Student body at Cornell

CayugaRed2005
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:20:06 +0000

If you want to find intellectualism at Cornell, it’s not very hard to find it. When you consider a school like Swarthmore, which has less than 2,000 kids known for their intellectualism, it wouldn’t be hard to fill the same school with 2,000 kids from Cornell and not notice any difference in school culture. In hindsight, I spent way too many nights my freshman year talking about religion, culture, and politics until five in the morning.

And if the parties I frequented when I was an upperclassmen are any indication, there is a fair amount of overlap between the intellectual types and the party goers. I think all one has to do is look at the types of bands that are routinely playing in Ithaca to confirm this fact – when I was at Cornell I had the pleasure of seeing Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire, Interpol, Of Montreal, and The Flaming Lips, all before they made it big.

Candidly, I’ll come right out and say that I don’t think the opinions and viewpoints presented on this board are indicative of the breadth of student culture at Cornell. There are a lot of intellectually minded architects, humanities majors, and pretty intense physical science majors at Cornell who would never be on this board. But you will find them at Cornell at a lot of the different parties hosted by the various co-ops, Risley, Telluride, or off-campus houses.

That being said, the pervading culture at Cornell is down to earth, pragmatic, and a little bit bourgoise. It doesn’t take much understanding of Cornell’s history and founding principles to appreciate why this is the case.