Dear Student,

I am thrilled that you are interested in starting a new student organization. Cornell is always looking for more leaders to step up and make a change.

The Student Activities Office (SAO) has information that will help you begin starting your new organization.  https://sao.cornell.edu/SO/

I would first suggest that you search through their list of registered organizations to ensure that one similar to the one you want to create does not already exist.  If your organization is one of a kind, then follow this link to the SAO FAQ site, which will outline the rest of the registration process. http://dos.cornell.edu/activities/sao_handbook/faq.cfm#CP_JUMP_2753

There is no deadline to register an organization, but there are a few forms you will have to fill out. 

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Tax Deduction Seeker,

Considering we are in the midst of tax season, I’m sure this question relates to many other students.  To answer this question, I referred to an example listed on the IRS website at http://www.irs.gov/publications/p970/ch06.html#en_US_2010_publ ink1000178331

Example 3 from IRS website:

“When Marci enrolled at College X for her freshman year, she had to pay a separate student activity fee in addition to her tuition. This activity fee is required of all students, and is used solely to fund on-campus organizations and activities run by students, such as the student newspaper and the student government. No portion of the fee covers personal expenses. Although labeled as a student activity fee, the fee is required for Marci's enrollment and attendance at College X. Therefore, it is a qualified expense.”

After reading this example from the IRS website, it appears as if your concern aligns perfectly with this example. Therefore, it seems as if the activity fees may constitute a qualified expense, but check with a tax preparer to be sure.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Student,

Attending graduation and celebrating your achievements is a once in a lifetime opportunity (unless you pursue higher degrees later on).  However, not everyone is able to attend graduation, yet we all want the diploma to document our achievements.

If you are graduating in May, your college registrar will hold your diploma for two weeks following graduation, so you can pick it up then. If they haven’t been picked up then, then they will begin being mailed out in early July.

According to the registrar website, for those students graduating in August or January, “Diplomas for August graduates will be mailed to your home address beginning in late October. Diplomas for January graduates will be mailed to your home address beginning in late March.”    

Visit the registrar’s office website for more information about diplomas. http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/diplomas.html

Also, update your address in Student Center to ensure your diploma is delivered to an active address.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Milstein Turista,

Oh, how time flies around here.  One minute you’re quarrying stone from Libe Slope, hauling rock up the hill with teams of oxen, and cementing it into the first classroom buildings on this campus. The next you’re shopping on the Internet for chairs, opening FedEx packages from Spain, and installing them in a building designed by the internationally acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas —with offices in the Netherlands and a Cornell pedigree.

Before visiting that auditorium to see how it’s working for today’s Architecture students, let’s ask AAP’s John P. McKeown your import-export question — noting that LEED certification takes into account the distance materials must travel to the construction site. He says:

“The designers had very specific criteria for both the chairs and the curtain.  A thorough analysis was done for firms that could meet the high standard.  Although the selected firms were outside the US, most of the installation and fine tuning was done with local labor.  We expect to get a gold LEED certification and did earn a credit for local materials.”

Thanks, John, for that. So now we’re in the auditorium on a sunny afternoon. The Dutch curtain is drawn, and first-year architecture students are seated in those  pop-up chairs.  But the students aren’t  gazing  at the curtains (or even squirming in the chairs) because they are focused on a genuine,  Made-in-Ithaca  landmark— the pioneering godfather of computer graphics (and Cornell professor of architecture and engineering) Don Greenberg. 

The distinguished guest lecturer is compressing the 40-year history of computer graphics innovation at Cornell (including technologies that make computer-aided designs look so realistic, video games so exhilarating, and graduates of his program so successful when Hollywood hands out Oscars for animations) into two class sessions.  Students who can follow all the rapid-fire math and physics (“You should remember this from high school,” Greenberg coaxes) are astonished to discover the design software they’re learning to use came in part from Greenberg’s labs in Rand Hall, next door, beginning in the early 1970s.  And that offshoots of that technology helped Koolhaas visualize Milstein Hall— all the glossy surfaces and stony curves and intriguing textures— before the digging began.

Greenberg hints why he’s going to California next week — to show Intel how to squeeze sophisticated computer-graphics apps into a cell phone. Made in Ithaca doesn’t get much more homegrown than that. Let them craft disappearing chairs in Spain and weave quaint curtains in Holland.  We make the ideas here that spread around the world.  

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Future Florist,

Within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, there are a number of classes that are being offered in the Fall that can help you improve upon your floriculture skills.  Some courses would include: BIOPL 6540 - Botanical Nomenclature, BIOPL 3450 - Plant Anatomy, HORT 3000 - Annual and Perennial Plant Identification and Use, etc.

