. S. Army Infantry.
During my stay at Cornell, I made a lot of friends, drank a lot of beer, smoked a lot of my friend's cigarettes, inserted a lot of nickels into Collegetown pinball machines, played a lot of three-cushion billiards, struck out with not a lot of coeds, and was honored at graduation with a minima cum laude degree in mathematics in recognition of finishing in the bottom quartile of my class.
I had a fairly okay opinion of the university in those days, but the relationship took a nosedive in 1969 when the President of the University, a plump, flaccid Quaker by the name of James Alfred Perkins, responded to the violent takeover of the student union by an armed contingent of black thugs by sitting down with the thugs and capitulating to their modishly asinine demands.
Black thugs proudly vacate Willard Straight Hall, Cornell's Student Union, in 1969 after trashing it to the tune
of several hundred thousand dollars. At right, Pres. Perkins celebrates his victorious ass-kissing. For
an account of the shameful incident by a man who was there, see Tom Sowell's The Day Cornell Died.
The thugs, you see, who were nominally part of the student body, had been forced to arm themselves, expel visiting parents from their rooms, and vandalize the premises because most of them were flunking out after having been admitted by Perkins under an early form of affirmative action ─ their qualifications for admission involved having SAT scores low enough to prove that they were victims of discrimination by the white establishment rather than the natural-born idiots that one might otherwise have thought.
If this process seems a mite odd to you, it simply means you don’t have that higher level of Judeo-Christian faith, sensitivity, and lovingkindness that delicate souls like Perkins have, namely, that any African American who is measurably stupid, must have had his brain cells pillaged over the years by his teachers, The Ghetto, The Power Structure. and The Man.
(As a necessary corollary to Cornell’s enlightened procedures, black applicants with high scores on their SATs were denied admission )
* * *
Now a bit of history.
Cornell has had 12 presidents since its founding in 1866. I’m slightly familiar with only four of the clutch all of whom were notable for being outstandingly undistinguished, a quality perhaps attributable to the fact that the main qualification for presidency of Cornell is a demonstrated ability to raise money through connections with the Right People, the Right Corporations, and the Right Politicians.
I’ve already written about the university’s seventh chief executive, that gentle soul James Perkins whose far-sighted radical chicness led, unfortunately, to his forced resignation.
Perkins’ immediate predecessor, one Deane Waldo Malott, burst upon the campus in 1952 with quite a splash ─ his inaugural speech turned out to have been plagiarized in large part from an earlier address by Sarah Lawrence College President Harold Taylor
When the New Yorker magazine published the two speeches side by side in a feature called "Department of Curious Coincidences" (in those days the New Yorker hadn’t yet been taken over by a humorless cadre of New York City homosexual hacks), the authorities at Cornell were shocked!...shocked! In fact, their shock was so seismic that the trustees met in emergency session...and did absolutely nothing.
Prior to Malott's accession, someone named Edmund Ezra Day, a large if shadowy figure who died in 1951, held sway. Mr. Day's remains are currently interred on campus in Sage Chapel. He was further honored by having a big and ugly administrative building named after him. Day’s impact on the academic world can be measured by his entry in Wikipedia ─ a one-paragraph "stub" that has the editors asking for further info to flesh out the distinguished gentleman’s resumé.
After the Perkins fiasco, and despite subscribing to the Cornell Alumni magazine for the purpose of checking the obit section to see if I was in it, I paid little attention to Cornell presidents. That is, until David J. Skorton, the current dork-in-chief, took office.
Cornell President Skorton explaining something or other to somebody or
other. To improve diversity at the university, Dr. Skorton has asked Michelle
Obama to sit in for him on Sundays and Mondays during football season.
Dr. Skorton (he has a degree in cardiology), enjoys giving us alumni the benefit of his wisdom and inspirational prowess via a jargon-laden introductory page in each issue of the alumni magazine.
Not content with his seldom-read bi-monthly essay, the great man ejaculated a lengthy email last week to "Members of the Cornell Community" announcing an electrifying new initiative about to descend on the school at his direction.
As I’ve remarked previously, President Skorton finds it difficult to complete an English-language sentence without using the word "Diversity." Accordingly, and not to be deterred by the disaster visited on Perkins during his term in office, Skorton’s email let all and sundry know that he is hell bent on out-Perking Perkins.
Here are some excerpts from Dr. Skorton’s email (caps and boldface courtesy of Dome of Glass):
"I am pleased to issue the following statement regarding the university's new DIVERSITY goals. I am grateful to all my colleagues who have worked so hard on this important priority [as opposed to an unimportant priority, ed.]."
