Cornell has been a huge part of my life for my entire life. From my earliest days I was aware that my mother had bootstrapped her life as the daughter of Slovak immigrants living in rural Upstate New York by deciding to get herself admitted to Cornell at the age of 16 in the depths of the 1932 Depression. She drove that stepping stone into a life of global adventure that led her eventually to a career as a UN diplomat, and that gave rise to my upbringing in Latin America, the Midwest, the Northeast and Rome, landing me at age 17 at none other than Cornell University. I had five great years at Cornell, making lots of friends, learning lots of interesting things and getting two degrees, a BA in economics and government and an MBA in finance. That trajectory set the course for my professional life, and to a degree, my personal life for the next 50+ years. During that time, after a natural absence from the campus for ten years, I started going back and getting involved with the school, first doing recruiting and then eventually serving on various advisory boards for both the graduate school and the undergraduate school. In 1996 I bought a 25-year leasehold on a home adjacent to the campus and spent many summers reconnecting with my mother’s Finger Lakes roots and with all aspects of the University. I called the house Homeward Bound in honor of the town of Ithaca’s Homeric status, because people were always homecoming to their Alma Mater and because I felt like Ithaca and Cornell were where my heart lived. 95% of my charitable donations went to Cornell and they were not insubstantial. I felt grateful to be connected to such a fine institution of higher learning and it was fair to say that Cornell was woven into my heritage and my very being.
Along the way, all three of my children got a healthy dose of Cornell, both from watching me and spending significant blocks of time up in Ithaca. I even reintegrated a bit with my extended family by virtue of becoming fast friends with my cousin Pete and his wife Nancy, who remain our closest non-nuclear relatives…by a long shot. All of my kids got enough Cornell exposure that when it came time for them to matriculate, they all chose to apply and go to Cornell, making them third-generation Cornellians. I did not consciously push Cornell on them, but it would be hard to ignore the overriding influence my connection to the University and venue had on their individual decisions to attend. Knowing how kids operate psychologically, I’m sure they each have points of view about how voluntary their choice of Cornell was in their college selection and the fact remains that in those days (before the majority of the admission scandals of the not so distant past) there was a distinct advantage for legacy applicants and especially for those who were descendants of major donors (which I was and was acknowledged as such by being given the Foremost Benefactor accolade and having my and my mother’s names placed in perpetuity on the stone wall adjacent to the iconic bell tower). I even went one step further by having my face in bronze put on the business school’s Wall of Honor, a distinction held by only 15 other graduates since 1946. My kids could literally rub a shine on my bronze nose in one of the historic and iconic halls of the University, Sage Hall. That was also where my daughter Carolyn chose to get married, first with a ceremony in Sage Chapel and then a reception in Sage Hall in the Atrium adjacent to my bronze likeness. That same hall was where my oldest son worked after he chose to depart Cornell after several years without degree, and where my youngest son and I lunched every Monday during his years there as an undergraduate.
When I came to a logical point of departure from Wall Street and my career, it was Cornell that offered me a professorship and the refuge of teaching in the business school for what amounted to ten years. At that moment, Cornell was on a pedestal for me. It had been such a meaningful part of my life that I could not overstate how much it meant to me and how proud I was to be a part of the Cornell community. It brought the expression higher education to the greatest heights imaginable.
It was during those years that things started to change in my relationship with the University. To begin with, my oldest son, Roger’s, time at Cornell was less than perfect. His fraternity experience, that included hazing and an unseemly introduction to gambling, did much to change the course of his life for over a decade, and not for the better. I struggled with what that said about him, about me as a father, but mostly about Cornell as a place where young minds go to be moulded properly. My daughter Carolyn’s experience at Cornell was more traditional and less troubled, but I never felt it wasn’t particularly special or energized. She did eventually marry a Cornellian, but that was a coincidence of meeting well after graduation. As for my youngest son, Tom, his experience at Cornell was very troubled. He did graduate in fine order and did, indeed, marry a lovely fellow classmate, bringing our family Cornell connection to even greater proportions, but his experience with hazing (both in the fraternity system directly and indirectly with his a cappella singing group) and institutional cross-play left a meaningful life bruise on him which he is still struggling through all these ten plus years later.
Then in 2022 I ran directly into an institutional buzz saw at Cornell over my leasehold property. There is no need to detail the specifics again here, but suffice it to say that anyone who hears the story is amazed that the institutional machinery would denigrate a member of its highest giving and volunteering group in such an offhand manner. It caused me to sour considerably on Cornell and I began to distance myself. It was probably time for that to happen anyway, but my personal bruises were mounting. What I thought was an important legacy connection for my children had turned out to be a very negative mark on their lives. My oldest son was as negative as could be. My daughter was and still is very sore about the way the house was handled. My youngest son came close to blows with the University and I was there to bear witness (literally in a judicial hearing), giving evidence of the University’s willful disregard for the well-being of its students. This had not turned out like it was supposed to.
Now we are all reading about Cornell’s problems with this gang rape incident from 2024 and the way in which that was handled by the University. What a headline for anyone who has proudly worn the Cornell banner as part of their credentials. And here’s the thing…I can relate to all the accusations at a very personal level. I know the people that run the place and have known them for years. They are good people, but they are part of an institution that has lost its way in a meaningful manner. I was an active alumni and a member of the faculty, not to mention a parent of active students from 1999 through 2017. I have at least three personal and direct examples or institutional negligence in the handling of their affairs with students, student organizations and alumni like myself. That change has rocked the core of my foundation since nothing has meant more to this man who grew up with a mother going through graduate school or this man who reveled in being part of an Ivy League faculty for a decade. All of this has meaningfully lowered my esteem for both the institution and for the broader category of higher education.