Author Archives: Angela

Finding new homes for donated items

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Earlier this semester, I had participated in helping out with preparing diaper packages to give away to needy families at Catholic Charities. The expected time commitment was fairly long (about 4 hours) and the turnout was really low (2 residents and the sponsoring GRF). With this chance to volunteer, I thought that the turnout would be higher because not only were the shifts shorter (2 hours), there was one that started later in the day (not before 9 AM). Unfortunately, the turnout was still low this time around, with only 3 residents signing up for the first shift, and none for the second. I strongly encourage those living in Rose next year to sign up for volunteering events too, and not just the ones that are low commitment and impact.

This time around, we weren’t the only group helping out. While we interacted with Liddy again, we were among several other volunteers from organizations like Kohl’s Cares. Instead of walking through the building to get to the basement, we entered from behind the building and brought out bags of clothing. We then folded them on the table and tried to organize the large variety of donated items, despite the warnings from the experienced volunteers that any organization would soon be ruined by people rifling through the many options.

I was surprised by the turnout of the people looking forward to the Free Sale. Liddy mentioned that this has not yet been a long-running event, but with the amount of people looking for clothes and the many donated items they had in the basement, it seems like a good chance to distribute things out to those who need them. A lot of the people were mothers who had brought their children along. It was a little hard to see our somewhat sorted, folded clothes being tossed around, but it was nice to see that people were able to find what they wanted. There were several little kids running around, and there was one little girl who especially liked hugging things (including my leg once) and was really happy to find a cute dress that was her size that she could hug. Another memorable moment was the reaction of one little girl to a sweater that GRF Magdala handed to her, because it was just what she wanted.

The idea of a free sale from a bunch of donated items that are just asking to be given to someone who needs them is great, and it was a concept I hadn’t heard of before. It was a great chance to interact with people around Ithaca who aren’t part of the campus community, especially because the kids there had genuinely excited reactions to something as small as a piece of clothing. To end this, I want to reiterate that the turnout for these volunteering events has been pretty low this semester, but it really isn’t a big time commitment and it’s definitely a good feeling to help others – so in the future, definitely sign up more for Rose House volunteering events!

^ Reasonably well-maintained table of clothes at the end of our volunteer shift

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Confusing for a documentary

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I came into this film with certain expectations, and unfortunately they weren’t really met. Overall, the organization and the editing of the film were really distracting, and I think that the presentation of things that aren’t really Tai Chi related while touting it as a story about Tai Chi rather than just saying it’s the story of Cheng Man-Ching and his legacy is confusing to an audience who enters without context.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this documentary was the way it was put together. I typically enjoy informative documentaries, but this was not put together to my personal taste. From the design of the information cards to the awkward and uninformative lower thirds during interviews, I found it hard to take the film seriously. There was little introduction to the people speaking and long unnecessary pauses that should have been edited out, like the slow reaction, pan, and zoom in to a squirrel. The narrative flow of the film was also quite confusing. For a recent production (2016), its quality as a documentary was kind of lacking.

That’s not to say it didn’t present historical and factual information. It did, but in my opinion, it was just done poorly. The documentary seemed to be more about the story of Cheng Man-Ching and the impact he had on his students, and not just about tai chi chuan, which it seems like some of the other responses were confusing. It presented a lot of other aspects of traditional Taiwanese culture that Cheng also taught his students, but those ideals are separate from the practice of tai chi chuan. The practice of calligraphy and painting and Daoism are common in Taiwan, and Cheng clearly embodied them, but those are completely separate.

One thing that was even more frustrating was their lack of complete understanding. They would participate in activities and they would begin to feel that chi, but when they tried to describe it, they used different words with skewed connotations, confirming my beliefs that they learned movements but the not the context of the practice in not only tai chi chuan, but the painting and the calligraphy as well. The students clearly embraced the traditional practices, but I find it hard that they could pass down the full meaning of tai chi chuan. The end of the documentary showed Cheng’s style practiced globally, which is great, but to me it feels like what yoga has become – something recreational, but not really cultural anymore.