"The provosts and I are directing the development of explicit institutional DIVERSITY goals across all campus populations to which university leaders and their units and departments will be held accountable/"
"To help shape our work and move it forward, a team of DIVERSITY professionals with expertise in faculty, staff and student DIVERSITY and inclusion will coordinate efforts across the campuses and provide assistance to colleges and units in meeting DIVERSITY goals. Together with the provosts and a number of vice provosts and vice presidents, they form a new University DIVERSITY Council (UDC)."
"The university’s deans and vice presidents, who have line responsibilities for staff, faculty and student DIVERSITY and inclusion, will continue to have the key responsibility for identifying and taking direct actions to meet the agreed-upon goals in support of the university’s DIVERSITY agenda, and their progress will be tracked and assessed. College deans, vice presidents, chairs and supervisors will have the opportunity to consult with the DIVERSITY professionals as they pursue their DIVERSITY initiatives."
"Our annual report on DIVERSITY will highlight best practices across the campuses and document progress made in achieving our DIVERSITY goals."
"We welcome all members of the Cornell community to offer input on the university’s DIVERSITY plans at diversityinput@cornell.edu."
"Collectively, as a university community, we must value DIVERSITY and inclusion and reject both active and passive discrimination."
* * *
Sheesh!
Has this semi-literate, self-important, politically correct jackass avoided a single instance of liberal Newspeak or overlooked a single cliché of marketing argot?
Oh for the good old days at Reader’s Digest. I would have caught the first Metro North to Chappaqua and told George Grune, John Bohane, Marcia Lefkowitz, Ken Gordon, Jack Smith, and the rest of the marketing assholes to install Skorton on the board of directors without delay.
● And has Skorton bothered to define for us ignorant masses what ─ if anything ─ he and his PC minions mean by the word "Diversity?" If past history is any guide (and it is), Diversity is a euphemism for Affirmative Action which is a euphemism for Quotas which is a euphemism for Discrimination Based on Race which is a euphemism for Bigotry.
● And what about sex diversity? Does the University Diversity Council plan to demand that students and staff ─ present and future ─ provide sworn notarized certificates of sexual orientation as well as race, religion, and ethnic background to allow the school’s Diversity Gestapo to monitor the quantity of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, necrophiliacs, pederasts, and eunuchs with respect to each group receiving its just representation in accord with the statistical percentage of each in the population at large?
● And what about the thorny problem of determining the degree of blackness of students, faculty, and administrators? Is a student with a 100% African father and a 100% Caucasian mother credited as half a diversity point? Or is the slightest hint of smoke in someone’s background to be viewed as proof of blackness a la our friends in Nazi Germany?
● And there's the matter of Hispanic diversity. Do the multi-millionaire descendents of Spanish nobility qualify? Should candidates be required to have last names ending in EZ? Will the grandchildren of German immigrants from Brazil and Argentina whose family names are Mengele and Eichmann be granted slots in the Portuguese and Spanish quotas?
● And if the percentage of females in the student body exceeds the percentage of males ─ as it does in most colleges ─ will qualified women be denied admission in favor of less-qualified men?
● And if, in the fullness of time, the University is sued by, say, an Asian-American or a Jew or an Anglo or an Irish-American on grounds that it is violating the equal protection amendment to the U. S. Constitution, will President Skorton reach into his very deep pockets to defray the legal costs (his base salary sans dozens of perks in 2009-2010 was $686,683)?
* * *
And...oh yeah...one thing more.
I emailed diversityinput@cornell.edu with a list of questions (without using even a single naughty word!)
What's the probability of my hearing back?
Hey...I’m not gonna prejudge ─ it’s only been a week ─ but my estimate as a former probability student at Cornell with Prof. Jacob Wolfowitz (Paul’s father) is that it's a little less than zero.
Norm Mack, Peterborough, dog@myfairpoint.net
I expect to write more on this subject in a later post detailing my personal experiences with what Cornell ─ and Harvard ─ really mean by "Diversity"
Categories: Political Correctness
Tags: David J. Skorton diversity Cornell Unikversity James Perkins Willard Straight takeover
It's really quite nauseating.
Affirmative action getting a big dose of fertilizer - pun intended.
It's the same thing with a different label.
I'm sick of cowards.
I'm sick of lazy, stupid people.
The lazier the person, the larger their sense of entitlement.
I hope they write you back. At best you'll get a form letter thanking you for your input is my best guess.
L
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Oh lordy pick a bale of cotton, oh lordy pick a bale a day. I do believe that a black lesbian woman counts as three points. My friend from high school of Spanish decent got unneeded financial assistance based entirely on his race. I think we straight white men should join together and demonstrate by taking armed control of Washington DC. How about the million pissed-off rednecks march.
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