It’s a truth universally acknowledged that, with the exception of, like, Bob Jones University, institutions of higher education are generally more progressive than the world outside their gates. But all the idealistic hippie students who came of age in the ’60s and later became idealistic hippie professors are now retiring. The younger professors replacing them still disproportionately vote Democratic, but they are “less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate”: 17.2% of the 50-64 age group define themselves as “liberal activists,” versus 1.3% of professors 35 and younger. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a 31-year-old professor, told the New York Times, “My generation is not so ideologically driven” and the article credits the rise of civil discourse over fractious infighting. Read the rest of this entry »

Noting our coverage of November’s “incrediblyyyyyyyyyy sexual” Cornell Craigslist orgy planner, the Cornell Daily Sun played To Catch a Predator last Friday, publishing a story in which a team of intrepid reporters pose as an NSA-seeking female on Craigslist, and then giggle wildly when they receive “over 50 responses in two days.” Always the tease, Sun kept its unwitting subjects anonymous, but we have no doubt they facebooked every single entry, because seriously, how could you not? Somewhere, a “36-year-old professor” is super red-faced.

The article, entitled “Everybody’s Doing It,” features the sage advice of columnist Jenna B. and extended quotations from their responses. Our favorite:

So you say you’re looking to experiment eh? As an engineer I know how to experiment.

Given the Sun’s fascination with “homosexual and bi-sexual men” who want to “explore… without having to come out,” we wonder if there is an alternate version of this article where the Sun’s tricky staff writes an m4m listing. They can call it “Everybody’s Doing It, Part II: Panic Attacks Sweep Closeted Gay Population.” Ithaca’s “Casual Encounters” is about to suffer a loss of activity… or a huge spike, depending on how much anonymous sex-seekers enjoy exhibitionism.

Looking to fill the void in your voyeuristic reading routine now that Sex and the Ivy is gone? The Cornell Sun would like you to meet “Jenna B.,” their anonymous biweekly sex columnist:

Twentyish dudes ago … my first sexual endeavor concluded with a condom floating around lost inside my body for two days.

Thinking back to the glorious moment when the rubbery, slimy souvenir surfaced from the murky depths of my vag a couple of mornings after the incident (putting a stop to the nightmares in which I gave birth to a baby who had this condom growing out of its face in place of a nose), I wish I’d had the presence of mind to throw the thing in a jar and save it. … On second thought, I’m glad I didn’t save it; it was kind of stinky.

Is that even possible? Superhuman physical feats aside, Jenna B. has hopped on the latest of Ivy daily trends: Uncomfortably vivid and rhapsodically grotesque descriptions of vaginas. You could make a whole college tour out of various campuses’ vagina metaphors of choice! Yale likes its pie served with papayas, while Dartmouth dines on sugarbush, and Cornell… well…

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You’ll have to excuse newbie RagTimer Juli for mistaking the Cornell Daily Sun’s joke issue for reality. The unprecedented candor of this “joke” editorial totally threw us:

[W]e are committed to providing the Cornell community with the most biased and slanted news coverage we possibly can. We uphold our commitment to bringing you news stories that fail to localize national events, op-ed pieces that “opine” on issues too lofty for a collegiate audience (i.e. funny Halloween costumes and casual sex) and sports coverage that fails to straddle the delicate line between fact and fiction. If we could print on toilet paper, we probably would.

Actually, since “biased and slanted” presupposes original thought (not the Sun’s strongest suit, nor that of any other publication run by college students, this one included), we’ll give them a free pass there. Nonetheless, there was some thoroughly titillating stuff on the cornellsun.com domain today. We found it by following the “Click here for real articles” link.

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Similarly, are you bored right now, or the most bored you’ve ever been? If the latter, we’ve got some primo cinema for you. Cornell student Oliver Bundy made a quick documentary–nay, a requiem in four parts–last year about the Cornell Daily Sun. Considering his atrocious subject matter, Bundy’s assembled a rather watchable piece. One of the subjects getting a lot of face time is Michael Morisy of IvyGate guest-editing fame. Luckily Morisy doesn’t say anything stupid, so we’re not obligated to make fun of him.

Our favorite segment is the second, where arts editor Alex Linhardt (maybe the same who writes for Pitchfork?) talks about six-year-old girls getting upset by the Sun’s depiction of “fellatio,” and when the production manager (Cornell ‘74) says “The writing has definitely declined… over the past 30 years. … Ask professors they’ll tell you the same thing.” Hey old man, just whose side are you on?

Four segments of life at a college newspaper after the jump (about 15 minutes total).

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We’ve already brought you some of the Class of 2011’s incredible exploits. Yet there’s something infinitely worse than pre-frosh acting dumb: upperclassmen who deign to give freshmen advice in campus newspapers. Year after year, we are subjected to the selfsame verbal diarrhea as semi-nostalgic upperclass columnists blow smoke up their own asses.

These advices employ a time-old formula of mixing general banalities with college-specific banalities, i.e., “you have such wonderful opportunities at [school] and should totally take advantage of [local record shop or bar in town].”

After the jump, a round-up of the inane “wisdom” to which the Class of 2011 is being so cruelly subjected.

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The Cornell Daily Sun greeted students back to campus yesterday with an overhaul of cornelldailysun.com. Now the reviews are in, and they are … less than raves. This calls for bullet points, lots of bullet points:

• “awful”
• “It doesn’t feel like a newspaper”
• “all [the other Ivy dailies] were more professional looking”
• “simply terrible”
• “completely user unfriendly”
• “major step backwards”
• “Not looking too good”
• “Please head over to the COMM department and let them markup what is wrong with the site” [Ed.: Ouch! Our favorite.]
• “my high school paper’s web site looks more professional” [Ed.: Spoke too soon!]
• “it’s lacking!” 

To be fair, there was a lone dissent.

• “I like it. A lot. Sorry.”

We’re not quite sure where that leaves the Sun — the current site is actually a redesign of a redesign. The temporary summer site’s logo displeased one commenter, who wrote that the historic nameplate had been “pushed into a slanted murky background … like some thought that can no longer be recognized as either a dream or a true recollection.” Damn, where can we get some of this dude’s moonshine?

[UPDATE: The picture's of a cat, people. Being catty. We're firing our photo editor.]