When Cornell announced that it had received a remarkable, anonymous $350 million donation specifically to help it build a new engineering and technology-focused school on Roosevelt Island (effectively forcing the city to select its bid) there was a lot of speculation as to who would donate that kind of money (*cough* hizzoner *cough*). But there is no reason to speculate anymore, the donor has come forward and, honestly? He sounds like the kind of 1 percenter we could use more of. more ›

And the winner of New York City's high-tech campus sweepstakes appears to be... Cornell, by $350 million dollars. Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce the news later today at the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Ithaca-based Ivy is apparently so eager to get started they want to have their first classes going by next September—a year earlier than the Bloomberg administration initially asked for! more ›

Well, that's a shame! For weeks Stanford and Cornell were the presumed neck-and-neck frontrunners to build a high-tech applied science campus in the city. But today the left coast institution sent out a press release announcing that it was withdrawing from the process immediately. Why? Because the school suddenly feels that "it would not be in the best interests of the university to continue to pursue the opportunity." more ›

In the aftermath of today's earthquake we've looked at funny tweets and seismic videos, earthquake-related eats, checked in on our local nuclear plant and gotten some tips on how to survive another one. But for a little more information on what exactly occurred today, we turned to Larry Brown, a Cornell University professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Continents. more ›

A sophomore at Cornell University was found dead in a fraternity house on the Ithaca school's campus last Friday. George Desdunes, 19, was found unresponsive in his bed at the frat house on Friday morning and was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead. The investigation into his death is continuing, but suicide is not suspected and a sheriff told the AP that alcohol consumption may have been a factor. more ›

It's Operation Ivy League Part 2! A Cornell University senior has been arrested after police found her with a Tupperware container with six ounces of uncut heroin, worth about $150,000. Keri Lynn Blakinger, 26, was arrested in the parking lot of Ithaca's Hillside Inn, and Deputy Ithaca Police Chief John Barber said, "The preliminary weight of the heroin indicates it may be the second largest seizure of the drug by the Ithaca Police Department since September of 2008." She was also described as "not acting right." Was she peeing in bottles too? more ›

While Ithaca is hours away from the Big Apple, the taint of Wall Street hits too close to campus. At least, that's according to Cornell student Tony Manfried, who composed an opinion piece in the school paper demanding that Goldman Sachs never recruit there again in Vampire Squid-lite fashion:

It vets and interrogates, tests and examines, and eventually it leaves campus with a wish list of eager undergrads. A few months later, those same undergrads are paying for a few rounds of drinks at a celebratory Long Island iced tea night. And come summer, these undergrads have transformed into full-fledged Goldmanites — squeezing every drip of profit out of the rag that is America with conscious abandon — under the tragically correct assumption that the rest of us are, above all else, jealous of them. more ›

A Michigan native who had been living in a Midtown Manhattan apartment has apparently disappeared and her family is worried. Aimee Angle-Zahn's mother said that her 34-year-old daughter, who is a fourth year medical student at Cornell, "can be clueless about the real world... My daughter has an IQ I believe equal to Albert Einstein’s. But if you send her to the grocery store for bread, she’ll come home with spaghetti." Angle-Zahn also reportedly suffers from epileptic seizure-disorder. Update: Angle-Zahn was found at the West Side YMCA; more details. more ›

After several recent student suicides, Cornell University has constructed temporary fencing on three university-owned bridges from which students have taken their lives. According to the Times, the Ivy League school is also in discussions with Ithaca politicians about erecting similar fencing on three city-owned spans. School officials consulted with "many experts both local and national" on suicide prevention and bridge barriers before selecting eight-foot tall chain-link fencing as a temporary solution. "The idea is that any longer-term solution would involve architectural elements that would fit in with the bridges," said university spokesman Simeon Moss. "So they certainly wouldn't be chain-link fences." Security guards are expected to be posted on campus bridges at least through the end of next week. more ›

In the past months and years, NYU has shocked the city with a number of high-profile jumping deaths, but such tragic incidents are nothing new at Cornell. Three students died in the course of a month recently, and Cornell is currently on suicide watch, kicking off a full-scale campaign that urges stressed and depressed students to get help. The three students are thought to have taken their own lives—all by throwing themselves into the town's famous gorges (Ithaca's version of the Bobst Library). “While we know that our gorges are beautiful features of our campus, they can be scary places at times like this,” Susan Murphy, the vice president for student and academic services. more ›

For almost four decades, Carolyn Klass toiled in a lab at Cornell University identifying insects. For a $25 dollar fee, people from all over the world would send her pests they wanted identified, and in recent years business was booming because of the bedbug renaissance. Klass would examine each specimen and reply back with a thoughtful note, such as: more ›

Cornell University has lost $1.45 billion of its endowment in the second half of 2008—due to "reduced state funding, endowment losses and a drop in donations" according to Bloomberg News—so now the school is cutting $50 million from the Ithaca campus budget and $13 million from the medical school here in NYC. The News also reports, "Undergraduates at the university's 10 privately endowed colleges will pay 4% more next year - sending tuition to a whopping $37,750. Tuition at four other Cornell colleges that receive state funding will rise by 7.2%, bringing the total to $21,610 for instate residents." NYU also announced its endowment lost 19%, bringing it to about $2 billion. The NY Times notes that college endowments "fell about 23 percent on average in the five months ended Nov. 30." more ›

The 10th grade schoolteacher who was fired for calling his students "filthy animals who belonged in a f---ing zoo" has opened up to the Daily News. Last week Steven Clarke's lawsuit against against the Education Department was thrown out, with Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Shafer ruling that the principal at the Global Enterprise Academy was justified in terminating Clarke because "he had verbally abused students." more ›

Tenth grade teacher and proud Cornell alum Steven Clarke (not pictured) lost his lawsuit against the Education Department yesterday. Clarke had been fired from his teaching fellowship at the Global Enterprise Academy in the Bronx after he told another teacher, in the presence of students, that, "My parents did not sacrifice for me to go to Cornell so I could take care of a bunch of animals." He then went on to describe the 10th-graders as "filthy animals who belonged in a f- - -ing zoo." Called on the carpet by the school's principal, Clarke refused to apologize, explaining that he was not speaking to the students directly, and that he was merely responding to one student's instruction to "get the f- - - out of my face." Supreme Court Justice Marilyn Shafer ruled that Clarke's termination was permissible because "he had verbally abused students." more ›

Patients at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center are discovering a hidden cost of healthcare: the theft of their identities at the hands of a hospital employee. During a federal investigation, it was revealed that as many as 40,000 patients over the last five to six years had their names, phone numbers, and social security numbers stolen from hopsital records. An audit at the hospital confirmed that the information had been misappropriated. more ›

The health scare of the season continued this week with news of an outbreak of the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) "superbug" at an Upper East Side hospital's children's ward. The New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center said that nine infants were infected with the drug-resistant strain of bacteria that killed a New York 7th Grader last month. Omar Rivera Jr. was felled by the staph infection on October 14th after being misdiagnosed at Kings County... more ›