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SPEAKER 1: This is put on by the Senior Class Campaign with some support from the Class Council of 2017. So you might be wondering, what is the Senior Class Campaign? Well, the Senior Class Campaign is a group of seniors, as you could probably guess, who are dedicated to helping the Senior class give back to Cornell before we graduate. And so we try to get Seniors to give a gift and leave their mark before we leave here.
I personally gave to ILR Women's Caucus, which was a group that was really fundamental in my development and learning here at Cornell. And so I want to make sure that after I graduate, new students have the same opportunities to grow and to succeed and to learn in ILR Women's Caucus. So you don't have to just give to a large Cornell fund, but you can. That's still great. Cornell knows where it needs its money. But you can also give a gift to something that's really impacted your time here.
And something that's really special this year is that we have a very generous alumni couple who has pledged up to $50,000 for undergraduate scholarships. So the way they're giving that money is for every Senior that gives a gift of $20.17, they will give $50 to undergraduate scholarships. So we can get all the way up to $50,000, which is almost a year's worth of tuition for somebody.
We hope you will join us in giving back. But for now, we want you to just sit back and enjoy learning a little bit about our almost alma mater. So thank you-- our alma mater. So thank you to Corey Earle for coming and giving us this opportunity to learn about Cornell history and celebrate Cornell history.
[APPLAUSE]
COREY EARLE: Thank you. Hello, everybody. Is the microphone loud enough? Can you hear me? It's all good? Excellent.
So thank you for coming here, despite the snow and the change of time. I think I owe you an apology for four different reasons.
So first of all, I'm sorry that my class wasn't offered this year to the Seniors. Because I know some of you were planning on taking it. Second, I'm sorry that this lecture got rescheduled from when it was supposed to be, yesterday. Third, I'm sorry someone convinced you to come to this lecture because it would be interesting. I mean, it's just a bunch of history. But hopefully, you'll find it entertaining. And fourth, because you're the class of 19-- or 2017, and I'm the class of 2007, we're going to be on the same reunion cycle for the rest of your lives.
[CHEERING]
So whenever you come back to Cornell in June for your reunion, I'm going to be here. And you're going to be stuck with me. So my apologies.
I also understand that this is being Livestreamed to some alumni. So hello to the alumni out there. And this is being recorded. So it's not just Seniors watching.
But we're going to talk a little bit about Cornell history and some fun anecdotes, a little bit of stories and bits of information about Cornell over the years. I've decided to add a little bit of seasonalness to the slide here.
You were able to witness history this week, actually. You might not have realized that. But the storm on Wednesday, this was the second longest closing in Cornell history this week.
[APPLAUSE]
So yeah, you were a witness to, witnessed history. The longest being 1993, when we were closed for 48 hours straight, although 24 of them was a Sunday. So it really hardly counts. Reopened at 3 o'clock on a Monday. So this was the largest, I think possibly the longest closing of classes in Cornell history.
And I think it's a good opportunity to bring back a piece of Cornell history that no longer exists. So some of you may know, there's a building called Toboggan Lodge. And so there used to be a toboggan slide onto Beebe Lake. This is a slide that would go from behind Human Ecology down onto Beebe Lake, and students and faculty would go and go sledding down onto the lake in the wintertime. It lasted from 1902 to 1949. So it s here for almost 50 years.
And then the era of risk management sort of happens, and litigation and lawyers. Every year, someone would break a leg or arm or something. Because this would get going pretty quickly. That's a tall slide. But a neat piece of Cornell history that is no longer with us.
So Cornell has over 150 years of history, 152 years of history. You were all here when we celebrated the sesquicentennial a couple of years ago. Everyone had to learn how to pronounce and spell sesquicentennial. But in the grand scheme of things, 152 years isn't that long compared to our peer institutions. We're actually a pretty young institution.
If you look at Harvard, for instance, 381 years old, considerably older than Cornell.
[BOOING]
There you go. Thank you. So to put it in perspective, Harvard celebrated their sesquicentennial over a sesquicentennial ago. So that sort of shows relatively, we're a pretty young institution.
So a lot of you know I taught this class at Cornell called the First American University, American Studies 2001. That's where the hashtag comes from. Students would live tweet during class. And you are welcome to live tweet fun facts that you learn today, so your friends can play along and learn a little bit about their alma mater. But over the six years, I taught over 2,000 students in the class. And I think it's really important for Cornellians to have an understanding of their alma mater, an understanding of where they spend four or five years of their lives, or six or seven, for some of you, perhaps. Tyler and Jovan, where are you?
But how many of you took my class already, anyone in the audience? Tyler. Oh, we've got a few people. All right. So shout out to the alumni who clearly learned nothing and are here for a remedial session.
So we learn about things like early Cornell faculty looking like Harry Potter characters. We learn about things like why we have weird traditions like Dragon Day, why we no longer have weird traditions like the Mud Rush, where Cornell students would just pummel each other in a pile of mud, why there are things like a famous murderer's brain on display in the Psych department. We cover all sorts of fun things in the class.
But today, I'm going to try to condense 14 lectures of material into one lecture, which is a little bit of a challenge. So I figured if we just take 100 slides at a time, we'd be able to do all 14 weeks. So this is Week 1 or so of the class. You can follow along and see what's going on here. All right. That may be a little challenging.
So First American University was the title of the class. Why is it called the first American university? A little audience participation. Why do you think Cornell can be called the first American university? Any ideas? And if you took the class, you're not allowed to raise your hand. Yeah?
Nonsectarian. We didn't have a religious affiliation from the start. Great answer. That's part of it.
Patrick?
No royal charter, true. We were not a colonial institution.
Founded the year of emancipation, close of the Civil War, 1865.
Thoughts? More hands? Are we missing any? Yeah.
We spearheaded bringing in people who weren't just old white men. Excellent point.
Any others? We've covered most of it. Any? Did we miss any?
So all of those are great answers and all of them do play into this name, first American university.
And so a lot of schools claim the title of first American university. Some have better claim than others. One of them, Harvard-- all right, some of you caught on, good, good. Harvard is chronologically the first American university. They were founded first. They've been around a long time. So they like to claim that title.
The College of William and Mary also likes to claim that title, because they were officially chartered by the state of Virginia as a university, or designated a university before Harvard was a university. Harvard was still Harvard College at the time. So the College of William and Mary says, we're the first real university.
The University of Pennsylvania also says they're the first American university, because they were officially designated a university by Pennsylvania a week before the College of William and Mary was designated a university. So we're getting into sort of splitting hairs here.
Yale, on the other hand, claims they're the first American university because they gave the first PhD in the United States. And they say that's what makes a university. The PhD was for a six-page dissertation. And the quality of scholarship hasn't changed since.
