100 years later, the ill-fated voyage still resonates
100 years later, the ill-fated voyage still resonates
I enjoyed “Unsinkable” by Brad Herzog ’90 (March/April 2012)—his story about the four Cornellians on the Titanic was moving. Whether on sports, travels around the nation, or sharing his brief TV celebrity on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” Brad is always a good read. He mentioned the 1997 Titanic film in the article, but many of us prefer the 1953 movie version. I was an undergraduate when it came out, and I’ll never forget the scene of young people singing college songs around the piano in the ship’s lounge. First an Amherst song, and then a beautiful rendition of “Far Above Cayuga’s Waters” (both verses) just before the ship hit the iceberg. We didn’t realize that Hollywood inadvertently was paying its highest tribute to the two Cornellians lost some forty-one years earlier.
In March, I went to a Titanic exhibit at the Natural History Museum in San Diego. Upon entering, each person was given a replica of a boarding pass with the history of one of the passengers. Imagine my surprise when the person listed on my pass was Edgar Meyer 1905.
A Dissenting Voice
I regret being unable to share President Skorton’s excitement about the partnership between Cornell and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (From David Skorton, March/April 2012). In fact, given the well-documented close ties between Technion and the Israeli military and weapons corporations that contribute to Israel’s policies and practices that function to deny justice and freedom for all Palestinians, the newly formed alliance between these universities is cause for dismay, not celebration.
Arms technology research developed at Technion collaboratively with Israeli weapons corporations and the military has been employed by Israel to sustain its occupation, directly and indirectly. For example, faculty and students at Technion worked with Rafael, one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers, to develop rockets, aircraft, and tanks, some of which were involved in the widely condemned Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009. No less troubling are reports that Technion’s practices of discrimination seriously affect the ability of Palestinian students to have equal access to higher education.
Many faculty and students at other North American universities, including McGill and Concordia in Montreal where I have appointments, have asked our institutions to not collaborate with Technion because its practices seem to violate basic academic principles and human rights. I ask the same of my alma mater. Through its partnership, Cornell serves to “normalize” what happens at Technion. What is happening there is of grave concern.
Beyond Prison Walls
I was glad to see the article by Edward Hower ’63 on the Cornell Prison Program (“Writing Dangerously,” March/April 2012). I have been a volunteer in maximum security prisons through the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), and I am currently volunteering in Auburn Correctional Facility. We meet weekly with our inside workshop facilitators, and it has been a source of pride as a Cornellian to see Cornell students giving their time and energy to teach the men incarcerated there.
I attended the Cornell Prison Project conference on campus last year and was pleased to see that one of the formerly incarcerated speakers was a man who had participated in an AVP workshop with me. When he spoke, he was asked why he had dropped out of school. He said that he had always expected that he would go to prison, and so, at the age of twelve, he had practiced holding razor blades in his mouth and spitting them out, in expectation of the violence he would face. Someone asked him what needed to be changed in education for those expectations to change. He had no answer—but I do.
When my husband and I graduated from Cornell, we had completed majors in English, but we had also completed a program for provisional certificates in secondary education. This program apparently no longer exists. Cornell, unfortunately, does not provide training for students to go into teaching in the public schools, which so desperately need them.
I know that Cornell students are finding in their prison classes men who can compete intellectually with any students on campus. I know they must share with me the sadness that these same men were deprived, as children, of teachers who might have inspired and energized them to have expectations other than a life in prison. The hard reality is that some of the men who graduate from the Cornell Prison Project will never be able to use that education outside prison walls—and never see their children outside prison walls. And the other hard reality is that many of them have sons and daughters who are incarcerated in other prisons.
I think the Cornell Prison Project is wonderful. However, I hope that it will grow to develop a vision of what must be done in order to change the expectations of young people growing up on the streets, and to develop a program to train “the best and the brightest” to teach in our public schools.
War—What Is It Good For?
While I was reading Beth Saulnier’s article about Danfung Dennis ’04, BS Ag ’05 (“Home Front,” March/April 2012), I pulled up Hell and Back Again on Netflix. It’s very well done and, in the end, quite disturbing. I am an Air Force brat, so I hardly dislike our military. But the film confirmed a couple of huge concerns I have with our current armed forces and how we are using them. First, these wars are doing more harm than good—you could see it and hear it from those village elders who want nothing more than peace for their families. Second, the all-volunteer army attracts people who enjoy killing, especially when soldiers are constantly deployed. I heard this from an early retiree who described the changes he had seen in the past ten years. More and more, he told me, fewer military volunteers are people willing to defend their country but not fond of war and many more are people who prefer war.
My dad, a career Air Force officer and World War II veteran, was sickened by the waste of life, especially in the Iraq war, which had no justification. Future generations of Americans will, I am afraid, be stuck with the ugly consequences of these lengthy wars of occupation.
Conversation Starter
With all of the current kerfuffle about higher education—escalating costs and the student loan burden, intense competition to attract top students to elite colleges like the Ivies, and the power of rankings by national surveys to influence perceptions of quality and value—I write in hope of sparking a robust conversation among fellow CAM readers about such issues.
To kick this off, I am reminded of a remark in the Daily Sun, circa 1958, following a survey by outside experts about the value of a Cornell education, to the effect that: “While an excellent education can be acquired at Cornell, holding a diploma from Cornell does not guarantee that one has had an excellent education.” Is this still true?