Soundbites

Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:

" endowments must not become -- as Perry Mehrling, an economist at Columbia University recently called them -- 'warehouses of wealth.' Those who have fiduciary responsibility for academic institutions should be as aggressive in distributing assets as they are in investing them."

--Glenn C. Altschuler, professor of American studies and dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, commenting on university endowment payout rates in an opinion column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 31.

"Potatoes are a sustaining food crop, the second bread for many parts of Russia. A severe late blight problem could harm millions of people and possibly destabilize the region."

--W. Ronnie Coffman, associate dean for research in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, describing the devastating effects of a new potato blight pathogen that has emerged in Russia, in a Reuters news wire report, March 22.

"Kids who are out are the class president, the star athlete. Same-sex couples at proms aren't even a weirdo thing anymore. There's an interesting dichotomy today. It's really bad for some, but many gay kids are doing well."

--Ritch Savin-Williams, professor of human development, commenting on the fact that gay and lesbian students are completely accepted in some high schools while persecuted in others, in an article about the controversy over the formation of a gay-straight alliance club at McKinley High School in Baton Rouge, La., in Newsweek, March 20.

"There's no such thing as something that works for everybody. Not everybody stores and processes information in the same way."

--Alan Hedge, professor of design and environmental analysis, discussing how work spaces can be tailored to meet each person's style, in the Boston Globe, March 12.

"Such is the construction of the national Republican coalition that it cannot last. ... The three factions of the Republican party cannot be held together -- the liberal/libertarian country club faction; the traditional, secular conservative small-town faction; and the Southern, sacred conservative faction. The fault lines are getting deeper."

--Theodore Lowi, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, commenting on the current state of the Republican party, in The Washington Times, March 10.