[LAUGHTER]
And then you have Cornell University, 1865. Considerably younger than these other institutions. I appreciate the enthusiasm, very good. And so Cornell, we like to call ourselves the first American university for a few reasons. It's a term coined by this guy, Frederick Rudolph. He actually was a professor at William and Mary, famous educational historian, wrote a number of pretty landmark books. And he described Cornell as the first American university, because what we think of today as an American university, as a university in America, Cornell was really the first to be like that.
And so that means a few things, and a lot of them are things that you touched on with your answers. But in summary, Cornell was unique when it was founded in 1865 as a coeducational, nonsectarian, land grant institution, which means it has sort of a public service mission to it, with a broad curriculum and a diverse student body. And Cornell was founded to be all of these things.
This was really unusual for the mid 1800s. Higher education in the United States was for wealthy white men. It was for them to be trained to be clergymen and politicians. Almost all education in the United States, at this point, had a strong religious influence to it. And so this was very different than what higher education looked like in the United States.
And that was Cornell's purpose. That's what the founders wanted to do. They wanted to change higher education in the United States. And so Cornell really was a pioneer in a lot of ways. It wasn't necessarily the first to do each one of these things, but it was the first to do all of them together at one institution. So that's what made it the first American university.
So in summary, what Frederick Rudolph was saying is you've got a bunch of old, out-of-touch universities founded in the 1600s and 1700s, not to name names. Cornell University, founded in 1865. And then you have all of the old, out-of-touch universities becoming more like Cornell, eventually becoming coeducational, eventually becoming nonsectarian, adding a public service component to the universities. But Cornell really took the lead in a lot of these waves.
Even things like teaching a broad range of curriculum. Most schools just had a classical curriculum. Cornell said, no, agriculture is a legitimate field of study, engineering is a legitimate field of study. And later on in its history, hotel administration, labor relations. These are things that were not considered legitimate things to study in college. And Cornell said, no, they are academic equals of history and language, et cetera, and so changed the way a lot of universities operate in the United States.
So today's lecture is going to be a little different than just about the First American University. The way I've decided to frame it is life lessons from Cornell history. Most of you are Seniors. You're going to be graduating, going out into the world. Most of you will be graduating. I assume some of you might have some challenges with that. But it's OK. It's a great place to stick around an extra year. But for those of you who are heading out into the real world-- some of us stayed here an extra nine years-- these are some life lessons from Cornell history that hopefully you can take with you.
So life lesson number one, don't bury good ideas underground. So it's important to talk about Ezra Cornell when talking about Cornell's history. Who knows where Ezra Cornell made his fortune?
There we go. Telegraph. You know your Cornell history. So Ezra was born into a very poor family, eldest of 11 children, basically grew up in poverty. His father was a potter and a farmer, and really did not have many resources growing up. He had about a third grade education. But he really valued education. He saw the importance of education to reaching success. He knew that most successful people were able to get access to an education, and he wanted to help others get access to an education.
And he ended up being in the right place at the right time. He was asked to design a plow that would dig a trench and bury telegraph cable underground. And so he did this and became the assistant to Samuel Morse, Morse being the inventor of the telegraph. So Ezra gets hired to help Morse launch this new technology. This is the original telegraph receiver. Cornell has this in the University archives. And You can check out the very first-- you can't check out, as in take it out of the library-- but you can check it out, as in visiting the library, to see the very first telegraph receiver, received the first message. And Ezra was the guy who built the first telegraph lines. And the telegraph ends up revolutionizing communication. This was like the internet of the mid 19th century.
And so Ezra designs this plow that will lay telegraph cable underground. And it doesn't end up working that well, actually, because the cable wasn't well insulated, it would break, and then the line would not work, and this industry was not going to take off without coming up with a new solution. Oh, another fun fact about the telegraph receiver, have you ever walked behind the statue of Ezra Cornell? The telegraph receiver is part of it. A little fun fact for your next time you're on the Arts Quad.
So, this one doesn't actually work, though. But I do tell parents, when I lecture to them, if you're having trouble getting your son or daughter to answer the phone, you can send a telegraph because the original receiver still works. So you can send a telegram through, it's basically a big electromagnet.
But as I was saying, the telegraph was not going to be a success because the cable wasn't working buried underground. And Ezra was the guy who had this bright idea of putting wires above ground on poles. So next time you see a telephone pole, you can think of Ezra Cornell and his impact on society. He decides to string the cable above ground on poles instead of burying it. The telegraph industry succeeds, revolutionizes communications, and Ezra becomes a very wealthy man. He becomes the largest stockholder in Western Union, which was this conglomerate telegraph company.
So Ezra has a major influence on this fledgling industry as an entrepreneur, as someone who had an interesting idea and thought outside the box and didn't bury his idea underground. So there's your life lesson for you about entrepreneurship, thinking outside the box.
Life lesson number two, listen to your mom. So we've talked a little bit about how Cornell was coeducational from early on in its history. The first women arrived in 1870, two years after Cornell opened in 1868. This is, I believe, Delta Gamma sorority, waiting for a party at Chi Phi. No. No. It is Delta Gamma sorority, I believe, from 1880s or so. And so Cornell was a pioneer in terms of coeducation. And it's tough to overstate how much of a pioneer it was in terms of coeducation.
Let's look at our peer institutions. This is when our peer institutions in the Ivy League accepted women. Columbia, yeah, exactly, 1983 was not that long ago, people. So some of these schools actually had sister colleges. So Columbia had Barnard. Harvard had Radcliffe. But if you were a woman attending one of those schools, you could maybe take some classes at Columbia or Harvard, but you couldn't get a degree from those institutions. Your degree came from Barnard or Radcliffe or the sister institution.
So you can see, Cornell was considerably ahead of the pack. For the Comm majors among you, that's 113 years.
[LAUGHTER]
I was a Comm major, so I can do that. Shout out to the Comm majors. Do we have any? All right. One. There we go. Thank you. Some enthusiasm.
So quite a bit ahead of the game. Cornell actually became a model for other institutions. Other schools were very worried that coeducation was a bad thing, that it would make men womanly and women manly, and people complained that women would start riding bicycles or something ridiculous like that if they started attending school with men. And so Cornell began accepting women showed that this was actually a good thing, that it was better for everybody, that women should have access to a world class education. And other schools eventually followed suit and said, I guess we'll accept women, as well, and become coeducational.
And so one of the influences on this decision was a woman named Clara Dixon. Any Clara Dixon Hall former residents? All right. Largest dorm in the Ivy League, fun fact for you. So who was Clara Dixon?
There we go. A.D. White's mom. So Andrew Dickson White was the co-founder of Cornell University with Ezra Cornell. He was the first president. And he was really the architect of Cornell. A lot of the policy decisions and founding ideas came from Andrew Dickson White, along with Ezra.