Perhaps my personal experience with tai chi chuan and Taiwanese culture colored my perception of the film, but it seemed poorly put together and conflated different things because they weren’t fully understood. I think it’s not a bad look into the spread of culture because Cheng was open to teaching westerners, but I think viewers should be critical of what the film presents and not use it as a first introduction to tai chi chuan, because it doesn’t do a very good job at distinguishing Cheng’s many different teachings from the practice in general.

A feel-good movie

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Last Thursday, I attended the screening and discussion panel of Hidden Figures at Cornell Cinema. For me, it was an enjoyable feel-good movie about three women who demonstrated their exceptional worth and helped pave the path for others. The movie was based on the stories of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan, though I would say that they didn’t feature them equally, with the story of Katherine Johnson having had more focus than the others. Katherine Johnson was portrayed as a prodigious mathematician who had the best numerical sense at NASA, while Mary Jackson was played as a fun-loving character who wanted to go to high school extension classes to become an engineer, and Dorothy Vaughan was a natural leader of the West Computing Group who learned and taught FORTRAN.

The movie itself was funny, but as a student in STEM, I would have appreciated more STEM related jokes because that’s a pretty significant part of these women’s journeys. It was pretty obvious at what points the dialogue was really dumbed down to be more digestible, but I guess I was expecting it to be nerdier. The movie, however, did have its fair share of the black experience in southern Virginia in the 60s. I’m still not clear about the history behind it, but it was strange that the movie showed this group of “colored computers,” but no black men working at NASA.

The staring and the awkwardness still present at the time definitely provided the audience insight to the attitude these women faced in their daily lives. There was one scene with a colored and white water fountains, and I can’t help but think about the other people of color, especially Asians and Hispanics, and their experiences at the time. During most of the movie, I was kind of annoyed with the fact that Katherine Johnson’s story included a love interest, but since that thread was based in fact, which we learned at the end of the movie, I tried to forgive it.

After the film, Professor Kim Weeden led a discussion about women in computer science and the film. What I did not realize was the large disparity in women in CS has been increasing rather than decreasing. Many of the CS students I personally interface with at Cornell have been women, but my own experience as a women in engineering has perhaps made me more inclined to seek out other women in similar fields. Looking at last fall’s enrollment statistics, CS ’18 majors in engineering is about 28% female, which doesn’t seem very high, but is higher than the national average. While this can be attributed to many things including the culture of Silicon Valley, one thing that I know shapes many prospective students choice to not pursue CS is the lack of background going into college. People enter top CS programs with a few years of programming experience already under their belts and have a couple years of summer internships because they were encouraged at a much younger age to study CS. This makes entering the major much more intimidating for those with absolutely no coding experience. In my opinion, the gender disparity in CS is largely attributed to how younger children are exposed to the notion that for some reason, being a computer nerd is typically male and uncool, and that creating a positive experience earlier on for more people, especially girls, can help tighten the gap.

During the discussion, one person brought up their disappointment in the white saviorism of the film, to which I have a differing opinion on. African Americans have fought hard for their representation in Hollywood and the media, but have largely forgotten about other people of color to the extent that they complain about things that aren’t just added to reinforce the white narrative. The truth is, things don’t magically change because of minorities’ hard work. In real life, there kind of has to be someone in power that gives you the chance to succeed. Yes, white men helped put them in a position to succeed, but without their own hard work and intellect, they would not have. So while others complain about this representation of minority success, I find it hard to overlook the fact that there are still minority groups who have unproportional and trite stereotypical media representation while the movie was clearly the positive retelling of actual people’s lives. This was a feel-good movie for a general audience and I definitely had a good time watching it.

