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Campus Beat: Nothing Happened Because It Was Thanksgiving

By Emily Rutherford - Dec 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am

Some universities had the entire past week off, and at those which were in session Monday through Wednesday, apparently nothing much happened. Shocking and exciting headlines range from the fact that Harvard is changing the requirements for the classics major to make it easier, to the fact that Haverford and Bryn Mawr are thankful for things. But wait! There’s more!

I thought the days when everyone hated the pigs were over, but Wednesday’s Oregon Daily Emerald featured an angry diatribe from a guest contributor furious at the way police broke up a party the previous weekend. I don’t know all the facts, of course, but it is just a little endearing how ineffectually outraged the author is. Go on, read it. Maybe you’ll smile indulgently a little.

MIT hosted what is basically the coolest event ever last week. Called “Splash,” the idea is basically that MIT students can teach anything they want (within reason, of course) to middle- and high-school students, many from out of state. I’m a huge fan of cooperative education (really—it’s one of my absolute favorite things), so I love this idea. What better way to engage kids and get them excited about college?

The University of Michigan has granted a posthumous honorary degree to Milo Radulovich, who was unable to finish college because of an ongoing fight with a host of McCarthyist government agencies who considered him a national security threat because of his politics and national origin. It’s too little too late, perhaps, for Radulovich or anyone else who was hurt by McCarthyism, but good on UMich for doing their part.

Finally, returning to my usual frivolity, I’ve been enjoying the “Cornell Diaries” episodes the Cornell Sun has been publishing, in the way that I do anything scandalous. They’re a nice change from the usual (rather dull) fare of college papers, though I have my doubts as to whether all the cocaine- and sex-related tales are true, anonymous as they are. However, clearly a representative number of people disagree with me: This week, the Sun’s letters to the editor are furious about the sexist and simply crass nature of the articles. They have a point, of course—there are some items in the “Diaries” that I can’t believe someone would say. But the Sun claims it’s committed to publishing “the true, unedited lives of different Cornell students”—surely, therefore, it’s not the responsibility of these pieces to be ethically responsible or educational. It says more to the third-party observer about mainstream culture at Cornell than it does about the Sun’s editorial policies.

Tags: Campus Beat