And so White was writing a letter to his mom when he was designing this new institution and saying all these crazy things they were going to do here, like non sectarianism and coeducation. And his mom wrote back and said, I'm not so sure about your other ideas, but as to the admission of women, you are right. So Clara Dixon was a supporter.
Both White and Cornell actually had strong women in their families. White's second wife was the first woman to get a PhD in the United States. So they had this influence on them, and that helped convince them that coeducation, yes, it was a good idea, 100 years ahead of some of our peers.
So the lesson there, I think there's a lesson about inclusiveness, a lesson about listening to other people's perspectives, and, of course, listening to your mom.
Life lesson number three, dream big. So we've talked about how unique Cornell was in terms of being founded in 1865 on these pretty interesting ideas, radical ideas, revolutionary principles. So let's look at some of our peer institutions again. There we go. All right.
So we've mentioned Harvard. Harvard's motto is Veritas. That was their goal when they were founded, truth, this very highfalutin sort of meaningless motto.
[LAUGHTER]
Like, what else are you going to teach, alternative facts?
[LAUGHTER]
Then you have Dartmouth, founded a little later. Dartmouth's motto, also in Latin, a voice crying in the desert, or wilderness. Why would you want to go to an institution with a motto that's a voice crying in the wilderness? That makes no sense to me, not a super fun sounding place to go. And both Harvard, Dartmouth, and most of our Ivy peers have Latin mottos.
In fact, Cornell is the only Ivy League institution with an English motto, a little more accessible, a little more inclusive. And Cornell's motto stands out for a lot of reasons. "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." This has been hammered into you over the years. Pretty strange motto when you compare it to a lot of other institutions. And especially strange when you think about it in 1865. This was not what higher education was about, as we've talked about. This was a very unusual thing for a motto. And particularly, the any person and any study. These were radical for 1865.
And the other thing to remember about the motto is that it was aspirational. It wasn't intended to be a practical sort of thing. This was the goal for a new university. They understood, Ezra and Andrew Dixon White, they understood that they weren't going to teach every person, they weren't going to teach every study. But they should have a goal of teaching any person, any person should be welcome at the Cornell University. Any study should be taught at the Cornell University. No study was less equal to the other, as agriculture and engineering, which were maybe seen as lowly subjects at other schools, they weren't seen as less important at Cornell.
And so that's really where this aspirational motto came from. The founders were dreaming big. They wanted to change higher education. And when you compare it to other institutions' mottos, this was a pretty unique thing.
I like to think about any person in a few different ways. Let's sort of break it down into pieces. So first of all, it meant any gender. This is a photo of the women's crew team from the early 1900s, fighting the patriarchy by dressing up as men and mocking their place in what was seen as a man's world in higher education and athletics at a higher education institution.
But the founders intentionally used the word person in the motto. Any person, not any man or any white man or any wealthy white Christian Protestant man. This was purposely a vague term that was applied to everybody, any person.
They also meant any race. We mentioned earlier, Cornell was founded at the close of the Civil War, 1865. I think the charter was signed a week after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. Race is obviously a topic in the United States, at this point. And the founders were conscious of that and they wanted Cornell to be an inclusive place. This was an intentional decision, as well. This image, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the first Greek letter fraternity for African-American men in the United States, was founded at Cornell in 1906. And so any race was also part of that any person part of the motto.
Any nationality. Cornell had one of the largest international student populations in the 19th century, late 1800s. It was called the most cosmopolitan of universities, referring to the number of international students. This is the Chinese Students Association, which was founded right at the turn of the century, as well. The first permanent resident of the United States from Japan was a Cornell student. The A Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Alfred Zee, was the first Chinese graduate from Cornell. A number of very notable international students early on in Cornell's history. And that was part of this any person, too. There were international students in the first year at Cornell.
Any religion was another big component. This image is of the class statistics. They used to publish class statistics, where they would ask you questions like, do you have a mustache and how tall are you and what are you studying. You can see this list, there's their field of study, what they plan to do after they graduate, or their career field. I believe that's their birthday. But it also lists religion. And you can see on this list of religion, it goes from Hindu to Hebrew to heathen.
At any other institution in the United States, if you said you were a heathen on some official document, you probably would have been thrown out of that school. That was not acceptable in higher education at this time. But at Cornell, that was OK. It was a nonsectarian institution. And Cornell students prided themselves on that fact. Cornell was called the godless institution. It was the Heathens on the Hill. And this was the most controversial part of Cornell's founding, the fact that it wasn't tied to any particular religion. And the founders felt strongly about that. Got a lot of criticism from prominent clergy people, from prominent journalists, that you don't send your children to Cornell, it's a horrible thing. But fortunately it worked out and other schools eventually became nonsectarian like Cornell.
Some of the early students actually really got in on the negative press that Cornell was getting and decided as a joke to found the Young Infidels Association as a student club at Cornell. And of course, the media missed the sarcasm from the students and publicized that the Young Infidels Association was corrupting students at Cornell. So another part of the any person aspect of the motto.
And then finally, the fifth element, any socioeconomic status. Remember, Ezra grew up in poverty. He could not afford higher education, and he wanted to make sure that other poor farmers in New York State could get an education. So from the start, they said, truly any person is welcome here. And what Ezra did is he created one of the first work-study programs in the country. He said, look, if you can't afford tuition, which was, I think, $20 when Cornell opened -- it's changed a little bit-- he said, show up on campus, we'll put you to work. And so early students actually helped build the buildings on campus.
So when students arrived, McGraw Hall was under construction. Morrell and Whitehall on the quad were the two earliest buildings. But McGraw Hall, students helped build it to pay their tuition. They helped build paths on the Arts Quad. They helped level the quad, which was just a cow pasture, at this point. This was Ezra's farm. So they were put to work in order to get access to an education. And the Cornell Tradition program today, which has a work study element, that's named after this idea of Ezra Cornell's that students should have access to an education while working for it in order to help pay their way. So another important component of the any person part of the motto.
Which brings us to life lesson number four from Cornell history. Don't be a sellout. So how many of you-- do we have anyone from Iowa here? All right. No one from Iowa. All right. I'm sure some of you have heard of Cornell College in Iowa. So Cornell College is actually older than Cornell University. It was around before we were. And Cornell College was named after a minister who was a fifth cousin of Ezra's. They'd never met, a distant relative. And Cornell College is quite proud of the fact that they're a little older than Cornell University.
And if you go to Cornell College's website, they actually have a section on it, called we're not in Ithaca. The original Cornell is in Iowa. And if you click on that, it gives you all sorts of facts that obviously portray Cornell College in a much more positive light than Cornell University. Things like Cornell College has a national team wrestling title. Cornell only has individual wrestling titles. Various stats like that that they provide.