High expectations

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Like many of the Rose Scholars in the group, I had not seen La La Land yet. In fact, I am so behind on new movies, or really most movies, that I didn’t actually know anything about it other than a little bit of what happened at the Oscars and that it was a musical. I guess I never realized how many covers of its songs I’ve heard in other places, but the music was familiar, which may have actually worsened my experience watching it for the first time. Personally, I don’t really understand all of the praise it has received, but I also know my movie tastes tend to be misaligned from a lot of popular opinions.
From the hype that it’s gotten and the positive expectations going into the movie along with the fact that I enjoy musical movies, I didn’t enjoy this movie as much as I thought I would. Maybe if I saw if again it would grow on me, but it seemed a little too contrived and cheesy. I understand fading the background and having a spotlight on an emotional soloist in a theater production, but I was slightly annoyed every time it happened in this particular movie. Unlike a live production, there are so many more interesting things you can do with a scene and camera angles that aren’t zooming into a face with a dark background. I think with a clearly large budget and the fact that it is a movie could have resulted in some better cinematographic choices.
I don’t want to make this post into a rant about why I didn’t enjoy the movie, because that’s not really the case. I enjoyed the movie bits much more than the musical bits, which I think was my main issue. I understand casting big-name stars, but I wasn’t on board with all the artistic choices. The singing wasn’t as strong as I expected, especially coming in after watching fantastic renditions of the songs elsewhere. Perhaps the vocal tones the producers were going for were met, but I think was expecting a more musical-theater-sounding quality to the voices. Another thing that was distracting was arms. Or maybe just the dancing in general. While there were some great scenes where I thought they took good advantage of the fact that they were shooting a movie and not a stage production, it was pretty obvious who wasn’t trained as a dancer. In some ways, the movie even recognized this, like with the cheesy silhouettes in the observatory and the very boringly shot tap scene.
While I enjoyed the acting for the most part, I don’t really enjoy watching an established actor pretend to be a struggling actor who keeps auditioning and finally gets their chance. I get that this may have been their dream in the past, but at this point, if Emma Stone were less likeable, I would have been very irritated watching her bad auditions. Also, why was Ryan Gosling the only white person who liked jazz in the movie? There are definitely things that musicals can get away with, but I wasn’t enamored with the overall movie to overlook smaller parts.
Overall, the movie didn’t meet expectations, but I still had an enjoyable time watching it. There were definitely parts where I laughed and definitely appreciated some of the artistic choices made, but this I don’t think this is ever going to be a favorite movie musical for me. I think it tried to mix elements of movies and musicals in different ways, but not always cohesively. While I would definitely give it another shot and will probably watch it again sometime in the future, I can’t really pinpoint my current feelings on the production.

Life Advice and Art

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Last Sunday, I went to my first art workshop (I think?). I used to spend much more time on my artistic endeavors, but have cut back greatly in the past few years. I was even considering taking an art class at Cornell to get back into creating art on a more regular basis, something I had done for years up to a certain point in high school, when it ended kind of abruptly. My experience at this workshop was definitely unexpected.

I had attended the art reception at the beginning of March for House Fellow Nicholas Carbonara’s art in the Rose dining hall, where he talked about the asymmetries of people on the subway. At the workshop, he spoke some more about his experience working with the details of hair and the importance of experiencing things not through the lens of a digital device. While there was colored paper and markers provided, Nicholas encouraged those who weren’t comfortable with drawing to write about their observations. He told us to not just focus on the models, friends and dogs he had brought along him, but to other people in the room and how they react.

Once the music started, we were left to our own observations. I think it took a few moments before anyone actually put something down on paper, but the models were in their element and moving around. The first thing I sketched was of the fluid motion of the models moving to the music, but was then quickly drawn to the various resting positions the models slipped in and out of. I hadn’t considered the variety of positions in which someone can look relaxed, but I filled up a decent amount of space with different relaxing body positions.

