Author Archives: Patrick Loi

Guiding I’s and Guiding Us

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Last week, the organization Guiding Eyes led a puppy petting event, in which they spoke briefly about the Guiding Eyes program, and brought in some of those trained dogs to play with students. The Guiding Eyes presentation was very informative, detailing how the puppies are specifically bred for the program, and how extensive the training process is. The puppies start their training when they are only a few months old, and have to go through multiple rounds of tests before they are qualified to help patients in the program. It definitely sounds like a difficult task to train those dogs in not only obedience, discipline, and responsiveness, but also in empathy, and sensing the owner’s needs. Training takes years and tens of thousands of dollars. The presenter also showed us some interesting tricks to manipulate the dogs to discipline. It was nice to hear about the rigor of the training program and the lives of some of these dogs.

The only complaint I have about this event was that there were not that many dogs for all the people who showed up. There was a massive turnout for the event, so it would be nice if everyone had a chance to participate.

Suddenly Aware

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Last week, I attended a dinner conversation that featured Dr. Ariela Keysar, a professor of Public Policy and Law at Trinity College who lead a discussion about prejudice. Topics like prejudice are usually difficult to discuss, but I was pleased by how everyone who attended listened to each others’ stories respectfully. The majority of the discussion involved most of students each sharing instances in which we felt discriminated against. The major point that I noticed from almost everyone’s stories was that at Cornell, we all felt very aware of our race and our genders. Most of us remarked how we all came from neighborhoods that had predominantly “minority” communities, and we never thought much about our race until we came to Cornell. Suddenly when we walk into a room, we’re aware of the demographics, and then we worry if we’re out of place because of how we look. Coming from a high school with a 75% Asian population, suddenly I’m very aware of situations in which there are very few or many Asians at Cornell.

For example, one girl spoke about for a hospital placement, the program director placed her in a “worse” hospital in an inner city predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood simply because she is Hispanic herself. Although the director might not be aware, and placed her there out of convenience, she felt like she was wrongfully placed due to assumptions from her ethnicity. Similarly, we discussed briefly on how people talk to us in a condescending tone, like backhanded compliments: “you’re smart… for a girl” or “you’re attractive… for a brown person”. We had a brief moment to discuss potential solutions, and GRF Antonio suggested mandatory history or communication classes for first year students to become acquainted with being more respectful to people from different backgrounds. Ultimately, I thought the discussion was much too short to adequately cover such a complex issue such as “prejudice” but I enjoyed the opportunities to hear from Prof Keysar and stories from fellow peers.

Mastering being a “Master of Love”

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This week, I had the pleasure to partake in another dinner discussion based on an Atlantic article by Emily Smith entitled “Masters of Love”. The article spoke about a study in which newlywed couples were brought in, asked questions about their relationships, and given physiological tests. The study found that the results of the study were able to predict whether the couples would stay together or get divorced six years later. Some of the physiological tests focused on if the couples felt aroused, stressed, or flight-or fight responses when speaking about their partners. This showed general uneasiness and discomfort with the partners, and the other tests showed how little habits could either help or put long term strain on relationships. I came late to the discussion since I was rushing from work, but I entered when the discussion was centered on what makes relationships work. Some of the responses and points that the article addressed included kindness/compassion, trust, and assuming the best intentions in your partner.

It seemed really trivial that obviously kindness and trust are essential for any good relationship, but I liked how we discussed how we could convey those emotions in every day situations that could reinforce relationships. The key really lies in the nuances in how we use our words. For example, GRF Andrew spoke about when we encounter issues in relationships, it’s important to frame the situation such that it involves the feelings of both partners and does not recklessly accuse one partner in fault. For example, instead of saying: “You didn’t wash the dishes, you’re irresponsible,” a more effective alternative would be “You didn’t wash this the dishes, this makes me feel unappreciated.” The slight change in the use of pronouns could help shift the argument into a discussion that involves both partners rather a single-sided accusation.