But the history between these two universities actually goes pretty far back. So when Cornell University was founded, the founder of Cornell College had passed away years before. But the trustees and administrators of Cornell College, they wrote a letter to Ezra Cornell. And they said, look, you've obviously got a lot of money, you just founded this new university, and we wouldn't want people to get confused between these two universities. So for a consideration, if you paid us a little bit of money, we'd be willing to maybe change the name of our university, of our college in Iowa.
And Ezra didn't take kindly to this sort of blackmail, or extortion that they were trying to do, get some money out of him. And he wrote a letter back that is very, very Ezra, in his inimitable style. He writes back, it seems that anything can be done for a consideration nowadays. I have no fear that Cornell College will ever be mistaken for Cornell University.
Ezra throwing a bit of shade there. And of course, he did not pay the money. They did not change their name. And to this day, about 1% of the applications to Cornell College every year are intended for Cornell University, according to an interview with their admissions director that was in the New York Times about a decade ago. They actually had a student show up once, I believe it was an international student, who thought he'd applied to Cornell University, got accepted to Cornell College, showed up at Cornell College and then was very confused that this was not the university he thought he'd applied to. So they have to deal with that confusion quite a bit.
Even stranger, though, the current president of Cornell College got a law degree from Cornell University. So he's bringing a little of Cornell of the East out West, to the Midwest. So I think the life lesson here is a little bit about staying true to your identity, not trying to sell out for a little extra cash, like Cornell College tried to do.
Life lesson number five, fast food isn't that bad. So you may think to yourself, what does fast food have to do with Cornell history? Well, this is Ezra Cornell's birthplace. The McDonald's was not there at the time. But Ezra was born in 1807 in the Bronx, at the corner of Silver Street and Westbridge Road. And there is a McDonald's there. That's Ezra Cornell's birthplace. I went there on Ezra's birthday this year for a little pilgrimage on January 11th. And it was delicious.
But Cornell's ties to fast food actually go much deeper than that. In fact, the chicken nugget was invented by a Cornellian. I see some people got very excited about the chicken nugget back there. Bob Baker, class of '43, was a Cornell graduate, then came back, joined the faculty at Cornell, taught here for many years. And he was sort of the George Washington Carver of chicken nuggets, came up with 200 uses of chicken. He invented turkey ham and turkey hot dogs and all sorts of things, including the chicken nugget, and the process for breading chicken that gets the breading to stick to it just right. He came up with all sorts of things.
Some of you might have heard of the Cornell chicken barbecue recipe, as well. That was one of Bob Baker's inventions. But we can thank him for the chicken nugget. In fact, a lot of fast food items owe their creation to Cornell, because the Vice President of Product Development at McDonald's for many years was a Cornell graduate from the 1950s who developed the fillet-o-fish for McDonald's, the quarter pounder with cheese, the McDonald's apple pie, the process of freezing French fries so they can be shipped between franchises and cooked very quickly so you'd have fries without them having to make them from scratch at each McDonald's.
And then, of course, we have hotelies who founded Burger King. And a hotelie helped found Arby's. So the entire fast food industry would be very different without cornellians. So you can thank Cornell for the obesity epidemic in America.
But it's not just unhealthy food that Cornell has had a hand in. Apples, for instance. Cornell has developed over 60 apple varieties, like the Cortland apple, the Empire apple, I think, Jonah Gold, a lot of different varieties that you probably have quite regularly came out of Cornell scientists. And we probably wouldn't have blueberries without Cornellians, either. It was a Cornellian who was the first person to domesticate blueberries and be able to grow them so they can be distributed in markets and that sort of thing. The propagation methods that he designed are still used today for blueberries. So you can thank a Cornellian for both apples and blueberries.
And you can also thank Cornellians for pot stickers and stir fry. Although a Cornellian did not invent these items of food, the terms pot sticker and stir fry were coined by a Cornellian. Yun Rin Chow, class of 1914, very famous linguist. He wrote one of the first English language Chinese cookbooks, he and his wife. He translated it into English and he came up with the terms pot sticker and stir fry. So the next time you have either of those, you can think of Cornell.
He also was the first person to translate Alice in Wonderland into English. Fun fact-- or into Chinese, I mean. It was originally in English.
[LAUGHTER]
Sorry.
Life lesson number six, use Latin correctly. So this one doesn't have that much to do with Cornell history. But I can't miss an opportunity to teach a little bit of Latin. So this is an alumnus. Latin is a gendered language, so it often gets misused. This is an alumna. Notice neither of them are an alumni. They are an alumnus, an alumna. These are alumni. These are alumnae.
So alumnus, singular male, alumna, singular female, alumni can be a group of men or a group of men and women, alumnae, group of women. Alum can be used informally, although some people don't like it, necessarily. Don't ever use alumn, with an N on the end. And aluminum is a chemical element.
So you should never, since you're about to become alumni, many of you are about to graduate, never say, I am an alumni in an interview or in conversation, or just ever. A lot of people do that. But you're an alumnus or an alumna, not an alumni. So a fun little lesson for you about using Latin correctly. I just had to throw that in there.
Life lesson number seven, set high goals. So how many of you have heard the story of the clock tower pumpkin? So quite a few of you. Perhaps the most famous prank in Cornell history. So I figured it was worth retelling the story here. So 1997, October, about a week before Halloween. Campus wakes up to find a large pumpkin on the clock tower. And it looks small in these photos, but this is a pretty sizable gourd we're talking about here. Not that easy to put on that roof, if you think about it. This would be a challenging thing to do.
No one knew how it got there. No one knew who put it there. And this makes the national news. In fact, the New York Times basically assigns a beat reporter to cover the clock tower pumpkin over the next few months.
Conundrum at Cornell, pumpkin's lofty perch. So they're trying to figure out, all right, how did this get there? Everyone's excited. This is weird. All right. Cornell waits for pumpkin to plummet. So it's November now. It's been a couple weeks. They're like, OK, it's going to fall off soon enough. Cornell actually put police tape around the clock tower, because they were worried it could fall and injure someone. But campus is getting into this, and the news, national news is covering this. All the nightly news shows send reporters here to do bulletins from Cornell about the pumpkin.
Cornell's pumpkin posits another mystery. Is it real? These are all the New York Times. It's now December 20, and they're still covering the pumpkin on the clock tower. So now they're like, well, the pumpkin's not falling, maybe it's a fake pumpkin, maybe it's plastic. The engineering students on campus actually design things that will fly up and try to take photos or take samples of the pumpkin. The glee club sings a parody of the alma mater on the nightly news about the pumpkin. The editor-in-chief of the Daily Sun is interviewed on the evening news. This is getting a little out of hand here.
Cornell wants to know, is it pumpkin or plastic? Note the date, it's February 22 now. It's been months. The pumpkin is still there. And this mystery is plaguing campus.
