Cornell football 2022

[billhoward]

Moreover, it was home to AD White and other university presidents, and the last vestige of the faculty row.  Before it housed the Society for the Humanities, it was the White Art Museum.

Exactly. None of them move the needle when it comes to biotech, nano-fabrication, etcetera.  Plus six, okay five, floors in place of AD White would guarantee 5 bars of cell service all the way out to the new athletics complex.

Uris Hall would not be missed, either.

ADW made it easier to protest w/o having to march all the way to Cayuga Heights and the current president's house.

[Al DeFlorio]

That's my frustration with Martha Pollack is she is the most AWOL president Cornell has ever had.   For example, she has been president for five years and has not once come out to meet alums at our Cornell Club event.   Secondly ask many of the staff in the athletic department and they can't stand her.    My daughter overlapped one year with Martha Pollack at Cornell and never saw or met her, in comparison she met both Elizabeth Garrett and Hunter Rawlings.   I think I have seen Martha Pollack twice at Homecoming and both times she left the game prior to half time.   Come on you're president of a major university and you can't stay for Homecoming?   Meanwhile a buddy of mine who went to Princeton, daughter graduated from Cornell back in 2019 and they had to stand the entire two hours for the ceremony at crumbling Schoellkopf and he still gives me a hard time about it.   Tell me one contribution Martha Pollack has made to Cornell athletics over the past five years?  Oh yeah.............she added a red tarp to the Crescent so fans can no longer sit there.  Anything else?

And based on this you rant that she "hates athletics?"  What nonsense.  If you are the guy who writes this same nonsense about Pollack over and over on Voy forum you are an embarrassment to Cornell.

[Ken711]

That's my frustration with Martha Pollack is she is the most AWOL president Cornell has ever had.   For example, she has been president for five years and has not once come out to meet alums at our Cornell Club event.   Secondly ask many of the staff in the athletic department and they can't stand her.    My daughter overlapped one year with Martha Pollack at Cornell and never saw or met her, in comparison she met both Elizabeth Garrett and Hunter Rawlings.   I think I have seen Martha Pollack twice at Homecoming and both times she left the game prior to half time.   Come on you're president of a major university and you can't stay for Homecoming?   Meanwhile a buddy of mine who went to Princeton, daughter graduated from Cornell back in 2019 and they had to stand the entire two hours for the ceremony at crumbling Schoellkopf and he still gives me a hard time about it.   Tell me one contribution Martha Pollack has made to Cornell athletics over the past five years?  Oh yeah.............she added a red tarp to the Crescent so fans can no longer sit there.  Anything else?

You'll be even more pissed when Martha Pollack hires a female athletic director. But just about every other Ivy's hires as AD have gone that way the past decade.

Not to dispute your points but to offer other perspectives:
* A president who leaves the football game at halftime is going to meet one group of alums, then have drinks at the Statler, probably twice, with alumni with clout or money to donate, hang with a couple trustees, then have dinner with more influencers. I bet there are times when the president desperately needs to go pee and cant' get away from a long-winded bore; it's part of the job. I sat in her box about 5 years ago and she left at halftime but she also was thoughtful to note with a shrug that she had a bunch of homecoming weekend appointments. Regardless, Andy Noel stays to the end of virtually very game, no matter how cold, rainy or hopeless the score.
* The red tarps add zest to the stadium. Nobody has been refused admission because the stadium lacks capacity. Most arenas with upper and lower bowls can drape some or all upper sections. Cornell tarps at least have a stylized C and may have Cornell's twitter handle, so think of the branding opportunities Cornell gains among influencers.
* The president or provost or head of planning comes to an alumni club meeting based on how big the club, the potential gain (versus other use of their time), etcetera. It has been perhaps two decades since Cornell has more or less guaranteed every Cornell club a name-speaker-from-Ithaca without looking at costs and benefits. The CC of Boston gets blown off less than CC of Western Mass. When I was president of that smaller group, at one point the head of Cornell planning flew out in a private plane to speak to 50 people. But then football coach Bob Blackman circa 1980 stopped making a trip to WMass to aware the trophy to the Player of the Year because a) the kids was often not academcially qualified and b) making the award in February, if he was a senior, the kid probably had his college chosen.
* Pollock did show up at a hockey game the day she was announced. Or maybe it was Skorton. We've been through a bunch of presidents this century and I forget which is which.

Not always.  Dartmouth's new AD hired this past June wasn't a female, and neither was Princeton's AD hired last year.

[billhoward]

Singles may be fine but roommates are both wonderful and entertaining. )

North Campus new dorms (Vietnam era new dorms) were typically (my recall)
* 4 people in doubles, 2 in singles, 2:1 ratio
* Not enough in-suite common space
* too much common area space and what was there seemed cold, institutional

Would have been nice to have a suite of 1 double, plus 3 singles or 4 singles, and more in-suite space. Not everyone at Cornell is rich but even a lot of middle class kids come from single-bedroom houses. Maybe there's a dynamic with a double where you're closer to that person that two guys in adjoining singles. I like to think there's mostly cohesion in a ~six-person unit and you informally pair up with someone you're closer to than, say, your doubles-room mate.

Would have been nice to have some suites with cooking facilities as a on-campus alterntive to off-campus apartments.

