Culture

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM | More Than A Month: Black History Being Made

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Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by black people and their role in history. Since 1976, February has been designated Black History Month, not only in the USA, but in countries around the world- including Canada and the United Kingdom. When thinking about celebrating Black History Month, public figures such as Nelson Mandela and Oprah immediately come to mind. But I wondered if we could broaden that list of black heroes and include those ordinary people who are making or have made giant leaps in their communities, those working internationally to make change on a global scale, and those that were making history long before the Civil Rights Movement. There are so many hidden figures that need to be on everyone’s lips throughout the year.

Campus

ON MY MIND | ‘C’ Stands for Colonizer, and Also Cornell

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“Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conquest and subsequent political dictatorship. But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised.” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind
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Intra-Ivy League bickering aside, Cornell University is widely regarded as one of the top institutions of higher learning in the world. Students who graduate from our school go on to become world leaders in their industry of preference: from Wall Street and Capitol Hill to Hollywood and Silicon Valley. The design and administration of our medicine, our mortgages, our software, our textbooks, our food, our jobs, our cities and our homes all bear the mark of a Cornellian somewhere in the fine print. This is not a matter of opinion; it is a fact of our society.

Culture

KYLIE’S ROOM | What Are We Celebrating on Valentine’s Day?

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I painted my nails red for Valentine’s Day. Very cliché, I know. This is shocking and out of character for me for two reasons: 1) I painted my nails — which I almost never do, and 2) I have spent the last 21.5 years (yes, even as a small infant) vehemently opposed to Valentine’s Day. When I was in elementary school, I would symbolically wear black (or whatever black clothing my mother let my nine-year-old self-wear — I definitely didn’t buy my own clothes) to make a statement. My mother would give me “love gifts” the day AFTER Valentine’s Day to respect my cause, and I even wrote a poem entitled “I Hated Valentine’s Day” in fifth grade and got in trouble with a teacher.

Campus

OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM | The Legacy of Cornell’s Campus

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People know Ithaca for its beauty. When I first visited Cornell in the summer of 2014, I was struck by the seemingly endless verdant grass on the Arts Quad and the sea of trees that surround the school. Unless you grew up around waterfalls, nothing really prepares you for walking to class amongst the sight of our monstrous gorges, where thousands of gallons of water tumble down every second. The natural beauty of Cornell’s campus probably affected my decision to apply; when it’s not freezing cold, the bright greens and blossoming bushes express warmth and exuberance all over the landscape. While looking at this nature, we only think of it in terms of wilderness—of untouched beauty, far from the civilization of Cornell.

Culture

THE E’ER INSCRUTABLE | Fimbulwinter; The End of the World

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It is not easy to imagine what an entire city on fire must look like. It would be easier to imagine what Hell itself looks like: more than two millennia of referential material survive to aid in painting that mental portrait. Perusing Dante, or staring wide-eyed at a tableau of Hieronymus Bosch, even turning one’s ear to the apocalyptic blare and bleating of any dime-a-dozen Evangelical can give one at least an inkling of this. The word itself has been cheapened almost beyond practical use: “go to Hell,” “to Hell with it,” “what the Hell.” It is as if, as the preacher in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explains it, the eternal punishment of brimstone were a mild discomfort. Not so: Hell is stench, Hell is immobility, Hell is an eternity of directionless torture, and by eternity is meant the elapsed time it takes for a sparrow to light upon a mountain of a million-billion grains of sand and, carrying one away in his beak, to make it flat.

Culture

ARRAY | We Still Need Arts

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Kids in the liberal arts and social sciences get a bad rap. They are derided for their “easy” majors, lack of relevant job opportunities after college or for ending up in careers that aren’t related to their degree. Engineers and other “skilled” workers, on the other hand, are increasingly valued in our culture, and many economists claim that the future of America lies in technical jobs that require specialized degrees. This is reflected in the fact that the number of business, engineering and health degrees received has exploded since 1970, while the number of history and liberal arts graduates has remained relatively stagnant, or in some cases dropped. This fits quite well with the way Americans perceive themselves.

Culture

THE E’ER INSCRUTABLE | Fimbulwinter: The Rhein’s Fury, Part I

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“Jetzt komme, Feuer! Begierig sind wir,

Zu schauen den Tag,

Und wenn die Prüfung

Ist durch die Knie gegangen,

Mag einer spüren das Waldgeschrei.” -Friedrich Hölderlin, “Der Ister”

Almost two thousand years are to be retrospectively traversed from the death of Hitler to the object of my next inquiry. This is an ode to the Rhein river, the fosterer of an independent Germany, and a blessing, and a curse. In 55 B.C., Gaius Julius Caesar built a bridge over the Rhein. The river was dark, wild, and churned with the same malevolence which the peoples of the sunnier Mediterranean perhaps perceived in the spectral shapes flitting amongst the German pines.

Entertainment

TALK IS CHIC | Fashion Forward or Fashion Backward

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Cuddling in Eleni’s queen sized bed recounting a fun evening, we began discussing our lack of photo documentation this year.  By the time you reach senior year, is taking a #selfie in your novel mixer costume lame/sad/pathetic/overdone? Or were we having too much fun dancing and twirling? Either way, we’re getting nostalgic and sappy as our time at Cornell comes to an end:

GO:  Won’t we want to look back at pictures of us in our Brandy Melville crop tops and LF chokers, which are likely to be painfully outdated? ET: Or the body contouring, mini dresses that may only be acceptable and flattering in this realm of our lives?