So Cornell decides to take action. Cornell plans to rescue pumpkin stuck on tower. They're like, all right, we need to do something about this. Cornell decides to throw a big party to take care of the pumpkin. They're going to bring in a gigantic crane. They're going to take the pumpkin off, have a little ceremony. The dairy bar makes pumpkin ice cream, which is the tradition to this day, thanks to the clock tower pumpkin. So everyone gets ready for this big party where they're going to ceremoniously take the pumpkin down.
And then pumpkin and hoopla at Cornell go splat. This is March, I believe. And what happens is a gust of wind blows the crane into the clock tower earlier that morning, while they were doing a test run, and it knocks the pumpkin down so it doesn't happen during this big party. This celebration that they had planned doesn't really go according to plans. But the New York Times does have the final word. Cornell panel determines object really is pumpkin. So they did get the plant scientists in on this and horticulture students. And they made sure that it really was a pumpkin.
Four physics majors won the campus wide competition to determine the nature of the object. So there you go. They used a balloon and remote control video camera to obtain a sample and close ups. So that was the story of the clock tower pumpkin.
There's the provost of the university, at the time, who went up to get the pumpkin. There was scaffolding around the clock tower at the time. So they're standing on scaffolding. You can see that the pumpkin is sort of a rotted husk of a pumpkin at this point. And what they determined was that the pumpkin in the Ithaca winter had basically freeze dried itself and wasn't rotting at the rate they expected it to. It had been hollowed out by whoever put it there, so it was just the hardened outer shell of the pumpkin that then got freeze dried and was not going to go anywhere for a while.
They did put the pumpkin on display for the rest of the semester. Because, why not? So you could go check out the pumpkin, I think in Willard Straight Hall. And then for the 10th anniversary in 2007, they did get out the pumpkin. The pumpkin had been preserved in a jar with the Cornell brain collection. Because what better place to put a pumpkin? So they did get out the jar with the pumpkin. I believe that jar of mush is still in the basement of Uris Hall, along with the leftover brains from the brain collection.
So whether they get it out in October, 2017 this year for the 20th anniversary, I think we need to have another little anniversary celebration when that happens.
No one ever came forward and admitted to being the pumpkin prankster. The pumpkin perpetrator remains at large. They did give an anonymous interview to the chimes masters about how it was done. And the story is that they went up during the evening chimes concert, when the tower is open. They hung out onto there, listened to the chimes, then they hid up there while the chimes master was playing amongst the bells. The chimes master left, and the person taped over the lock on the door and went home and got professional climbing equipment. They were a climber.
And then the story is that they went back up in the middle of the night. They had brought a bolt cutter to cut through a padlock on a trapdoor about halfway up the roof. And you can see the roof is kind of ridged, so you could walk up the roof without that much trouble. So they used climbing equipment and a lot of courage and walked up the roof with this hollowed out pumpkin and put it on top. And they remain a mystery to this day. Although it's said within the local climbing community, people do know who the pumpkin prankster was. But they've never come forward publicly.
At one point, they did write a letter to the university archives, admitting how they did it and who they were. I'm not sure if that still exists. There was some statute of limitations they wanted it to be opened in 50 years or something. But one of the great pranks in Cornell history and why we have clock tower pumpkin ice cream.
Life lesson number eight.
What was the life lesson? Oh, aim high. So there's your life lesson for the pumpkin. Set high goals and achieve them. 161 steps high, 173 feet.
Life lesson number eight, give back. So because this is sponsored by the Senior Class Campaign, I felt it was important to have a message about giving back. And so we've talked about Ezra Cornell. And this book here was something he called his cyphering book. And so he when he was a young boy, had no money, he actually made this book himself out of pieces of paper, he sewed it together and bound the book, and it was just blank pages. And what he'd used this book for was teaching himself Math. I talked about how he valued education. And so he would do times tables and he'd teach himself how to do accounting and calculate interest, things like that.
And so this was his little lesson book. And he pulls it out later on in his life, when he had made his fortune in the telegraph industry. And he writes in the book something that's a pretty profound message. And I think it's a really important part of the Cornell story. He writes in the book, my greatest care now is how to spend this large income to do the most good to those who are properly dependent on me, to the poor and to posterity.
And that's a pretty crazy statement. Instead of saying he wanted to hold onto his fortune, have his children inherit it, leave it in a bequest, he wanted to give it away while he was alive and make a difference. And at the time, that was not really the standard form of philanthropy. Nowadays, you hear more about giving while living, with philanthropists like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. But that was really not a philanthropic tradition that was common. But Ezra felt strongly about giving back to those around him, giving back to his community. And that's a really important part of Cornell's story.
Does anyone know what Ezra's first philanthropic gift was before Cornell University? The Ithaca Public Library, exactly. So at the time, Ithaca, Tompkins County, had no library. And so Ezra Cornell said a library is an important way for people who can't afford education to teach themselves, like Ezra had. So he paid for a building to be built downtown. It was called the Cornell Public Library or the Cornell Free Library. He bought the books and built Ithaca's first public library. It was right across from the Seneca Street parking garage on the corner of Seneca and Tioga there. Unfortunately, torn down in the late '50s, early '60s. Now there's a parking lot there, unfortunately.
But this was a really profound gift for Ezra. He wanted to give back, make a difference in his community. And he wanted people to have access to an education, for those who couldn't afford it. And so that was the message or philosophy that he took when he founded Cornell, as well, to make a place where people could have access to an education if they couldn't afford it, those who were disadvantaged, et cetera. So he was all about giving back.
And you can see evidence of giving back throughout Cornell's campus, the buildings, the labs, the classrooms with names on them. All over the place, you see names and class years of people who've made a difference to give back to others at Cornell.
How many of you have passed this tombstone in front of Stimson Hall and had no idea if there was someone buried in front of Stimson Hall? So it is not a person underneath there. It's a tombstone honoring trees, elm trees. Although some people say it's because it's outside of the old med school building, it was a med student who didn't make it, Ostrander Elms. Not true.
So Ostrander was a local farmer who, after Cornell was founded, he went up to campus and ran into the chair of the Board of Trustees, Henry Sage, and Andrew Dixon White, the President. And he said, I love what you're doing here, I believe in this idea, any person, any study. I have no money, but I want to do something to give back. I want to help out this new university, this radical experiment in higher education, as Cornell was called. What can I do to give back? And what this farmer decided to do is he planted elm trees all over campus. That was his gift to Cornell, because he had no money. So he planted what became known as the Ostrander elms along east avenue.
And there's actually another one of these tombstones. Does anyone know where the other one is? It's a little more hidden. If you look near the back of Duffield Hall, the southern side of Duffield, there's another one of these near that southern entrance on the Engineering Quad. And they mark the two ends of this line of elm trees that John Ostrander planted.