For a full list of possible courses, visit the Fall 2012 course and time roster at http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/FA12/, and check courses in plant biology, horticulture, and crop and soil sciences.

Uncle Ezra   

 Dear Student,

Scheduling courses can be quite hectic, and it is definitely more hectic if you have no idea what the courses are about.

For those students who did not already know, the course and time roster for Fall 2012 is now available at http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/courses/roster/FA12/.

The official course descriptions will not be available on-line until mid-June. However, you can use the course descriptions from previous semesters to gage the content of courses.  If courses were offered in previous semesters, then use this link to read previous course descriptions. http://courses.cornell.edu/content.php?catoid=12&navoid=2156

Also, for those classes that have not been offered in the past, I suggest you contact that department or professor teaching the course to see if they can provide you with a proper course description.

Good luck with scheduling your courses!

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Sensitive Econ Major,

Your architectural criticism has deeply wounded the faculty of several departments housed in Uris Hall (Sociology, Psychology, Economics for instance) since they’re kind of fond of “Old Rusty.” 

And the “rusty” part should be a clue that the exposed structural metal in Uris Hall had very little chance of achieving the Statue of Liberty’s copper patina. That unpainted steel frame was always intended to oxidize to the brownish hue you see today (not to Cornell red, although that makes a nice story). Put another way, rust is a finish coat on the steel—to keep it from rusting even more. 

But you’re right about one thing:  A dedicated Economics Department Building is needed.  Here’s hoping you can put your degree to work when you graduate; make a zillion dollars; give some to Cornell; where you can specify the architectural design and the paint job, too.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Anxious Freshman Nephew,

Looks like you might get your wish — so long as you don’t anxiously try to graduate in less than three years — because here’s what University Projects Management’s John Keefe says:

“The new Computing and Information Science Building (Gates Hall) will be constructed on the parking lot just north of Hoy Field on the corner of Hoy and Campus Road.  Construction is planned to begin in March 2012 and be complete by December 2013.  The plan is to have the building up and running for the Spring 2014 academic year.  In the next couple of months a web page will be up and running where you will be able to take a virtual tour of the facility and track construction progress via a web-cam.”

Thanks, John for that update, and for setting up a webcam for that generous Mr. Bill Gates  (and all the rest of us) to monitor.

As for everyone scanning the Web for “Cornell parking lots gone missing” alerts, all Your Uncle can say is: Get over it.  There is a big (and architectural-design-prize-winning) parking garage nearby, where snow, ice and foul balls from Hoy Field won’t clobber your car. A sign went up on the site, warning against parking after mid-March 2012.  It was a nice, convenient lot while it lasted, but time marches on.  The same can be said for the site of the Big Red Marching Band’s new digs near Schoellkoph Crescent.  The band building will take away some tailgaters’ space, but all in all should make this a better place.

Uncle Ezra   

Dear Curious Commuter,

Hummm, unsanctioned painting in the middle of the Arts Quad? As you well know, only one thing gets the statues of Ezra Cornell and A.D. White off their pedestals—to meet in the quad center and shake hands in the night—and that condition did not apply. Nor does Your Uncle care to decipher midnight spray-paintings.  Often, the furtive painter gets nervous (“Is that the Dean coming?”), flips the stencil upside down and backwards, and leaves the ancient Runic character for “I’m a jerk.”

Much better than sidewalk painting (which requires toxic chemicals to remove, and the labors of University Grounds people who have better things to do) is sidewalk chalking.  It is fresh (and gone with the rains before wearing out its welcome). And sidewalk chalking —like the next two examples of expression—can lead to meaningful communication. 

Say you’re chalking a “Vote for . . . “ ad for yourself, for some elected position where you will make this University even more functional, enjoyable and educational.  An engaging passerby crouches to suggest: “Instead of all that Super PAC money flowing into the presidential primaries, perhaps campaign advertising should be restricted to sidewalk chalking, by the candidates themselves.” You start to say: “That will never happen . . . “ Instead you say: “I’ll be done here in a minute.  Let’s get a cup of coffee and see if we can’t somehow make a difference.”

Same goes for the other recommended forms of sidewalk communication.  You could stand there and give a speech. To which hecklers respond: “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” A lively debate ensues.  A campus tour goes by, and some impressionable high school kid thinks: “Maybe I’ll apply to Cornell.”

Or you could pass out quarter cards to advertise your choral group’s next concert. A fast-walking student with spiky blue hair grabs the ad without stopping . . . then spins about-face and comes back to say: “I have a review session that night, but I’ve heard about your group.  I have a pretty good voice and some awful songs I’ve been working on. When are auditions?”

These things never happen to people who spray-paint in the night.  Poor them.

Uncle Ezra