What I really liked about the discussion was that the GRFs spoke much about their own personal experiences with their relationships. GRF Andrew told us the story of how he met and eventually married his wife, and how it was difficult to make the relationship work at first since they he was in Ethiopia while she was in NYC. However, he emphasized how vital communication was in keeping their relationship strong even with the long distance (they constantly wrote letters and made late-night calls), and it was a really sweet story for all of us to hear. I hope to see more discussion events like this one, in which we all discuss a prominent topic that is relevant and and share our relatable experiences.

Breaking Boxes a step at a time

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This week I attended an event entitled “Break the Box” which was a discussion about gender norms led by students in the Intergroup Dialogue Project. The event was interesting, and one of the facilitators asked if we noticed anything particular about the demographics of the room. Majority of the people in attendance were female, and I noted that the event might be biased as it self-selects for students who are already interested and knowledgeable about the significance of gender norms. Thus, it felt like for the sake of discussion, most of the people in the room were already aware of the issues and agreed with each other. For example, when the facilitators put up a word cloud about “what is a man?” and “what is a woman?” many of the submissions included adjectives such as “nice, smart, compassionate” and the facilitators had to add words to portray what the rest of society thinks about men and women: “aggressive, experienced, strong” for men and “innocent, weak, and sensitive” for women. Thus, at a renowned university like Cornell, it’s more difficult to get a diverse array of opinions because many of us, especially those who attend these kinds of events, are already aware of gender norm issues.

I found some issues with how some of the questions were phrased. In the initial survey, the questions asked “what are desirable traits in men/women?” and the facilitators hoped to get responses that reflected ideal stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. However, the question could be misinterpreted as “what do you prefer in desirable mate?” and the question does not take account into people of different sexual orientations and non gender binary. Additionally, there was another question “what are you most proud of your gender” which was extremely difficult and problematic to answer until it was rephrased into a question about privilege.

Overall, I felt that the event was a quick and nice taste into the Intergroup Dialogue Project.  I applaud the facilitators for having this as their project and I love any opportunity to talk about social awareness issues. I really appreciated hearing some of the stories the participants shared, such as when a father was concerned his 1 month old baby would be a “overweight daughter”.     I also liked that in the end, we discussed possible ways we could “break the box” such as being more vocal and not being afraid to speak up when we see instances of social injustice. However, the issues regarding gender norms and societal boxes are complicated than “women get less renowned jobs” and “slut-shaming double standards exist” and require much more than an hour to dissect. It felt like the issues were oversimplified (although I can’t blame them due to the time constraints) and didn’t take into issues of intersectionality. I was hoping the discussion would focus more on understanding why these gender boxes exist in the first place and how to overcome them, rather than just what they are. Overall, I hope to attend more similar events about social awareness at Rose House.

The History of West Campus Cont.

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Cornell always has had its history of housing issues. Last week, the Rose Scholars attended a tour of West Campus led by Prof Garrick Blalock, who spoke about Cornell’s history. We should take pride in that the intent behind Cornell’s founding is significantly different than that of the fellow Ivy League colleges. Prof Blalock went over how Cornell’s founder, Ezra Cornell only had the equivalent of a third grade education, but he worked his way up from being a carpenter to building the telegraph business, and he found Cornell to be open to “any person, any study”, in contrast to the other Ivy Leagues’ unofficial mottos: “any rich, white, Protestant male who wants to study theology”. However, because of Cornell’s unorthodox history, Ezra Cornell also didn’t want to have a dorming experience in which the students were isolated from the greater community; thus the majority of the students rented and lived in houses in Collegetown. Eventually, North Campus was developed for all the freshmen to live together, but there weren’t any great housing options for upperclassmen who wanted to stay on campus. Thus, West Campus was developed in response with the residential college system. The tour explanation, along with a similar “The History of West Campus” talk by Prof Kramnick at last year’s Rose/Becker Cafe Series, helped to illuminate how the housing system at Cornell came to be. Cornell’s extensive history helped to explain why Cornell doesn’t have a housing system like many other older universities and how West Campus came to be.