If you look at old photos, East Ave. looks very different. This is East Avenue in the 1950s. Those are the Ostrander elm trees. Unfortunately, Dutch elm disease hit in the 1960s, killed off most of the elm trees on campus. And so Hope Plaza, for instance, leading up to Willard Straight, used to have trees arching over it, as well, elm trees there, elm trees on the Arts Quad that died out. But these were a gift from this local farmer.
Does anyone know what this strange thing in front of McGraw Hall is?
Birdbath, I hear. Most people assume it's a bird bath. Patrick knows what it is. I heard you shout it out. It's a water fountain. How many of you have gotten a nice refreshing drink of water out of that when you're in between classes?
So this was a gift from the class of 1873. And when they graduated from Cornell, they wanted to do something and give back. And this was a tradition actually set by the class of 1872. The class of 1872, when they graduated, said, we are the first four-your class at Cornell. Cornell opened in 1868. 1872, the first full four years at Cornell. What can we do to give back? And the class of 1872 planted elm trees, much like John Ostrander would do later. They planted elm trees that went along, basically alongside Olin Library. They went from one end of the quad to the other. It was called the President's Walk, because the president would walk from the AD White house down to the top of the slope to watch the sunset. And so that used to be lined with elm trees given by the class of 1872 as their way of giving back.
Class of 1873 said, students walk up to the campus from downtown, because there really was no college town at the time. You get up to the top of a slope, you're thirsty. There's not running water in the buildings. So we're going to give a water fountain. So that was their gift. They bought a water fountain, this beautiful stone fountain. And it would have some apparently healthy water in it that students would get to class and take a nice big drink out of. I wouldn't recommend it these days. I imagine it's not super sanitary. But the fountain remains there as recognition of the class of 1873's gift back to Cornell when they graduated.
So ever since 1872, every class has had some element of what is the Senior Class Campaign, which is the group sponsoring this lecture, to try to teach people about why it's important to give back to help generations after you, to help future Cornellians, sort of like Ezra Cornell was trying to do when he created the public library and Cornell University.
Life lesson number nine, be proud of Cornell. So hopefully, for all of the reasons that we've talked about today, you have had some good reasons to be proud of Cornell and its legacy and the way Cornell changed higher education in the United States.
And so I like to think of my favorite Cornellian, Andy Bernard here, when I think of proud Cornellians. Let's see if we get this to work.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
--guy. You know, cut your throat to get ahead type of guy. But I mean, I'm not threatened by him. I went to Cornell. You ever heard of it? I graduated in four years. I never studied once. I was drunk the whole time. And I sang in the acapella group, Here Comes Treble.
[END PLAYBACK]
COREY EARLE: So hopefully not completely indicative of your Cornell experience, but someone who is pretty proud of his alma mater. And what you may not know is that Andy Bernard is actually based on an actual Cornellian who was proud of his alma mater.
So here's Andy Bernard on The Office, with all of his Cornell stuff, his Cornell mug and his bobblehead, his acapella group photo, his Cornell degree. And Andy Bernard is actually based on this guy. I particularly like how they're making the same hand gestures.
But this is a guy named Kevin Riley, who at the time The Office premiered, was the President of Entertainment at NBC. He was in charge of what shows got put on air and what shows did not. The Office didn't do very well in its first season and they were going to cancel it. And he stepped in and said, let's give it another chance, let's let The Office have a second season, keep it on air and see how it does. And The Office did quite well. And so for, I believe, its third season, Andy Bernard was added as a thank you to Kevin Riley as sort of an homage to Mr. Riley, the boss of the company, because apparently he was quite proud of Cornell and would mention it around The Office more than he should have.
So the lesson here is that if you're proud of Cornell and if you're that guy sitting around the office reading Cornell magazine in your free time, maybe you'll get a TV character based off of you. And that's kind of cool. I think that's something you can be proud of. But hopefully today, I've shown you that Cornell does give you a lot of reasons to be proud of it. Cornell was a pioneer in higher education in a lot of ways.
And a fun fact, Andy Bernard's diploma is hanging on the wall of my house. They sold the props on eBay after the show ended. So I don't have my own diploma on display, I have Andy Bernard's diploma on display.
So at this point, I'm going to open it up to questions, anything and everything related to Cornell that you may wonder about, happy to answer anything. You're also welcome to tweet questions at me, if you have questions later on, or shoot me an email. But are there any questions about anything Cornell related? Yes.
Why did Ezra choose this location? That is an excellent question, one that we're all asking ourselves this week, in particular, I imagine.
So Ezra, when he was a young man, he grew up in Deruyter, about an hour away from here. And he ended up walking to Syracuse and trying to make his way as a young man in Syracuse. He got robbed twice in Syracuse, after getting jobs there. And so he hated Syracuse. Ever after that, he refused to have anything to do with Syracuse. Andrew Dickson White, the co-founder of Cornell, was living in Syracuse when Cornell was founded. And White said, all right, Syracuse, this bustling metropolis, we're going to put the new university here. This makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of people here. It's sort of a hub of culture and industry. And Ezra Cornell said, hell, no, we're not putting my university in Syracuse, horrible place, horrible people there.
And Ezra owned property in Ithaca. This was Ezra's farm. He'd come to Ithaca as a young man, spent most of his life here, except when he was running around helping the telegraph industry be successful. But his family was always in Ithaca. So he said, I'll give my farm, you can have the farm to build the university on. So his farm, the Arts Quad, became Cornell. But we were almost in Syracuse.
Any other questions? Yes.
When did Collegetown start being a thing? So in the early years-- so Cornell had no housing, first of all, when it opened. So there was women's housing provided early on. Sage Hall was the Sage College for Women. That was the first dormitory on campus. Cascadilla existed when Cornell opened. Some faculty lived there. Some students lived there. It was kind of a hub of student activity. But there wasn't much else going on in college town. So most students lived downtown. And Andrew Dickson really felt that was an important part of Cornell's role in the community. He thought that students should be part of Ithaca, not sequestered away from the rest of the community. So most students lived in families' homes. So there were boarding houses. There were families that would have extra rooms for students. And so students were very much part of the Ithaca community and they would walk up from downtown to class every day.
So you think walking up just the slope is bad. They would walk up much farther to get to class each day. Collegetown gradually develops as the university develops. And it's not until the 1910s, 1920s that you see Collegetown really becoming more of a place that a lot of students are living. And you begin seeing big boarding houses being built in Collegetown and the population start shifting this way. 1910s is also when West Campus starts being built. So Cornell begins providing men's housing after 50 years.
Yes. Or nope, that was just a head scratch. Never mind. Any other questions? Yes.