I then started to focus more on the hands, especially after one of the models clapped loudly, slightly startling all of us who weren’t expecting such a stark break to the scene. Hands themselves can capture a lot of emotion and I started to fill up another page with sketches of different hand positions – hands holding things, hands tensed up, hands reaching, hands pushing, hands supporting. This made me think back to an old friend’s AP Studio Art concentration portfolio about hands in during different memorable moments. Before I knew it, an hour’s time was up and I had been able to release myself from my everyday worries.

The session ended with some very insightful conversation about just life in general. One big thing was about engaging with other people. The model who was in a wheelchair talked about his experience with a sort of offensive-defensive approach people have when they look at him, something I definitely felt but tried to fight during the session. Your physical appearance commanding attention is powerful and a good way to start to engage with people. Along with this was the fact that kids are innocently authentic, and do things that we find outrageous, only when we look at things hypercritically. This bled into something another participant brought up about trying to get to a relaxing mindset because of all the daily stresses we experience at Cornell and how taking too long to relax can also be stressful. One thing that was suggested was to take even the short moments walking between classes to be self-centered – to take back that moment and place yourself first instead of obsessing over other things.

An irrepressible demand for justice

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Last Tuesday, I attended a talk about the Attica Prison Uprising given by Dr. Heather Ann Thompson. I had no previous knowledge about the specific incident, and learned quickly that I really didn’t know much about the prison system in general. Dr. Thompson started by giving a background, which was much needed in my case, about mass incarceration. According to her, mass incarceration is the civil rights crisis of the late 20th and 21st century, something that I had never really thought about. My exposure to the inside of prisons is limited to what is portrayed on TV and through the news, which is clearly not an accurate representation. Dr. Thompson mentioned that prisons have gotten worse for both corrections officers and people inside in each decade since the 1960s. One thing that really surprised me was the idea of the war on crime, and how it started with Johnson at a point in time when the murder was very low and crime wasn’t that big of a problem. Additionally, prison rates didn’t see as much of an increase until 1972.

She then talked more about the Attica Prison Uprising, which is the focus of her book Blood in the Water. One important thing to note was the lack of available information, as the governor shut down records to the story for 45 years and she had to fight for the freedom of that information. She spent a good amount of time going into the background of Attica and the people involved and told the story of what happened. What was really shocking were the amount and quality images available, despite the record being concealed. Not only was there a chaotic riot and a clear lack of empathy for the prisoners, but the aftermath inside the prison and the actions of those outside to lie about what happened is disturbing. I had no idea that modern prisons in the US could be so bad on the inside, and that was something Dr. Thompson really touched on at the end of her talk. Most of the prisons in the US are public institutions, but their doors are kept closed. The false media message following Attica led to huge consequences, and Dr. Thompson emphasized the importance of getting history right. While there are certain pieces of news that can be easily seen as biased and contradictory to known facts, when there is an overwhelming push to hide the truth and fabricate a story because no one has access to the facts, it’s scary. I am definitely interested in reading up more about Attica and those other state-power events in the time period she mentioned and being open to correcting my own knowledge of recent events that may be exposed to be cover-ups later on.

Unsure about the story

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Last week, I went to watch a student performance of The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek. While I enjoyed the overall performance, there were some things about it that I may have changed. One thing that was especially bothersome to me was the shadow figures. Maybe it was the limitation of the theater with the lighting, but despite being a notable part of the story, all of the hand shadows were hard to see with just the light of a small candle. Another thing that made it hard to feel completely immersed in the play was the range of actors. While the acting was good, Pace was an especially fitting casting choice, the fact that they were all students made it harder to believe the relationships between parents and teenagers.

One thing that surprised me was the amount of money that goes into these productions. When I saw Eurydice in the fall, the set included pipes that included a working output valve along with a sturdy platform in the middle. In this production, the set was primarily the underside of the trestle and it was on a pretty large scale. Additionally, the play involves breaking plates, which definitely caught me by surprise. Dalton’s mother and father started throwing a plate back and forth, and I was nervously anticipating an accidental drop. When the plate was smashed, it took me a second after one of the broken pieces actually hit my shoe that I realized what had happened and why the mother made it a point to bring in plates.

