On the Hill

This past weekend Psi U hosted our annual Parents’ Weekend. This is always a fun weekend since we all get to see our parents but more importantly, we get to see other brothers’ parents which is always good for a few laughs. My Mom came this year and got in late Friday night. Since she is an alum, she wanted to grab a drink in collegetown so we stopped in at Stella’s which is sort of a trendy restaurant/bar.

The next morning we went down to Cayuga and hopped on a cruise around the lake. The cruise actually was about two hours long and I think we went all the way to the other side of the lake. We got to admire all the nice houses on the shore as well; it is quite a desirable area. Angela’s Mom made the trip up to Cornell as well so they joined us on the cruise. After the cruise we met up with my aunt and uncle who were in town for my cousin’s fraternity parents weekend and went out to Maxie’s (my favorite restaurant.) It was good seeing them – my uncle is actually a cartoonist http://www.glasbergen.com/ so he provided quite a few laughs.

After dinner we headed back to the house for the Parents’ Formal. This was definitely the best part of the day because we had brought in a band that usually plays at our semi-annual crush party. His name is Jamie Notarthomas, check him out Jamie Notarthomas. He certainly got the crowd going and although my Mom went home a bit early, Ange’s Mom stayed pretty late in the night dancing up a storm with us. He did a great job of playing songs the parents would want to hear and keeping everyone pumped up with songs like “Shout.”

I might be MIA for the better part of this week. I have a massive, massive project due Thursday. I pulled an all-nighter last night for it and we are nowhere near even being in the vicinity of complete. Wish me luck (I think I say that way too much for a second semester senior who should be relaxing…)

Anyone who is familiar with college lacrosse knows that the perennial powerhouses have always been: Syracuse and Princeton. But… not lately. There has been a new entrant into the “elite” college lacrosse programs – Cornell. For the past few years we have gotten better and better; consistently making post season play and staying near the top of the rankings. This year has been no different, we have been ranked #1 nearly the entire year and are the only undefeated team left in the nation. While Princeton has struggled in the past few years, they are quite good again this year and our only real competition in the Ivy League. So, as you can imagine it was a big deal when they came into town yesterday afternoon.

Thankfully, the student body rallied around what has become the best collegiate team at Cornell (since in the past they did not always get the attention they deserved.) A huge tailgate was organized and it really rivaled the turnout for the big football games, including homecoming. The weather was also beautiful which was a great change from the snow we had just a few days ago. Temperatures broke 70 degrees and it is amazing the effect the weather has on students at Cornell. When it is snowing in April, students mope around, walk slowly to class with their heads down and tend to stay inside during their free time. 70+ degrees gets everyone out of their house, the clothes start to come off (guys at Cornell can never believe girls actually own skirts!) and people neglect their work in order to have fun. The tailgate was a huge success and the lacrosse team won definitively 10-6. All in all, it was an amazing Saturday afternoon at Cornell.

I am usually against what can sometimes become false sympathy or “hopping on the emotional bandwagon” in terms of some people’s reactions to large scale tragedies. As a follow up to that, I am not going to try and explain how I feel or what can possibly be going on with the families and individuals affected by this terrible tragedy. I am glad that the few students I know at Virginia Tech are still alive, but I know it is just random luck and it could easily have been one of them, just as easily as this could have happened anywhere and it could have been any of us. My thoughts and prayers go out to those families and my mourning goes out to those who lost their lives.

I hope we can never forget what happened, and I certainly do not think it is appropriate to move on in any way. However, it disgusts me to watch this monster on TV again and again and I find myself needing to turn the TV off. I hope soon the media can move towards celebrating the wonderful lives of those who were lost and not giving a murderer exactly what he wanted – a spotlight.

So… last weekend the pledges finally finished their process and were initiated as brothers in the 26th pledge class since reactivation of the Chi chapter of Psi Upsilon. This may not mean a lot to many of you, but I can assure you it is one of the best days (if not the best) I can remember of my time here at Cornell. I have described how special Psi U is to me and it is an amazing experience being able to share that with another 18 upstanding guys. It was nostalgic and sad to remember three years ago I was in their same exact place. I can’t say much else other than congratulations and I was overjoyed that I got to share that day with this group of newly initiated brothers.

You may have seen from the other blogs that we had a snow storm on Monday. Yeah, it is the middle of April… I swear this isn’t normal at Cornell, it is usually short-wearing weather by now. One thing I have learned from Cornell is to never be surprised by the weather though. We got hit with seriously like almost two feet. It was miserable. But, the good news is that today was BEAUTIFUL! I was walking back from class and noticed that Collegetown Bagels was hosting a BBQ with Magic Hat Brewery. Two of my favorite things – BBQs and… great weather. Sadly, I have an exam at 8 am tomorrow so I could not sit down and bask in the great weather. Oh well, at least my ROTC class is finished as of tomorrow in terms of graded materials. I wish I could say the same about a few of my other classes. Wish me luck.