Yeah. Sure. So it used to be one of the big issues on campus was hazing between sophomores and freshmen. Sophomores would haze freshmen. That was a huge part of the campus culture. And they would have some pretty ridiculous traditions as part of it. And one of them was this thing called Mud Rush. And it was also sometimes called a Cane Rush. There would be like a cane that was the symbol of the class, the freshman class. And the sophomores would try to tackle the freshmen and steal the cane, or vice versa. And so they would usually pick some day where there was a big rainstorm and there was mud all over campus. And they would go to this huge mud pile and you would have sophomores and freshmen line up on the two sides and then just beat each other.
And that was the tradition. That was a lot of fun. And you would have students get their arms broken and legs broken, horrible injuries, clothes ripped off each other. And that was a fun tradition between sophomores and freshmen called the Mud Rush. Eventually, the university was like, we should probably stop doing this. This is not a good idea. And it died out by the '20s or '30s, you see that tradition disappear.
Yes. One tradition that I would like to see brought back. Oh, that's a good question.
Obviously, the toboggan slide that I mentioned earlier. But one thing that used to be much more a part of Cornell culture, which is a perfect lead in to my last slide after this, but it used to be campus singing was a big part of culture. And so all students on campus knew all the songs, all the Cornell songs. And so every fraternity, sorority, dorm, when you went to bed or had dinner at night, you would get together with friends and sing Cornell songs.
There used to be a thing during Senior Week called Senior Singing. And all of the senior class would go to the steps of Goldwin Smith and sing Cornell songs. And as cheesy as that sounds, it's kind of cool to think about everybody knowing the songs, getting together and singing them. I know at some fraternities, it still happens a little bit. I know the Glee Club and Chorus and Marching Band still keep the tradition of the Cornell songs alive. But that's a tradition that very few people even know the alma mater or evening song these days. it'd be neat if that came back.
Any more? Yeah.
Why are we called Big Red? Good question. So it actually connects to the songs quite well. There used to be a crew song that everybody knew. Crew was the big sport, rowing. Everyone would go watch the crew row down in Cayuga Lake. And so there was a song that everyone sang when they went rowing, called "The Crew Song". And there was no football song. And the football team was very jealous of the crew. So the football team actually had a contest and said, who can write the best song for the football team? And the winning entry was a song called "The Big Red Team" . And the term Big Red hadn't been used up until that point. And the song won the contest. The guy got $20. He later became Director of Athletics at Cornell. And so it worked out quite well for him. And the football team got their song.
The color red-- so that was the first use of the term Big Red. But the color red dates back to the founding of Cornell. When the university opened, there was a ceremony for the opening, the inauguration of the first president. And they had two banners at the front of the stage that had the words Cornell and White on them, because those were the founders of the university. The banners happened to be red with white lettering, just randomly. And it didn't take long for a student to point out that well, White is like the color white and Cornell is like carnelian, Cornellian carnelian, which is a shade of red. So the students suggested, well, why don't we make carnelian and white the official colors? So that's how we became red and white.
Yes. Sure. So that's tough to fit into a five-minute answer. So the question was, can I talk about the Willard Straight Hall takeover? So very briefly, the Willard Straight Hall takeover was 1969. The AAS, or Afro-American Society, on campus took over Willard Straight Hall, occupied it for 70 hours? I can't remember how long it was. No less than that. But they occupied the building. And it was in protest of a number of things on campus. Basically protesting institutional racism, in a lot of ways, and a lack of an inclusive campus community. And that was a result of in the early 1960s, Cornell was the one of the first institutions to start a really significant affirmative actions program. A program called COSEP was started. And the goal of sale COSEP was to diversify the student body at Cornell. Although Cornell was a diverse campus compared to its peers, it had very few students of color. So there would be a handful of students of color at any given point, leading up to the 1960s. So in 1963, the President said, we need to do something about that. Cornell needs to take the lead in diversifying its student body. And so he created a program to bring in more students of color, help recruit students of color and support them on campus.
But what happened was the campus didn't really have the resources to support them adequately. And so you have a population of blacks students, for instance, goes from, I think, 7 to around 200 within less than a decade. And there weren't really the services, resources on campus to serve that population. And most of the faculty and staff weren't used to dealing with students who had a different background than themselves. And so that led to some racial tensions on campus. And this group of students takes over the building in protest of a campus judicial system that they thought was not serving them adequately, campus government that was not recognizing them adequately, just a general lack of services, resources on campus, and the administration moving slowly in creating a Black Studies program.
And so it was a combination of a lot of different factors that led to it. And it was really a turning point Cornell history in a number of ways. So campus afterwards, the judicial system was completely changed, the student government was completely changed. The campus Ombudsman office was created to deal with disagreements or situations on campus that needed mediation of some sort. You have things like Cornell Ambassadors were created as a result. The goal of Cornell Ambassadors was to go out to alumni and talk to them about what was going on on campus that time. It was less of a prospective student thing.
So it was really a landmark shift in campus. And it also led to the creation of the first, the predecessor of OADI and 626 and intercultural programs on campus. You begin to see offices to help with more diverse populations on campus. So it had a big impact in a lot of ways.
That's a very quick answer to what is a much more complex question.
How recent is Dragon Day? Dragon Day goes back to 1901. So it's been around a long time. It was started by a guy named Willard Straight. So Willard Straight was an architecture student. The story goes that he thought students didn't have enough fun on campus, architecture students, which is still true, some things. Do we have any architects here? Exactly.
So he decided that he would create a tradition called College of Architecture Day for the Architecture students. It happened to be around St. Patrick's Day. So they borrowed the tradition of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. So they made a snake and paraded the snake around campus and decorated things green. And it sort of evolved into a dragon over the years and became less about St. Patrick's Day and more just a celebration of Architecture students.
It has disappeared from campus a couple times over the years, but always comes back eventually. In the '70s or so, it was all about vandalizing campus. Students would splash green spray paint all over buildings. And it wasn't really a good thing. The university tried shutting it down and then decided that they would institutional it into a safer, more regulated way, which is how it happens now.
And up until maybe seven years ago, they used to burn the dragon. But then New York State passed new laws about what can be burned. And they're not allowed to burn the dragon anymore. So unfortunately, the fire part has gone away.
Yes. Slope Day also dates back to 1901. Willard Straight also was on the committee that created the original Spring Day. Henry Schoellkopf was also involved, the namesake of Schoellkopf Field. And so it actually came out of a fundraiser for athletics. Athletics was independent from the University, at this point.
And so students had to raise money to support athletic teams. So they created a little event called Spring Day. It wasn't called Spring Day till the second year. The first year it was just sort of a little parade on campus and a little vaudeville show at a theater, some performances and things. And they sold tickets to raise money for this event. And so there was a parade on campus in the middle of the day to sell tickets for the evening event. And then the next year, they're like, let's do this again, have a little party on campus. We'll call it Spring Day. And it gradually turned into a carnival on campus called Spring Day, at the end of the spring.
