Why Cornell Can’t Love You
trading our disappointment with Cornell for love of our neighbors
Cornell University Arts Quad during Halloween
This article is part of the Claritas spring 2023 issue, Love. Read the full print release here.
BY JOAQUIN RIVERA
I love Cornell.
No, really. This is a really special hilltop where I have had my best memories, my greatest friends, and my deepest growth. But an interesting question I often ponder is: Does Cornell love me back? Can this institution, with its vast resources, satisfy the craving for love that I and all my fellow students have? Well, you can’t say it hasn’t tried. Vice President Ryan Lombardi bombards me with emails that express how much he appreciates me. Cornell tosses us a few free sweatshirts, free popcorn a few days a week, and a whopping 20 free pages for printing. Generous gifts, sure, but their positive benefit just isn’t quite balanced with the stress I am having about my Labor Law final.
Now, I don’t mean to slander everyone behind these various institutions. I have had great personal interactions with Ryan Lombardi (never got a selfie though). And it makes sense that we want this institution to care for us. After all, it has the distinction of being an Ivy League institution with a massive endowment, and has frequently espoused a commitment to caring for the wellbeing of the community. [1] However, I think it is vain to look to Cornell for love. Everywhere on campus, I can see signs of despair. An etching on a desk in the Olin Stacks reading “F*** school.” Writing on a chalkboard saying “Why can’t anyone just give me a job?” A Reddit post on r/Cornell from 4 months ago states “I was glancing at the reddit's [sic] of each of the Ivy League schools and there were a lot more panic/existential dread posts on [Cornell’s] IMO.” [2] We want to be valued. We want someone to stand beside us in our trials. Free popcorn in Willard Straight won’t solve that need.
Students have tried to remedy this by turning the lack of love into anger directed at Cornell. A Daily Sun article lambasts Cornell for its misguided approach to new housing. [3] Yet another describes how Cornell’s athletic infrastructure is not “Ivy League material.” [4] Obviously, it is a good thing to hold the university accountable, but is there a point to which all this negativity creates more harm than good?
I recently attended a presentation by a senior who talked about the lessons she had learned throughout college. Her primary involvement on campus had been to advocate for more student support, and she had been on the frontline directly speaking to President Martha Pollack and organizing rallies on Ho Plaza. She was proud of the work that she did, but the constant activism burnt her out. In her final months here at Cornell, she found that the best way to help this campus was not to rage at the administration, but simply, to love. She sought to personally help individuals who needed her help. She brought those around her together by hosting meals and other events. So perhaps asking “How can Cornell love us better?” is the wrong question, and we should rather focus on how we can love Cornell better. Isolation, stress for a prelim, and anxiety about our futures grip us all. What if instead of blaming and raging at this institution, we devoted our thoughts to understanding that the person sitting next to us in Human Bonding is also suffering, and just needs love?
We are not wrong in hoping for help from a larger power. Sometimes we can feel discouraged by the small scale effect of our efforts. We can feel that it is unrealistic to maintain a constant disposition of love. We want to believe in a greater significance behind our actions. And Cornell is not that greater power.
The Bible speaks of a God that understands our struggles and brokenness. He understands that we need more than 20 pages of printing. We need a Savior. It speaks of Jesus, God in flesh, who came down to Earth and helped those around Him. It was prophesied that he would come and save the world, and people thought that this would look like a violent overthrow of the institutions of his day. But that’s not what he did. He loved and ministered to the people around him. He did not wait for people to love him before he reciprocated, instead loving everyone first because they were his people. He healed those in society that no one else wanted to touch. He sat down and ate with those whom everyone else considered unforgivable. He taught a vision of love that was sacrificial, serving, and humble. And most of all, he lived out that vision of life in the most compelling act of love, by being nailed to a cross and dying a slow death, taking our sins with him.
Now I am not saying that as Cornell students, we should not ever criticize this university. There certainly is a place for those Daily Sun articles that point out the flaws of this institution. Jesus, too, spoke against the leaders of his day. Perhaps most famously, Jesus went into the Temple and overturned the tables of all people who were trying to sell goods there. But this was not the core of Jesus’ ministry. He understood that to bring change, he was to set his eyes on those around him. And to change their hearts, he poured out his own. This is powerfully demonstrated in Chapters 4-5 of the Gospel of Matthew. Chapter 4 describes the famous Temptation of Christ, in which Satan directly approaches Jesus and tries to win Jesus’ allegiance by offering gifts. One particular offer from Satan is that he will give Jesus dominion over the world only if Jesus bows down to Satan. But Jesus rejects this. Instead, in Chapter 5, Jesus preaches the famous Beatitudes, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the world.” [5] The radical message of Jesus was that we should not be wrapped up in society’s perception of power and what it means to bring change, but that we should see the value in everyone around us, and that true change starts by recognizing that fact.
There is a famous Bible passage that reads “[God] will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore”. [6] It’s a verse most often interpreted as referring to the Christian idea of heaven or to the idea that nations should demilitarize and focus more on peaceful development. But I think this verse can powerfully apply to our lives on campus. Except for some crazy clubs on campus like the Historical European Martial Arts club (yes, I am a part of this), we don’t really have the problem of literal swords on campus. But I think we have many instances where we use our resources and talents for more militant or blunt means, rather than for loving those around us. For instance, what if we took all our metaphorical “swords” that we constantly wave at Cornell in the literal form of disparaging speech and articles, and used all that energy to instead attend to the needs of our peers?
