LUTHMANN NOTE: Larry’s central target in the Cornell Seven saga deserves the ridicule: institutions selling elite judgment while relying on students to supervise the party. A sober-monitor rule makes a promise to everyone in that room. The reported drinking account raises the question of whether Cornell could deliver it. Please identify the morons who design, approve, and enforce those arrangements, because a prestigious university ought to manage more than its reputation. Families pay serious money and expect serious supervision. A safety title pinned to a student means little when nobody ensures he can do the work. An Ivy League crest is no substitute for someone capable of answering the emergency call. But since Brown, I guess we should have known better. This piece is “Cornell Frat House Monitor,” also available on The Family Court Circus.
Cornell University is considered one of the lower-ranked Ivy League schools. If you can’t get into Yale, Harvard, or Stanford, you end up at either Cornell or the University of Pennsylvania. These are the Ivy League backup schools. [LN: And also Brown University, the ultimate safety school. Providence, Rhode Island, most closely resembles earthly hell]. Once you get into an Ivy League school, it is hard to get kicked out. [LN: I learned it as a teenager: the hardest part is getting it in.] Grade inflation is the norm. Kids who can’t handle physics take poetry and get A’s with minimal effort.
In high school, these Ivy League kids were ruled by tyrannical helicopter parents who made them do their homework every day, followed by violin lessons at night. These kids had no friends in high school. Their only friends were other nerds. They graduated top of their high school class in their little suburban Midwestern towns. They are now headed to the Ivy League for a life of success and fortune, while the kids who laughed at them are headed to community colleges. Revenge of the nerds!
Once these nerds end up at an Ivy League college, they suddenly are free of their helicopter parents and placed in an environment with little to no adult supervision. Too much freedom, combined with uncontrollable hormones, is a recipe for disaster. No college is going to crack down on the party scene and risk losing students. Each student has many dollar signs on his head.
Three years ago,o the Cornell Seven frat house Chi Phi got in trouble for hazing, rape, and kids passing out from taking date rape drugs. One kid was found dead in a ditch after a frat party in 2019. Last year Cornell enacted new rules for frat house parties. Each frat house would have a designated sober monitor in attendance at a frat party, not unlike a designated driver. The monitor is supposed to call in the ambulances in case of an emergency and try to keep things under control. The designated monitor at the Cornell 7 frat was a sophomore named Jonathan Newell, from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Newell graduated from a prestigious Florida prep school: Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) college preparatory program. Newell was one of the ringleaders of the alleged gang rape of [LN: Cornell Seven Jane Doe accuser Lucy Craig]. Newell, along with Ignalls, another ringleader, was expelled from Cornell.
According to the New York Times, “The monitors, who must regularly complete a training program, are supposed to remain sober and have a range of responsibilities at parties. As of earlier this year, according to an archived version of Cornell’s event rules, the monitors were required to take reasonable steps to prevent overcrowding and underage drinking; prohibit public urination; and stop people from leaving with open containers of alcohol.”
Newell was supposed to be one of the monitors the night of the rape of Jane Doe. How do you trust a lowly sophomore to be a monitor at a frat party? Talk about stupid. Who runs these Ivy League schools anyway? A manager at the local McDonald’s could do a better job running an Ivy League school. According to the NYT, “Mr. Newell said that by the time he showed up to Chi Phi that night at about midnight, he had already been drinking at earlier parties, where he estimated he had two to three beers, several shots, two mixed drinks and a half bottle of a strawberry tequila drink. He was drunk to the point of stumbling down the stairs, he told the investigators.”
[LN: Richard Luthmann’s examination of the Cornell case records and Frank Parlato’s comparison of Jane Doe’s sworn statement with her lawsuit address the broader evidentiary disputes. Cornell still has to explain the party-supervision system it put in place.]
Why didn’t the Times interview Larry Noodles about the Cornell 7 case? I would have told them that the solution is to shut down these colleges. Let these get real jobs and take night classes if they want to study Shakespeare. They have too much free time on their hands. I should know. I went to college and law school. It was non-stop partying. The only kids who didn’t party in college were the pre-med students.
The Ivy League school should be the first to close down. Why do you think so many children of Chinese immigrants are flooding the Ivies? It’s part of their culture. China’s elite schools are hyper-competitive. The only way to be part of the political aristocracy in China is to succeed in one of these elite schools. England had the same system with their elite private boarding schools. America is supposed to be a democracy, not an aristocracy. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin once said, “All men are created equal.” Tell that to a Yale Law School graduate, and pay careful attention to his or her body language. FUHGETABOUTIT!!!
Larry Noodles graduated from elementary school, junior high school, high school, college, law school, and Otisville Federal prison, with high honors. I was referred to as “magna cum noodles” by my fellowclassmates/inmatess, and commanded much respect from the guards, who tried to lock me up for stealing the spiral noodles from the prison warehouse, where I worked as the prison tailor, hemming the pants of my fellow Jewish prisoners of war, not unlike Motel the tailor in Fiddler on the Roof. Except the prison guards never killed us, unlike the Cossacks in Russia, who tried to kill my great-grandfather, who made it out of there by the foreskin of his teeth back in the late 1800s.