And then over the years, it evolved and changed. Became Slope Day around the 1980s, early 1990s, the term shifted. And that's because in the 1980s, the drinking age changed. And this carnival had grown into a whole gigantic affair on the slope, with students partying and drinking. And when the drinking age changed, the students kept drinking, and now the university was a little worried about the legal ramifications of that. And so the university said, well, we're going to throw a special party on North Campus, which will be fenced in and regulated and not be serving alcohol to minors, because that's illegal.
And no one showed up for the official university event. And everyone showed up on the slope. There was an event. The students organized a protest called Take Back the Slope. And that's where the term Slope Day comes out of. It's Spring Day turned into Slope Day. And it's been evolving ever since. It used to be totally unregulated. In 2001, the university began making it a fenced in event, began having tickets, added music, so there was something besides just drinking for students to do. Although there were concerts throughout the years, the music was less of a part of the actual Slope Day itself.
Yes. Military history. Sure. So because Cornell's a land grant institution, Cornell was mandated from the start to teach military tactics. That was in the actual bill, the land grant, or a Land Grant Act said that all land grant institutions had to teach some element of military tactics. And that's why Cornell has had an ROTC program throughout its history. A lot of Ivys dropped the ROTC programs in the 1960s during certain era of unrest. But Cornell was required to maintain it. But it's actually a pretty important part of Cornell's history.
A lot of people don't realize that the War Memorial on the West Campus, these buildings, that is in honor of Cornellians who died in World War I. Cornell had more officers in World War I than any other institution in the country, including the military academies. About 2% of all officers in World War I were Cornellians, which is a pretty phenomenal number, when you think about it. 265 Cornellians died in World War I, which is what the memorial is honoring. And so throughout Cornell's history, you've had a pretty strong ROTC component. It has gotten smaller over the last few decades. But it is an important part of its history.
Yeah. Why are we rivals with Harvard? Well, if you ask Harvard, we're not. They don't care about us. It's sort of like Colgate thinks we're their rival. And do any of you care about Colgate? Exactly. I think it's just sort of an Ivy League, a little bit of the chip on the shoulder sort of attitude by Cornellians. But there's no particular reason that we're rivals, besides we've played sports against them for a long time.
Yeah. The symbols on the Cornell emblem. So there's three symbols on it. The top symbol is a little shield that has stripes. And the stripes represent the 13 colonies, representing Cornell's connection to the federal government, because we are the land grant institution. That was an act signed by Abraham Lincoln. So that's the connection to the country.
The upper right, if you look at it, is actually a little sailboat on a lake, with the mountains behind it. If you look at that, it's actually a piece of the New York State emblem. That's representing the state connection for Cornell. It also represents the beauty of the Finger Lakes region, because it's a little sailboat on a lake with mountains. So it's a little nature and picturesque. And then the bottom part is a book that has the university motto on it, I would found an institution, et cetera. So it's the federal, state connection, and then the motto.
Yeah. So that was in Ward Hall. The question was, where was the nuclear reactor on campus? Which has been decommissioned. But there was one in Ward Hall, behind the Engineering Quad, but is no longer there.
Yeah. What made the Grateful Dead concert in Barton famous? So in 1977, there was a Grateful Dead concert in Barton Hall. It's considered the best Grateful Dead concert in their history and one of the best concerts of that era by any group. It's actually preserved in the Sound Hall of Fame. There's a sound recording Hall of Fame in the Library of Congress that's preserved it.
A lot of different theories about what made it awesome. One reason is that the recording of it was plugged directly into the soundboard, apparently. So the recording is a straight feed from the sound mixer. So it's not just someone taping it live from the floor of Barton Hall. So it does have a pretty good sound quality. But otherwise, people just say, the Grateful Dead were on their game that night, played a good set.
Another fun fact about it is, this was in May. This was actually the Spring Day, Slope Day weekend concert. And when students went into the concert, it was sunny out. When they left, there was a few inches of snow on the ground. And this is in May. And so it was a crazy, fluke May snow storm while everyone is at the concert. So people left and were like, wait, how much drugs did I do at this concert? Everything's covered in snow. But yeah, it became this legend for everyone who went to it.
Any other questions? Yeah.
My favorite weirdest fact about Cornell, favorite or weirdest fact. Well, one of the fun facts, I often get asked-- it's not really a weird fact, but I think it's a fun fact-- I often get asked, who was the most famous or who was the most influential Cornellian? What Cornell alumnus did more to change the world than anyone else? Any guesses? Who do you think would be the most influential Cornellian?
RBG? Oh, RBG. Oh, yeah, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Celebrated her 84th birthday yesterday. I hope you all wished her a happy birthday.
Good guess. Any other thoughts? Exactly. Hu Shih. How many of you have heard of Hu Shih? All right. A few hands.
So historians, some historians claim that thousands of years from now, the one Cornellian that will be in the history books that will still be talked about is this guy named Hu Shih. Class of 1914. It kind of sounds like, who's he? So you can make a joke off that. So it's H-U, S-H-I-H, class of 1914. And he basically is credited with starting the literary revolution in China. So he came to Cornell. He actually started Cornell's library collections in Asia materials. We have a phenomenal collection of Asian materials. He got his Chinese classmates together, including the pot sticker, stir fry guy, they were the same year, Yun Rin Chow, they got together. They collected a bunch of Chinese language books and gave them to the Cornell Library while they were students, to start that collection.
But after he graduated, he became a pretty famous essayist in China. He actually was Ambassador to the US from China. He was chancellor of a university there. He was offered the presidency of China, allegedly, at one point, and turned it down. But he was the first person to start writing in the vernacular. He started writing essays in the language of the people, instead of-- sort of thinking of Latin versus English kind of thing. And so he popularized this literary revolution in China that that changed Chinese culture pretty significantly. And so people say that years from now, he will be the one remembered more than other Cornellians. So I think that's kind of a fun fact that most Cornellians don't even know of him.
My other, a weird fact that goes along with that. You know the bench on the Arts Quad that says, Above All Nations is Humanity? It's by Goldwin Smith Hall. That was a quote from Goldwin Smith. Hu would apparently sit on that bench. So it said Above All Nations is Hu. And he'd block the manity part. So he'd just chill there during the day and let people walk by and be like, ah ha ha, I get it. I kind of like that fact.
So we're about out of time. So one thing I did with my class, when I finished my class at the end of the semester, and so a few of you asked me to do this with you guys, is everyone stands and sings the alma mater. So if you'd like to do that, we can do that today. All right. Some people are standing up already. So we can put on the alma mater. We'll see how well all of you know the words.
[MUSIC - "FAR ABOVE CAYUGA'S WATERS"]
COREY EARLE: Thank you all for coming.
A lecture by Cornell historian Corey Earle '07, hosted by the 2017 Senior Class Campaign.
