Dear Fed up,

Thank you so much for reaching out to me. I’m sorry to hear about these concerns. I can understand how distressing this must be for you. As I read your concern, I actually see three concerning issues: your distress, your friend, and the “townie.” People tend to behave as you describe your friend when there are underlying issues. The recent drug use and connection with an unhealthy influence are warning signs that something is not right with your friend. If she will not listen to you, it is important for you to identify someone more qualified to assist her. You could reach out to an academic advisor, a Resident Assistant (RA), or a Residence Hall Director (RHD). These are all people trained to help in situations like this, and they would welcome the opportunity to help you through your distress as well as to identify viable strategies for helping your friend get back on track.

If you or your friend lives off campus I suggest that you talk to Julie Paige, in the Off Campus Housing Office on the 4th floor of Willard Straight Hall.  She is a wonderful and understanding person who can help you think this through.

There are also traditional as well as non-traditional counseling services available through Gannett. CAPS offers traditional counseling/therapy, there is an anonymous walk-in service called. “Let’s Talk.” For more information, please see this web site: http://www.gannett.cornell.edu/services/counseling/caps/talk/index.cfm

You are always welcome to make a citizen’s report (either officially or anonymously) with the local Ithaca Police or with the Cornell University Police. Keep in mind that this could result in punitive action against your friend as well. It sounds like she needs support and assistance, and not punitive action. I strongly encourage you to use the University resources first---to help you with your distress and to help your friend with his/her underlying issues.

Please let me know how it goes.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Water Lover,

All registered students may swim for free in the Teagle and Helen Newman pools during open lap swim times. Present your student ID card to the issue room attendant who will give you a pool tag which you then present to the lifeguard upon entering the pool area.

For the most up to date listing of the open lap swim times log onto www.wellness.cornell.edu. The pool hours are listed in the left hand menu bar.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Sports Fan,

This is what I found on the Cornell Athletics website:

10/13/2010 3:49:19 PM

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Cornell men's soccer team is setting out to break the Berman Field attendance record on Saturday when the Big Red plays host to Yale in a 7 p.m. contest on the Cornell campus. The Big Red's contest will follow the women's soccer game against the Bulldogs, which begins at 4 p.m. in a full evening of soccer at Berman Field.

The first 200 Cornell students in attendance starting at 6:30 p.m. will receive a special Break The Berman Record t-shirt, while all other fans in attendance will receive a Cornell Big Red drawstring backpack. All kids aged 14 and under who are wearing red will be admitted free of charge.

Tickets for the men's soccer game can be purchased online at www.CornellBigRedTickets.com or in person at the Cornell Athletic Ticket Office during office hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Tickets may also be purchased at the gate the night of the game. Adult tickets are $6, while seniors are $5 and Cornell staff and children aged five through high-school age are $4 apiece.

The existing Berman Field attendance record is 876, set on Oct. 20, 2001, when the Big Red battled Brown to a 1-1 draw. Cornell has had three crowds in excess of 800 since the field first began serving as the home to the Cornell men's and women's soccer teams in the 1997 season.

Berman Field's 10 Largest Crowds

10/20/2001 Brown 876 10/6/2007 Harvard 834 9/8/2001 Colgate 812 9/22/2001 Adelphi 724 10/13/2001 Harvard 713 9/28/2002 Penn 693 10/20/2007 Brown 642 10/10/2009 Harvard 638 10/11/2003 Harvard 508 9/13/2009 St. Bonaventure 487

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Athlete,

Cornell University and all other Ivy League institutions do not provide any form of athletic scholarship. Take care.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Sonic,

Thanks for the info!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Student,

Go to the Advising Office in your college and explain what happened right away.  They can help you.  For all questions, concerns or academic problems, your first attempt to solve it should include either the professor of that course or the Academic Advising or Student Services Office of your college.  Sometimes your faculty advisor can also be helpful.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Extra Space Wanted,

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it is likely that you won’t have all that extra space in your room for long.

The Housing & Dining Contracts Office almost always has a wait list of students waiting for a possible room change, and may also have students who currently live off campus waiting for space to open up so they can move back into campus housing. If a staff person from the housing office doesn’t contact you after your roommate moves out to talk to you about another student moving in this semester, you will almost certainly have a new roommate assigned to your room at the beginning of the spring semester – very likely a transfer student, or a student who is studying abroad this semester.

I encourage you to contact the Housing & Dining Contracts Office with any questions at housing@cornell.edu or (607) 255-5368.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Nephew,

As for  “the look” of replacement windows—e.g. the factory-like look of the hundred-year-old, former-mechanical-engineering laboratory named Rand Hall—this University has a pretty good record for preserving architectural detail (and conserving energy) throughout most historic building restorations.

But it won’t be cheap, as explained by Jim Gibbs in Maintenance Management:

“The fine arts library is moving to the third floor of Rand.  As for Rand itself, it needs a renovation.  The college is out fund-raising for a project that would create the library as well as repair the exterior of the building.  Timing depends entirely on the success of the fund-raising effort.  We would like to replace the roof, replace the windows and restore the exterior masonry . . . The issues are well understood, we simply lack funding.”