Brother Composite ‘07

Every year a few seniors from the house hop in a big truck or SUV and drive all the way to Ohio and back in a day (6 or so hours each way.) The purpose – picking up a large quantity of a very hard to find and Psi U tradition beverage, enjoyed by the older guys in the house…

I decided to make the trip this year along with two close friends, John and Dave. We departed at 4 am on Saturday morning and trekked all the way to just outside Cleveland, Ohio. Dave, who headed up the “mission,” had looked up a distributor in the area and assured us they would be open all day Saturday. As we neared our location, we asked Dave to call and double check that they were in fact, open. 8 calls later, we realized they either weren’t answering their phone or more likely were not open. Plan #2, google.com on Dave’s spiffy new BlackBerry. Believe it or not, there was another distributor very close to us, just over the border in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Our next course of action was to rent a small U-Haul trailer to transport back our future purchase. So, again to google. We found a U-Haul place right near by our new distributor destination. We stop in, hook up the trailer and realize John’s tail lights are a bit busted and won’t hook up to the trailer. What to do… The guy who ran what was merely a storage center (NOT a U-Haul center) told us to “drive to any mechanic… they will fix it in a second.” This guy was total weird toast (that’s for you Pinky.) First of all, any mechanic could not fix it and it was also Easter weekend. We went to the dealership, closed. We went to a Sears auto center, no help. We went to a used dealership; they pointed us in the direction of the U-Haul mega-center. At the U-Haul mega-center, they were much more lenient with the requirement that the tail lights be functioning 100% correctly and sent us on our way with a nice little trailer.

Next stop, the distributor. Upon arriving we learned that they were the only place in all of PA which sold our particular beverage. They chuckled at our request since it is by no means hard to get due to its premium nature, in fact, probably the other way around… They loaded up our trailer, only pausing to shoot me a smile while saying, “You boys just about reached max towing capacity with this order…” They generously gave us some t-shirts and we were on our way home.

We pulled back into Ithaca at around 11 pm after getting an astounding 6 miles per gallon on the way home. Most people had given up on us or assumed we were terribly lost, but it really did feel great to come through for the house. It was truly a road trip I will never forget.

Wait! I’m not ready yet…

Scary to think about, here is my yearbook photo and fake graduation gown photo. I did order my actual cap and gown the other day.

Sorry I have been a bit short with my posts. Just wrapped up a 25+ hrs. project, which included very little sleep this week and I went on a painful 6 mile hike this morning in the snow (yes, it is still snowing here)

“If Journey comes to Slope Day, so will I!” - Jenna’s Mom

Well, I will be at slope day either way, but if Journey came to Slope Day (which they are not, sadly) it would be a wonderful day.

On that note, here is a great monster ballad:

http://www.youtube.com/v/OyWFa7L4s-0

For all the long time readers of my blog (pause here for laughs) you may remember my post entitled, “football and marketing” (http://web.cornell.edu/studentblogs/ben/?m=200609)

I got the following comment on it today:

“Did this showcase game come to be and how were the results?” – Bob, Buffalo NY

Well, the showcase game didn’t happen – yet. The head coach was part of a team of teaching assistants and the professor which together graded our final presentations. Our final presentation was immaculate; it featured a touch screen which played witty videos of the lacrosse team players and our poster board was decorated quite well. As a result, the coach asked to keep our presentation since she liked the idea so much and we got an automatic A+ in the class for having the best presentation! While the game was not instituted this year, I think it is still a great idea and urge the team to do it in the future.

Ok, so this might be a reoccurring topic in my blog over the next month, but for good reason. Slope Day is the last day of classes during the spring semester and it is essentially one big party to celebrate the passing of another year at Cornell. Most professors cancel classes and if they don’t, students usually skip them. I am not advocating skipping classes but Slope Day is an important tradition and outlet for us students. The concept has been around since 1901 and for quite a long time it was focused on “partying” on Libe slope – the hill that leads down from central campus to west campus. However, in the past eight years or so the university has taken a proactive role in moderating the activities on the slope. They created the Slope Day Programming Board (comprised of faculty and students) to organize events for the day. This has led to an annual concert on Slope Day. I have seen:

• Kanye West, O.A.R. and Dilated Peoples (2004)
• Snoop Dog, The Game and The Starting Line (2005)
• Ben Folds, Talib Kweli and Acceptance (2006)

The concert is put on free of charge and literally every student comes out to see the show. Around this time of year, the rumors start flowing about who will be coming to Cornell for Slope Day. My insiders are telling me the rapper “TI” is scheduled and the previous rumors about Journey playing were false. We’ll see who it ends up being and you can be sure I’ll keep you updated…

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early for Joint Service Athletics Day – Spring 2007. The JSA Day is something we do every semester and it gives each service (Army, Navy and Air Force) a chance to compete against each other for pride and a bit of stress releasing exercise. We get together at Barton Hall and compete in a variety of sports: soccer, handball, basketball, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, tug-of-war and a relay run. There is usually some combination of these sports, with the exclusion of handball which was banned after someone suffered a fractured orbital socket at the hands of a fellow Marine Option.

This semester featured a twist on the old norm; we divided into classes instead of competing service on service. I think this was an effort to cut down on the sometimes dangerous competitiveness levels. The seniors were too big of a group so I actually participated on the sophomores’ team. I don’t know who set it up (I think the Air Force…) but we played all four matches against the seniors. We played them in basketball twice, soccer once and ultimate frisbee once. We definitively lost every match except frisbee, including a 42-5 stomping in basketball. Oh well.

I participated in the tug-of-war which was the only event that featured each service pitted against each other. Air Force and Army faced off first and after quite a long stretch, Army squeaked out a victory. Next, we faced Air Force and beat them in about 7 seconds. Army was no more of a challenge in the finals and we came away victorious.

Other than that, it was a pretty slow weekend. I hung out at Psi U a bit but was tired most of the weekend and took some time to catch up on some rest. No big plans or work scheduled for this week but I will check in a bit later in the week.