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nOT LONG AFTER HE LEFT HIS POSITION AS CORNELL'S
vice president for university relations to go to Duke, John
Burness had lunch with me at a Hell's Kitchen Italian
restaurant. He wanted to talk about higher education; I wanted
to find an alumni volunteer opportunity. We both wanted to eat.
One course led to another, and John introduced me to this magazine's
board. I write to you now, more than a decade later, as my
last act as chair of that board. The magazine is in fine shape--Jim
Roberts '71, our editor and publisher and my classmate and
friend, has the awards to prove it. But we face real dangers that we
need to address now.
 The
Cornell Alumni Federation owns CAM. The vast majority of its 28,000
subscribers choose to receive the magazine
when they sign up for
class membership. Because
we are independent, we
print what we want without
benefit of the advice or consent
of the University's public
relations machinery. We
intend to keep it that way--
and there's the rub.
The University gives us
office space, assistance from
the Alumni House staff, and
access to its alumni database
and employee benefits program.
We are grateful for all
that. However, unlike our
mates at Harvard, Yale, or
Princeton--to cite three institutions to which we like to compare
ourselves--Cornell does not distribute its alumni magazine to all
its alumni. There are many reasons, including cost. But after
spending years on this subject, years full of good faith task force
reports, meetings, proposals, and the like, I have concluded that
the real stumbling block is another C-word: control.
What Cornell doesn't control it doesn't want to circulate.
Instead, it prefers publications extolling good works by large
donors and, lately, an e-mail compilation of campus news as filtered
through University Communications. Both are worthy
efforts. But as beneficiaries of Cornell educations, we can tell the difference
between managed news and an independent voice--
and most of us prefer the latter.
What is it that Day Hall doesn't like about us? Once administrators
get the pro forma denial out of the way, they invariably
launch into a parade of what I can only call the not-so-horribles. I
will mention three. The first is always the same: a lame attempt at
humor the magazine ran in the late 1990s that portrayed Cornell
as the "lowest leaf" of the Ivies. The problem wasn't
the idea--anybody
on your U-Hall floor who didn't get into Harvard?--but the
execution. It wasn't funny. More to the point, it hasn't been
repeated. Can we all please get over it?
The next example in the litany of perfidy varies. The one I like
to cite was an irritated reference over a breakfast meeting to an
article so minor I had missed it: an opinion piece in 2003 that
politely objected to a proposed parking lot on a West Campus site
(not yet known as Redbud Woods). My Day Hall companion was
clearly agitated by that, but truly, as the controversy moved on,
that story was but one of many--and the next day the sun rose
over Ithaca. Sort of.
Mercifully, the third complaint has fallen out of favor. For a
while last year, we received furious warnings over our investigation
of the poorly explained resignation of Jeffrey Lehman '77.
Dire consequences were predicted. Instead, after CAM published
its thorough and less than incendiary account, a curious thing
happened: University officials began to send the piece to people
who inquired about the subject. Now maybe that means we
missed the real story. But I think what it really means is that some
at Cornell found value in having a trusted independent voice in
their midst.
Maybe this year we can build on that. Maybe this year the University
will come to grips with the fact that Cornell has the second
lowest percentage of alumni givers in the Ivies--ahead of only
Columbia--and will leverage the marvelous resource you hold in
your hands. Maybe. But we can't wait forever. Our costs grow, our
circulation is flat, and we need to control our future. The Federation
and the CAM board are exploring fundraising opportunities
to support our independence. That will be a task for future alumni
volunteers. Thanks for allowing me to do this job. Now I think it's
time for Burness and me to have another espresso.
Aric Press '71
Editor in Chief, The American Lawyer
Chairman, Cornell Alumni Magazine Committee |
