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:

"Clearly, many employers don't know how to level the playing field and engage people with disabilities in jobs. We need to infuse all participants -- from upper management to supervisors to workers -- with new attitudes toward the one in six Americans with disabilities."

--Susanne Bruyère, director of the Program on Employment and Disability in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, in a July 26 New York Times article which reported that the Americans with Disabilities Act has not helped to increase employment prospects for the disabled because the attitudes of employers and managers have not changed.

"There is a general breakdown of social conventions, of manners, of social controls. This gives a validation, a permission, to be aggressive. [Kids used to be] guided by a social convention that said 'keep the lid on.' Today they are guided more in the direction of taking it off."

--James Garbarino, professor of human development, in a USA Today article about the current epidemic of "rage" in public places, July 21.

"Everyone seems to be doing well in the market, and everyone hears stock tips. In this atmosphere, why should any of the elected officials who are doing it really worry that their actions might affect them adversely on election day?"

--Joel Silbey, the President White Professor of History, discussing the issue of elected officials investing in the stock market, in The New York Times, July 16.

"Drug testing is not, in itself, the only answer in creating a safe construction work environment. It has to be part of an entire substance abuse prevention program that drug testing is only one part of."

--Jonathan Gerber, Industrial and Labor Relations Class of 2000, in an article on his study showing that drug testing in the construction industry reduced workplace injuries, on CBS Health Watch (Medscape), June 30.

"The problem is that fewer than half of these Earth-threatening asteroids have been discovered so far. Of those we have found, we can accurately predict whether they will strike the earth over the next hundred years or so, but we can't project out several thousands of years. So it's possible some of these asteroids eventually will move onto an Earth-collision trajectory. It's a dangerous place out there."

--William Bottke, research associate in radiophysics and space research and lead author of a research paper in Science in which it is estimated that some 900 asteroids are in orbits that bring them close to Earth's, quoted in MSNBC online, June 22.

"The trick is to find synergies that will make technology serve education goals without bankrupting us in the process."

--Glenn C. Altschuler, dean of the School of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and Ralph Janis, director of Cornell Adult University, in an opinion column on the "promise and pitfalls" in distance education for alumni, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 16.

"Bugs are not going to inherit the Earth; they own it now. So we might as well make peace with the landlord."

-- Thomas Eisner, Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, in the May 5 Toronto Globe and Mail.