Thanks, Jim, for that update. Now, before the next pledge break in our on line fundraiser, a little history of that utilitarian (ugly, unbecoming-an-Ivy-League-campus —pick your adjective) Rand Hall:

The 1912 building  (anchoring one corner of the busy intersection of University Ave, Forest Home Drive, East Ave and the Thurston Ave bridge) stands as proof of one thing: If you endure long enough, someone will brand you “historic” and let you stay. 

Named for two brothers and a son  (Jasper Raymond Rand Jr., Mechanical Engineering Class of 1897) who all were industrialists, the blocky thing went up when Cornell Engineering occupied the north end of what is now the Arts Quad.  (Sibley Hall was Mech Eng, Lincoln Hall was Civil Eng, and Tjaden Hall was called Franklin Hall at the start, a suitable place to teach electrical engineering and physics.)

Plans circa 1915 propose a total of four similarly utilitarian buildings—strung out to the north of Sibley —but money kept running short (first World War I, then the Great Depression) and only Rand was built. The whole place (including Sibley and Rand) was to be torn down in the late 1930s in favor of an enormous, Art Deco engineering complex (designed by the architects of the Empire State Building) but that time, WW II intervened, saving Rand Hall’s grimy skin. The entire Engineering College decamped for its current digs in the early 1950s—leaving Cornell architects with some mismatched facilities designed by engineers.

Then came a plan to replace Rand with a new Architecture building— right at a major entrance to campus.  But the architect for the proposed Architecture building was replaced by one who had studied at Cornell, the Pritzker Prize-winning Rem Koolhaas.  Thus, Milstein Hall was sited between (and energy-efficiently caulked to) Rand and Sibley.  There a glassy, curvy, cunningly cantilevered modern object pays homage to much older neighbors.

Which is more than can be said about Rand when it was built.  That Mech Eng lab displaced a farmhouse Ezra Cornell had bequeathed to the University.

The two-story wooden farmhouse had been converted to an eatery (called the Sibley Dog) for engineering students in the late 1800s.  The Dog was dragged miles away to Slaterville Road (Route 79 East) and food was served from surplus trolley car, next to the Foundry, called the Sibley Pup.

Returning you now to a pledge break.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear History Buff,

No problem. There’s so much history around here. And you don’t have to “un-die” to find it. Although much is actually under ground, in the Kroch Library’s Rare and Manuscript Collection (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/) which is what we call the “archives.”

You might begin your journey back in time with the Cornelliana book collection, in the east end of Uris Library’s main reading room. Leaf through works like Morris Bishop’s “A History of Cornell” and Carol Kammen’s “Glorious to View.”  A lot of history happened in that very building, come to think of it.

Then cross over to Olin Library—again all the way to the east end, and down the stairs to Kroch Library. All around will be display cases with exhibits concerning University history. But it’s the helpful people down there who can bring history alive.  March right up to the reception desk and say: I have the undying desire to look through archives.”  They’ll probably hug you like a long-lost family member.  And get you started.  Be sure to come up before graduation day.

Same deal with the A.D. White House: The current inhabitants, the Society for the Humanities (http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/) love to show off the old place to visitors.  As long as there’s not some function going on, you’ll get the total tour. 

Even if there is some fancy-schmancy reception going on downstairs, try to mingle and converse: “Did you know that Frederick Law Olmsted considered this building—an adaptation of the Gothic villa style in the 1870s, designed, in part, by the Cornell student William Henry Miller but also copied from a Calvert Vaux pattern book— Olmsted considered the President’s House a ‘sermon in brick and stone for the educational and moral benefit of Cornellians’?”

Have another hors d'oeuvres. Sip the wine.  Ah, the benefits of senior-itis. (By now you’ve learned to cite references, so that Olmsted bit goes to “The Cornell Campus: A History of its Planning and Development,” which you’ll find back in Uris Libe.)  Welcome to the historic ranks of Cornellians.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Seed Saver,

Oh, you Nieces and Nephews! Always testing the  “Any person . . . any study” proposition with eclectic questions about things like . . . well, lilac seedpods.  Up and down Tower Road Your Uncle roams, fervently hoping not to disappoint. “Lilac seedpods? Anybody know about seedpods?”

Then, who should appear but that internationally noted urban tree expert, Nina Bassuk, who provides this reply:

“You can harvest Japanese Tree Lilac (Syringa reticulata) seeds right now. Pods should be removed from the tree and left to dry. When dry the seed can be refrigerated and stored for several years, but best germination of the seeds should occur this spring.”

Just for the record, since Dear Uncle Ezra answers are archived forever, “right now” means mid- to late October. In a very rainy Ithaca, N.Y.  Where Spring and lilac blooms can’t come soon enough. 

Uncle Ezra