As for the content of the play, I’m not sure I really liked it. I’m just not satisfied with stories that involve a rebellious female character that changes a boy and dies. Not only that, the last scene before the intermission and one of the final scenes in which Dalton kisses the just deceased body of Pace is disturbing. One other thing that I’ve seen before but still have no personal understanding of is the need to be seen – that if no one sees you do something, that it isn’t real, that somehow you aren’t real. Perhaps this is a reasonably common thought people have, but I have never been able to relate to how the sentiment is presented in various stories. I might have to go back and read the play to get something else out of it, but I just wasn’t excited or intrigued with the plot. Nonetheless, I thought the actors did a good job, especially with some of the more unconventional actions they took.

A productive Saturday morning

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Last Saturday, I helped out with a diaper drive at Catholic Charities. Despite the push by Dr. Hill to get more people to sign up, it ended up being just me, GRF Magdala, and one other Rose resident who went. Nevertheless, we had a good time doing what we could. Liddy, from Catholic Charities, was kind enough to let us in and meet her daughter August. We made our way into the basement, which was surprisingly big, and filled with lots of clothes and other donated items. While comfortable, the low exposed ceiling along with some small strange noises from time to time were a little creepy.

For the diaper drive, we divided up donated diapers into bags that would be handed out to low income parents once every two months. The number of diapers given out were based on the size, but even with the largest number of 52 size 1 diapers, we realized that this isn’t enough to keep up with an infant’s needs. Liddy mentioned that they also help low income parents by informing them of where else they could get free diapers.

Despite the fact that we only had three people, we got through over 4,000 diapers and pull-ups within 3 hours. Honestly, it was one of the most productive Saturday mornings I’ve had in a while, and it really was to help benefit those who need some support. While I think people may not have signed up to help because it was a Saturday morning and was supposed to be a relatively long event, I do think that people missed out. I would definitely do it again or even help out with other activities they need volunteers for. I really encourage other Rose Scholars to be more open minded about even rarely spending a chunk of their weekends to dedicate to some service activity. Who knows, you might learn somethings about diapers you never knew that might come up sometime later in your life.

Not what I expected

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This was the second performance of The Vagina Monologues I’ve seen. The first time was 2 years ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it to the point that I thought about auditioning for it. After watching this year’s performance, however, I was glad I didn’t – more on this later. One thing I noted was that they never said that pictures and videos of the performance not be taken, unlike their request in the previous performance I had seen. Especially with the increased amount of skin and cast members just in their underwear, I felt uncomfortable seeing others take pictures and videos which could end up floating around without the cast’s permission.

Before leaving Rose House, GRF Sara asked a couple of questions about the relevancy of the language and conversation in a play written in the 90s and if staging such a play has political motive. I understand the concern that the play may be outdated in a sense. Heck, my first exposure to The Vagina Monologues was from a Mad TV sketch on youtube several years ago. But I never really felt it was too outdated. From my point of view, the play isn’t on the cutting edge of gender and sexuality issues, but I don’t think it ever was supposed to be. They add in stories and statistics from more recent years, but I’m not convinced that it means the play is trying to represent all gender and sexuality issues.

For me, the play is should be looked as a play about what the title tells you – vaginas. I think that the scenes are still relevant to many today, though they might be seen as too outdated my very progressive people. I wasn’t raised to think liberally about my body and sexuality or to embrace all things associated with having a vagina, and I think things like this play really help start a conversation for those not accustomed to those ideas. Like someone mentioned afterwards, it was surprising and empowering to see a crowd applauding talking about vaginas, and I don’t think it’s necessary to try and make it wholly comprehensive.