IIRC BU's nicest newest dorm, overlooking the Charles ($14K per person 10 years ago), was 4 singles and a double, plus a galley kitchen, plus -- nobody gets it right -- a single bathroom where the toilet and shower were in a single room, only the two sinks were separate. How do six people get ready if all their classes are 9 am?

[wolcoma]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

[George64]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

As I've said before about eLynah, come for the sports talk, stay for the thread drift.  

I think being a university president may be one of the hardest jobs around.  They have three major groups of constituents — students, faculty and alumni — groups with vastly different perspectives and needs.

Arguably, she's not a Frank Rhodes or David Skorton, but she has the qualities to be Cornell's president.  After all, she was provost at Michigan, a large complex university like Cornell, which unlike our university, fields a competent football team from time to time.  Her background in computer science and artificial intelligence is particularly apt given the potential of Cornell Tech and need to integrate our far flung parts into "One Cornell."

As for communications, I recently sent her an email regarding an academic issue, and she replied the next day.  "Thank you for your kind email and your thoughtful suggestion ... I'm delighted to hear you were able to visit campus for your birthday. I hope you had a terrific time, and best wishes for the year ahead."  Although I donate regularly to Cornell, I'm hardly a heavy hitter and didn't expect a personal response.

.

[billhoward]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

No question a female athletic director can do a good job or better. ("Women who want to be equal to men lack ambition."--Timothy Leary) It could be the pressure is so strong to go in that direction that Cornell leans toward correcting a history of no women as athletic department head when the best candidate is male. And some male alumni will believe that to be the case even if the woman who gets the job is the best-qualified person.

[billhoward]

I think being a university president may be one of the hardest jobs around.  They have three major groups of constituents — students, faculty and alumni — groups with vastly different perspectives and needs.

Clark Kerr, former University of California chancellor, agrees with you. He put it this way:

I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.

[Trotsky]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

TBH no serious academic would want to be a University President.  It's such a step down.

[Ken711]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

No question a female athletic director can do a good job or better. ("Women who want to be equal to men lack ambition."--Timothy Leary) It could be the pressure is so strong to go in that direction that Cornell leans toward correcting a history of no women as athletic department head when the best candidate is male. And some male alumni will believe that to be the case even if the woman who gets the job is the best-qualified person.

How about they hire the AD candidate that is best qualified. It certainly it didn't matter to Dartmouth or Princeton, who both hired male ADs in the last year.  Whoever Cornell hires to replace Andy Noel, it shouldn't take long to see Cornell needs to go in a new direction with their football program. :-D

[billhoward]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

No question a female athletic director can do a good job or better. ("Women who want to be equal to men lack ambition."--Timothy Leary) It could be the pressure is so strong to go in that direction that Cornell leans toward correcting a history of no women as athletic department head when the best candidate is male. And some male alumni will believe that to be the case even if the woman who gets the job is the best-qualified person.

How about they hire the AD candidate that is best qualified. It certainly it didn't matter to Dartmouth or Princeton, who both hired male ADs in the last year.  Whoever Cornell hires to replace Andy Noel, it shouldn't take long to see Cornell needs to go in a new direction with their football program. :-D

It sounds as if we're saying what Cornell is saying: We'll hire the best athletic director candidate available. A little part of me — call me a cynic after 40-plus years in publishing — believes the odds that Cornell selects the NFL chant of "best player regardless of position" are 55-45 against. Cornell could make the selection, whoever it is, more palatable by picking an alum.

[CAS]

I believe Cornell should invest more in athletics & not accept losing over long periods in a "visible" program (read football).  As an aside, President Pollack must be doing something right.  Fundraising  is at a record level ($900MM in gifts last fiscal year).  Interest in attending Cornell also is very strong, with record applications & yield, resulting in only a 7% admit rate.  Imagine if Cornell had a winning football team...

[Roy 82]

I believe Cornell should invest more in athletics & not accept losing over long periods in a "visible" program (read football).  As an aside, President Pollack must be doing something right.  Fundraising  is at a record level ($900MM in gifts last fiscal year).  Interest in attending Cornell also is very strong, with record applications & yield, resulting in only a 7% admit rate.  Imagine if Cornell had a winning football team...

...then things would pretty much be the same IMHO.

Cornell is not in Division 1 in football (yes I know they call it 1A or something like that but it is not the highest level league). There is only so much excitement to be generated for a team and league that has been relegated to a lower status.

[Swampy]

I'm not an Andy Noel fan. But, IIRC, in 2019-2020, Cornell was #1 in M & W hockey, and men's lacrosse was ranked #2 (behind Syracuse, which had played a weaker schedule). Imagine COVID did not ended prematurely end the season, and we went  on to win NC's in all 3 sports. Would anyone seriously criticize AN or MP for their poor handling of athletics?

If we bring in a new AD, under which we accomplish these three NC's, would it be sufficient?

[jtwcornell91]

I have no problem with Cornell hiring a female AD as long as she is experienced and good at the job.   Where the Board of Trustees screwed up is after Elizabeth Garrett passed away they were in too much of a hurry to hire another female president rather than the best person for the job.   Again I think Martha Pollack is probably a brilliant academic, but does not have the personality or the leadership skills to be president of a major university.

TBH no serious academic would want to be a University President.  It's such a step down.

It's a different career track.  There are academics for whom Department Chair is a role you might take on grudgingly when you're pretty senior because someone has to do it and it's your turn/the department has run out of other people you think could do it competently.  Then there are those for whom it's a stepping stone to Dean, Provost etc.