On the tour, we visited the War Memorial Room attached to Lyon Hall and the underground tunnel that connects the loading dock at Becker House and Rose House. The tour was a great experience, especially since the War Memorial is closed off during the rest of the year. The aspect I always loved about West Campus is that the architecture is a mix of the traditional, archaic gothics with the new, modern main house buildings. Living in the main buildings, it is easy to forget how much history that’s in West. The Baker Flagpole arch is something that all West Campus students pass by every day, but I had no idea that it was specifically a war memorial for Cornell students who served and died in WWI. It was also really nice to see the tunnel that connects the Becker loading docks and Rose House; since Rose doesn’t have a loading dock on its own, all the food served in Rose is transported through the Becker tunnel. Unfortunately, we need Becker card access to get into Becker, I was hoping we would have a convenient way to get from Rose to Becker when the snow piles up outside. The tour helped us all to appreciate the little intricacies on West Campus, and Cornell’s larger history.

Distinc.ttive Vision

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On Thursday, I attended a dinner conversation which featured the Rose House guest, Michael Belkin, a Cornell alumnus who eventually pursued a career in entrepreneurship and created his own startup, a social media app for LGBT youth Distinc.tt. Many of us asked about his personal experiences, the progression of the app from a simple idea to what it is today, and advice for us if we chose to pursue entrepreneurship. Everyone is obsessed with the concept of having a singular million dollar idea that becomes a huge success. However, we were surprised to hear that a lot of success that Michael had was due to fortunate accidents, and the final product ended up being completely different than the original idea. His initial idea was to create a social media app for the LGBT community that can be used to identify others in the community and that wasn’t made for the purpose of necessarily dating or hooking up. After the app was completed and approved by the Apple Store, Michael was surprised to see that the app had a 17+ rating just because it was LGBT related even though there was nothing explicit with the content. He fought to get the rating changed to 12+ and then there was a flurry of media sensationalism in which Distinc.tt was the first app with a rating approved for teenagers. Thus, Michael and his team discovered that there was a hidden demographic that the app could be marketed to, which was the LGBT youth, who don’t have the means to meet and connect with other LGBT youth. He didn’t start off with the intention of making a social media app for LGBT youth, but they took advantage of the situation and the app evolved over time. This was something Michael really emphasized, as we can’t predict how something will end up as hard as we try, we can only hope the product evolves as we grow. 

Michael also gave other valuable pieces of advice when thinking about creating a startup. For example, I didn’t know about the potential of smoke tests, in which you could build and test certain features of an app and see if those features would be successful rather than build the entire app and waste time backtracking if certain parts fail. For the first few years, focus on consumer growth rather than monetization, or else the app quality would suffer. Other entrepreneurs are often the most valuable resources. Most importantly, since app development is becoming more commonplace and competitive, apps need to become a part of your larger vision. How do you see the world differently and how do you think your perspective can help the world? 

I absolutely adored this dinner conversation. Although I am not currently interested in going to create a startup, it was great to hear all these facets of experience that could be applicable to every problem solving situation. I was also just really interested in his app idea, and I hope that usage of his app would be more widespread in the near future!     

Not a Black and White Problem

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Last week at the Rose/Becker Cafe Series, Prof Eric Cheyfitz, the director of the American Indian Program came to speak to us about some instances of Native American brutality in history, as well as today. He was very blunt when he said that he considers the US brutality on the Native American people as genocide. For example, the white colonists committed every forcible attempt to wipe out Native American culture; the settlers had the vaccination for smallpox, but they did not make those preventative measures available to the Native American people who were dying from disease. In addition to the physical violence, the greatest crime that the Native Americans suffered was federal neglect. The federal government made no attempts to protect the indigenous people, and recognized them as political identities to seize land from rather than a race of people. There were as many as 4-5 million Native Americans in 1492, and the population was decimated to a measly 250,000 by the end of the 19th century. They are now the poorest community in the US.