Once criticism of the play I can definitely agree with is the skewed negativity towards men. There were a lot of stories about negative sexual experiences with men, and the one scene that wasn’t was clearly introduced with the tone that this was an uncommon event. On the topic of how they introduced scenes, this production was pretty different from the last one I had seen, despite the fact that they included many of the same scenes. The staging was dynamic and unique enough and the cast was great at portraying exaggerated characters to get an audience reaction. One production choice that struck me as even more interesting was the scene about transgender experiences. The last production, if I’m remembering correctly, did not attach bodies or even faces to the stories, but the staging choice here was quite clearly representing transgender issues stepping out from behind shadows to be seen. This is the kind of change I can more easily understand, as in the past two years, there has been a lot more progress in public awareness of transgender issues.

The inclusion of the Cornell student-written segment was definitely a better reflection of the current conversation of body acceptance, what makes a woman a woman, and experiences that align more with the time period we grew up in. This, however, marked the beginning of the end of my enjoyment of the production. While I can’t remember exactly how the play ended the last time I saw it, I was disappointed by the ending this year. When Sara asked the question about the play being a political act, I thought that was baseless because from my previous experiences with it, it was more of a social movement to get people more comfortable talking about sex. The ending of this production, however, was clearly politically motivated.

There were certain things I could understand – the pink pussyhats for example. Other things seemed unnecessary for this performance. I get that current political situation in America is not ideal, and I too am frustrated when I see the same face dominating the news. But I don’t think that the production over-politicized the play. Sure, calling out a comment about grabbing someone by the pussy is relevant, but protesting the wall and the ‘this is what democracy looks like’ chant don’t fit with the intent of the play. While I agree with many of the issues they threw in in the closing scene, this was one time I felt extremely distant from the sentiment of social justice warriors and a liberal college campus. It seemed like most of the play was negated by the ending – that the message they wanted to get across was not about female empowerment, but about their dissent against the president. The ending left me with such a bad feeling that I didn’t feel motivated to applaud the cast on an otherwise good performance, but felt like if I didn’t, people would judge me for not supporting the cause. I don’t know how this post will be received, but all I wanted to say was that while I generally agree and support the want voice opinions, I feel like there’s a right place and time and that the ending to this performance muddled the original intent.

What is Love?

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Before this past week, I had never really heard of Shakespeare in Love (I’m not really a movie person), but when I looked it up, I saw that it had won seven Oscars, so was interested to see what it was going to be like. Overall, I’m going to say that it was an okay movie. There were definitely parts I enjoyed, but others I found kind of cringeworthy. Before watching the movie, GRF Sara asked us to consider the process of creating a masterpiece of art and if love could be captured in a play or such a movie.

I thought the question about the creation of art was interesting in the case of this movie. Clearly, someone is telling Shakespeare expectations they have – like it being a comedy about pirates or that there needs to be a dog – but his mind takes him in a different direction. But at the same time, he experiences writer’s block, which everyone does. When he talks to Marlowe, you can tell that they don’t have an actual rivalry with each other, as Marlowe just talks about certain ideas that might work for the a star-crossed lover play. Doing this makes it even more impactful on Shakespeare when Marlowe dies, as first, he thinks he is the cause of the death, and two, that no one really source of every part of a large piece of work. It is entirely possible that some of the masterworks we know and attribute to one person could be the combination of many ideas from many different places, not something churned out by a solitary genius.

On the subject of creating a play or movie about love, I don’t know if I think either the original play or the movie capture that. When thinking about the play, I think while Romeo and Juliet clearly had feelings for each other, they could not have possibly been that in love. I guess this point of view may be different for those who believe in love at first sight. That is not to say that I do not enjoy the play. I appreciate Shakespeare’s writing and found myself reciting lines of the play as they either rehearsed or performed them in the movie, because certain prominent lines sort of stick with you unknowingly. I do not know, however, if I find the play to be a great love story.

