Religious Tolerance at Cornell

CayugaRed2005
Tue, 13 May 2008 20:24:11 +0000

The members of the CRs who also happened to be members of the Student Assembly wrote a resolution simply asking the University to change its policy to reflect a potential change in the laws of the land.



The very fact that the CRs used their time in the SA for such a purpose is ridiculous. All of the evidence shows that concealed weapons (or any sort of firearm, for that matter) is not likely to deter a tragedy like the one that happened at Virginia Tech or Columbine. All the proliferation of weapons will do is proliferate unfortunate accidents whereby people who don’t know how to properly use handguns blow their heads off. I’m admittedly exaggerating slightly, but you get the point.

The SA should be dealing with matters that can directly improve Cornell student’s lives, not silly rhetoric. Like improving the hockey line, or advocating for better career services offices, or improving on-campus student life. What a waste of everybody’s time.

But more on topic, I think there is a certain level of confusion and misdirection going on here. The reason why this thread exploded was due to the quip that:



i find that cornell has an extreme liberal bias and is very tolerant as long as you are also very liberal



A lot of us responded saying and providing anecdotes that large swaths of the campus are not liberal, and that the vast majority of students are tolerant of non-liberal perspectives. Hell, most liberals are just not tolerant at Cornell, but accepting and loving of their conservative friends! Are the Cornell Moderator and the Cornell Political Coalition still around? That’s what those two organizations were all about. And we freely admit that there is unfortunately a lot of multicultural leftist garbage circulating though Campus Life that unfortunately gets shoved down freshman’s throats.



These groups help to create an unfavorable perception of the doctrine of open-mindedness as it pertains to Cornell.



The key word here is perception, not reality. But then again, I suppose reality has a well-known liberal bias.



Additionally, my point is not to speak for the entire campus. My point is to simply point out that Cornell is not as open-minded as people claim it to be. Because many of the same people who hail the virtues of being open-minded are the exact same people who turn around and disrupt Republicans’ events, simply because they disagree with a certain ideology presented.



But the point is that Cornell isn’t any more or any less open-minded than any other top private university. Political correctness pervades all through academia. And the disruptions you speak of are not indicative of the entire student body, and aren’t all that outside of the norm for campus activity across the country. And let’s face it, the campus conservatives don’t have the cleanest histories either. Perhaps they have cleaned up their act this year, I don’t know.

And no, while you may not agree with the tactics used, what the silent protesters did at the Ashcroft speech wasn’t wrong. No laws were broken. The same can’t be said of the last two attorney generals of the Bush administration.