The intellectually elite leftist students of Cornell have struck again. In their latest foray into struggle, a group of anonymous students published a twenty-page “Disorientation Guide” detailing eleven grievances against the university. Self-loathing, misandry, and shame are its central themes, and a sense of entitlement is its underlying premise.
The guide was originally published at the beginning of the academic year, but The Cornell Review only recently learned of its existence. Other campus publications, such as the Dartmouth Review, only recently ran stories on their respective campuses disorientation guides. No two guides are the same, but the coordinated release and common name more than suggests collusion among left-wing students at various campuses.
The grievances of the Cornell Disorientation Guide are all familiar regurgitations of leftist gospel, wherein all that exists is evil and all that could be—if only the guide’s authors were given absolute authority—is good. To disagree with them, naturally, is to incur their wrath. The loving, open arms of the left are closed to the open-minded.
A line-by-line refutation of the Disorientation Guide, tempting as it is, would drag on just as the guide does. Rather, I have decided just to address select points from the first three grievances, and perhaps in subsequent issues I will delve into the remaining ones.
1. Cornell’s ongoing colonial occupation
Cornell, founded in 1865, sits on land that was occupied by the Cayuga tribe until 1779, when George Washington ordered a scorched-earth campaign to drive them off the land. The specific grievance in the guide is that Cornell does not acknowledge its “colonial” occupation of former Cayuga lands. Obviously, the guide authors are unaware of what colonialism is (hint: it’s when one country rules another country or group of people and benefits from exclusive trade policies). Stepping back from the literal definition, it is still
Furthermore, there is no explanation of what such an acknowledgement would accomplish.
Would it lift the 22% of Native Americans who live in poverty out of it? Would it employ the 60, 70, 80% of Native Americans unemployed on some of the largest reservations? Would it alleviate rampant alcoholism so devastating nearly 13% of Native American deaths are alcohol-related? Would it save the one in three Native American women who are raped on reservations? No, but it would make the campus activists feel good about themselves.
This section then takes extreme digression with the idea of colonialism to imply Cornell is the colonial master of Ithaca. The guide criticizes Cornell for only giving Ithaca $1.25 million instead of the $6 million usually requested by Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 or the estimated $6 billion tax bill.
Clearly, the guide’s authors are ignorant of or oblivious to the very obvious fact that Cornell is the economic lifeline of Ithaca. Over 8,000 people are employed by the university in non-faculty roles, and a university report released this year showed that Cornell contributed $3.2 billion to the New York state economy last year. The influx of students’ money keeps the real estate market sky-high, fill the coffers of local businesses, and incentivizes continual investment in this otherwise unattractive place to do business.
2. Consolidating patriarchal power
“Don’t pledge frats! They’re f*ed up and boring. Attacking frats is on the rise!”
So concludes the guide’s next section, an indictment of Cornell’s Greek Life.
It is not incorrect to call the Greek system patriarchal, but the key distinction is that Greek Life is completely voluntary. Joining chapters and attending their social events is not an obligation or duty of any student.
But truly, not all is right and well with Greek Life here or on other campuses. The guide correctly criticizes both fraternities and sororities for objectifying women, creating environments prone to and sometimes encouraging of sexual assault, and glorifying excessive drinking and drug abuse.
But leave it to the left-wing students behind the Disorientation Guide to take a perfectly justified set of complaints and warp it into another facet of so-called struggle. Borderline nonsensical rhetoric (‘‘Attacking frats is on the rise!”) subtracts from the gravity of the real issues. Most readers finish this section laughing at the ridiculous last sentences, completely forgetting all else. Worse, the divisive and truculent rhetoric turns off people who are less inclined to, say, topple the “patriarchy,” but are willing to reconsider preconceived notions about campus Greek Life. The guide authors are destroying their own cause by making a caricature out of it.
It leads me to ponder whether they truly want to end the “patriarchal power” structure or simply rant and rave about it. Probably the latter.
3. Cornell doesn’t care about racism
The call to arms in this section concerns last year’s Cornell Athletic’s “Cinco de Octubre” Mexican-themed event. The event was a marketing stunt for a home football game. It featured all that anyone would expect from something as asinine, and in its aftermath a majority of campus threw a collective fit.
Perhaps this event was racist. Only Mexicans could truly say, and plenty of them on campus said so. In response, Cornell Athletics profusely apologized, Vice President Susan Murphy wrote a letter apologizing, and most of the Cornell Daily Sun’s left-wing editorial board hounded on the topic for days. Compare this outpouring to the nonexistent reaction concerning the flyers specifically targetting a conservative writer of the Cornell Daily Sun. Cornell clearly cares about racism.
Apologies, however, are not enough. The only solution, as the guide authors suggest, is to “intervene” and “change” students’ and administrators’ “internalized oppressive worldviews.” Indeed, the old paradigm whereby institutionalized racism–which is determined by intent not outcome, by the way– could be eradicated but individual instances not has now given way to a new paradigm: re-education of the masses.
Of course, the same people whose economic central planning leads to collapsing economies want to now foray into social central planning. Venture to guess what the result of that be?
These left-wing students behind the Disorientation Guide, they stare into the distance, the setting sun, with a twinkle in their eyes and envision the day when they can socially engineer humanity to their every whim. To them, a more perfect society is one in which there is a specific result–that is, a certain set of outcomes created by specific values, policies, and beliefs. They will perhaps never learn that a perfect society is not defined by what it does, achieves, and believes in, but rather how and why it does, achieves, and believes in what it does.
All those interested in reading the Disorientation Guide can visit the Review Blog at blog.thecornellreview.com.
Casey Breznick is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He can be reached at cb628@cornell.edu.