As for the movie itself, I agree with another poster that it is somewhat tacky. While I don’t know much about fashion at that time, the fact that Shakespeare was always wearing those same strange pants and that he could get away with being a nursemaid to accompany Viola was ridiculous. Also the fact that a woman with so much hair and pretty feminine body language could get away with a fake mustache and a wig was ludicrous. The part of the film that resulted in the most visceral distaste was the reading of the play cutting between Shakespeare and Viola in bed and Viola and the actor playing Juliet in rehearsal. It just seemed contrived and unnecessary. At least to me, it was one of the most unromantic parts of the movie.

All this being said, I really don’t know if love can be fully portrayed in a play or movie or any work of art. Love is such a complex internal emotion that encompasses lots of different thoughts and actions, and is experienced differently in different people. While I think there are definitely instances where love is expressed in art, I cannot say there is a work of art out there that truly captures the feeling of love for everyone.

Who were Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose?

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In the first Rose Café of the semester, Eileen Keating came to give a talk about the history of the College of Human Ecology, more specifically the roles Martha Van Rensselaer, Flora Rose, and Eleanor Roosevelt played in the higher education of women. The entire talk was a really interesting history of something I had never known about. Learning about this lesser known history is really interesting to me, and I know there was a class Cornell offered about the history of Cornell (I believe it was AMST 2001), but that wasn’t offered this semester. For instance, I had no idea the hotel school used to be a part of the old home economics program. Also, just a disclaimer, the information I was able to jot down may not be completely accurate, but I nonetheless found the talk very interesting.
Bailey, the first dean of the ag school understood that there was no one meeting the needs of farmers wives and Martha was elected school commissioner. The involvement of farmer’s wives began with the bulletins that encouraged women to write back with their thoughts and concerns. A commemorative printing of one such bulletin was passed around, and including interesting suggestions such as using canine to churn butter, or certain things to keep in mind when organizing a kitchen. In 1907, the department of home economics was created in the ag school, and Flora Rose, who had a background in Nutrition, was brought in. In 1919, the school of home economics was formed.
Thinking about, the timing of everything makes sense, though it’s always interesting to really contextualize how historical events happen at the same time as each other. The reality of being a woman in America has drastically changed in the past century, and MVR and Flora Rose definitely impacted type of higher educational opportunities for women. Though they definitely had connections with politicians, notably Eleanor Roosevelt, they were careful not to be too political in the realm of women’s suffrage. Keating also shared a letter from Susan B. Anthony, who was interested in the fact that there was a program successful at getting the interest of women to participate.
At some point, Martha gets in touch with Eleanor Roosevelt, in an effort to lobby the state for a college of home economics. When it was first established, it was really meant for farmer’s daughters, as there were no tuition costs for NY state and it emphasized applied sciences such as child rearing. When the college wanted a new building (they used to be based out of the CCC building), Martha asked Eleanor for one million dollars in funding. At the time, FDR provided the funding, and since this was around the time of the Great Depression, the building was able to be bigger than originally planned.
Apparently, the building was initially supposed to be named after Flora Rose, but Martha unexpectedly passed around the same time, and the building now bears her name. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had maintained good relations with Martha and Flora lobbied the president of Cornell for Flora to be named dean of the school. It wasn’t until the West Campus building we know now was dedicated to Flora Rose.
I found Eleanor’s involvement with this whole history was very interesting. From early on, a farm and home week was hosted as a sort of gathering for women to learn about home economics. Eleanor attended every year from 1928 to Flora’s retirement in 1940. She even tried to serve Flora’s fortified cereals and recipes at the White House, though FDR did not eat them.
There were so many interesting things brought up about MVR and Flora Rose that I don’t think I would have heard about elsewhere. Keating mentioned that there was a documentary of Martha’s work made, and I will definitely go back to watch it at some point. There is clearly a lot about the history of the university that I just don’t know because I haven’t been exposed to it. I think everyone should definitely take the chance to learn more about the history of Cornell, because I am always amazed to learn about how the setting I am currently in was set up.