We’d like to think that this brutal and bloody history is done behind us, and that we’ve moved on from the racist, xenophobic attitudes. We’d like to think our society has become progressive and aware about the issues that plague the minority groups living in the US. I mean, just look at the online uproar and support for Black Lives Matter. However, as progressive as we like to think we are, the Native American community is still suffering from neglect, even today. The US government still thinks of the Native American reserves as domestic dependent nations, and tries to distance itself from the issues of poverty and injustice. I think the strongest example Prof Cheyfitz brought up that’s closest to home was that we are on the traditional Native American land of the Cayuga people today, and even though he’s tried campaigning for it before, it’s difficult for the Cornell administration to acknowledge that.

I remember that night how Prof Cheyfitz spoke about tragedy after tragedy, injustice after injustice, a lot of us felt uneasy and helpless. Hearing these stories makes us feel guilty, but guilty of what? The general US population doesn’t like to feel guilty, especially because the people now are so far removed from injustices done to the Native Americans. None of us have a particularly close connection, and people don’t like to feel guilty about actions they didn’t commit. These issues aren’t garnering a lot of attention simply because the Native American population is just too small to raise awareness about their history, unlike the vocal African American population. Prof Cheyfitz said that we think of racial tensions today and throughout history in a black and white binary, and we think of slavery as the primal crime in US history, but we forget about the Native American genocide. I appreciated how Prof Cheyfitz brought this up, because there are so many other minority groups whose stories need to be heard as well. I also appreciate how I was lucky enough to grow up in an educational system in which we talked about the brutality towards Native Americans and examined the errs of US history through diverse perspectives, instead of blindly glorifying the white colonizers. There may not be much we could do to fix the injustices done on the Native Americans today, but it helps to learn and pass on their stories as part of US history.

Prof Schwartz: Coming Full Circle

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I remember the first Rose/Becker Cafe Series I ever attended last year featured Prof Schwartz in Prof Blalock’s apartment. Almost all of the scholars crammed inside Prof Blalock’s living room, huddled around Prof Schwartz as he gave out his words of wisdom. His talk was one of the first talks I’ve heard here, and I thought his advice was extremely fitting for kickstarting the new year. I wrote last year that his advice was useful, applicable, but nothing new we haven’t heard before: study hard, prepare for the future early, take advantage of internship opportunities, keep on moving forward, make meaningful connections with professors, and challenge yourself by taking on new experiences outside your comfort zone. His sentiments definitely ring true, and they’re definitely strong, wise words we should strive to follow and remember as we take on this new year.

After attending his talk this year, I found many similar themes in his talks between the years. The ideas of the 3 R’s (resilience, resourcefulness, and resolve) and “time is time” and “find your own niche” resonate again and again. On one hand, I’m thinking “yep, I’ve heard this so many times before,” but on the other hand, it’s interesting to look around the room and see new Rose scholars looking and listening to Prof Schwartz earnestly, trying to soak in every syllable of advice. I remember how I felt when I first listened to him last year. I felt apprehensive, concerned, and eager all at the same time as a new transfer student. I felt that yes, ideally a great student would do everything he said, but his advice was easier said than done. But then I think back to how I have changed in the past year; his advice about finding a niche, and becoming involved, and getting to know professors didn’t seem so foreign the second time around. Through the past year, I worked as an undergrad researcher, a student advisor, and I even run a peer mentorship program to make research accessible to new students, and I found myself giving similar advice as Prof Schwartz did to new students who are now in my old shoes last year.

I was really glad I was able to hear Prof Schwartz speak again, and it was especially valuable to hear him a full year later.  It’s like that feeling of not fully appreciating your parents’ words of wisdom until you’ve grown older yourself and can look back on your experiences. It’s like “aha, they were right all along!” Listening to him really made me reflect on how I’ve changed in the past year; I’m glad the new Rose scholars this year got to hear him as the first speaker of the Rose/Becker Cafe Series and I’m excited to see what changes this upcoming year brings!