I’ll admit, when I opened this piece by saying that I loved Cornell, it was a bit of an empty statement. Yes, I can say I love this place for what it has given me, but the Christian way of loving something should extend far beyond that reason alone. In a post by the Cornell Undergraduate Admissions about the “Top Ten reasons to choose Cornell”, they tell us that we should love this place because it offers us friends, scenery, professors and alumni. [7] But what if these things fail, is our only option then to hate Cornell? Is it possible to see Cornell in its entirety, beyond the “Top Ten reasons”, seeing even all the brokenness and faults, and still choose to love it? The 20th century writer G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy gives a brilliant picture of the significance of loving the institutions we find ourselves in. He talks about the dilapidated London neighborhood of Pimlico, and discusses what it would mean for someone to love Pimlico, writing “Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico… It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.” [8] A love of Pimlico cannot be pure pessimism, nor can it be pure acceptance of everything that is going on. One could argue that we are here at Cornell for such a short time, that it may not justify what may be vain efforts to make it better. But Cornell is here permanently, and our actions here can change it for the better for all those in the future. We are forever linked to this campus, and not just through LinkedIn.
Given these connections, what are we to then do? Chesterton goes on, “The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason.” Sure, there could be a number of earthly reasons' why you might give some love to Cornell. Maybe you are thankful for your professors, the dining halls, or maybe you really are obsessed with the Willard Straight popcorn. But the point is that love should not be transactional. We should seek to give more than we are given. Back when I was a Senior in high school and in a frantic search for a place to give money to for the next 4 years, my eyes were set on Princeton (forgive me). In my research on Princeton, I came upon a video where current students were being interviewed. One of them was asked something like “What do you think old alumni would think of all the changes that have happened to Princeton?” To which the student replied, “Well, to start, I hope that they don’t think it’s their Princeton anymore. It’s our Princeton.” And while their Princeton never became my Princeton, much to my chagrin on Ivy admission day, I am nevertheless struck by that quote in relation to Chesterston’s message here. Yes, the 4 years here could potentially be treated as a burden to bear, but why should we not see it as a gift to steward? These 4 years should not be just another generic period of time where thousands of students simply exist as cogs in a machine. Rather, these 4 years should be embraced as a unique and vibrant time where a different mix of wonderful people are different from the period before. Thus, we should love this place, because we are here, because it is ours.
Chesterton then finishes the thought by arguing that it is this transcendental love that has been the cause for flourishing cultures, saying, “If men loved Pimlico, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico might be in a year or two fairer than Florence… This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great… Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” Chesterton mentions the city of Florence, a beautiful city, built on the wealth of great families of the Renaissance. But just because it was great once does not mean that it would necessarily remain that way. People had to be there to love it and nurture what was there. How many other great cities have been lost to time and abandoned? Although not everyone can agree that Cornell as a whole is great, I’m sure everyone has some part of life here that means something. Those things do not just magically remain great, but the task is for us to help maintain what is good about them. And in the same way that we have to love in order to maintain what is great, our love can also remake what is broken. Every action of love, no matter how insignificant it may feel to us, serves to shape the future of the places we inhabit.
And what ties together Chesterton’s argument is that our connection to the places we inhabit is linked to the connection we share with God. Psalm 24:1 reads “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Cornell is the Lord’s, and we are the Lord’s, so we should honor this place and care for it as we would our fellow brothers and sisters. We ought to love because, and we have the ability to love, because He showed love to us. He gave us the command that we ought to love our neighbors. No qualifications attached. He did not say that we should love if someone acts like this or if we are in a good mood and not busy at the time with a problem set. We are where we are because we are the instruments of God’s plan to show his love and compassion to the world. So how could we waste our time looking down on Cornell with apathy and negativity?
Cornell’s job is not to love me. It can try to please me, and whether it does or not, my mission should be to love it back. No, we won’t have Daily Sun articles praising or tearing down our individual actions, yet our actions nevertheless have tangible meaning that improves the lives of those around us. Maybe I can’t change how Cornell loves me. But I sure can try to change how I love Cornell and all the wonderful people that I share life with on this little campus on a hill. G.K. Chesterton said that by showing an arbitrary love to Pimlico, it may soon surpass the beauty of Florence. I will end by echoing the sentiment, and contend that if we really try to love this university with a transcendental love, we might actually be the standard for “Ivy League material” one day.
This article appeared in Claritas’ spring 2023 Love Issue
Sources
[1] Lombardi, Ryan. Preparing for February Break, email, 2023
[2] Annual-Pomelo-1508, Reddit, December 17, 2022. ”Which Ivy League has the most stressed students? : r/Cornell (reddit.com)
[3] Brendan Kempff, “What Cornell got Wrong about Housing.” Cornell Daily Sun. February 9, 2022
[4] Brendan Kempff. “We’re not Ivy League Material.” Cornell Daily Sun. March 9, 2023.
[5] Matthew 5:3-5 (NIV)
[6] Isaiah 2:3 (NIV)
[7] Angela Herrera-Canfield, “Top Ten Reasons to Choose Cornell.” Cornell University Undergraduate Admissions Office. March 16, 2015. “Top Ten” Reasons to Choose Cornell | Cornell University Undergraduate Admissions Office
[8] Chesterton, G.K, Orthodoxy, 1908.