It has been almost a year since consultants visited Collegetown to develop a vision for renewal and nearly six months since an entire book was compiled to lay out the plans that will bring make that vision a reality. Last night, the Collegetown Neighborhood Council devoted its bimonthly meeting to update the status of the Collegetown development plan.

The meeting had approximately 30 attendees. According to Mary Tomlan ’71 (D-3rd Ward), co-chair of the CNC, the meeting had a much larger turnout than usual, attesting to the interest on the development plan.

I’ve always been a bit of a conspiracy theorist. Okay, so perhaps not in the “Who shot JFK?/Where were the air craft carriers for Pearl Harbor?” sort of way… more like in the “CNN is the mouth piece of corporate America” sort of way… So when I stumbled upon an interesting little anomaly in Cornell’s Comprehensive Master Plan, involving a bit of photo-shopping, my first thought was “hold the presses”. My second thought was “well, no one’s updated CMYK in a while…”

President David J. Skorton requested the crowd who gathered to listen his second annual staff address yesterday afternoon in Alice Statler Auditorium to call him “David.” The only exceptions, he noted, were the vice presidents in the audience who he requested to say, “Good afternoon, Your Immenseness” in exchange for their salaries. The laughter that followed set the tone for the next hour, which included both Skorton’s speech and his responses to a compilation of questions and concerns of Cornell employees.

Skorton’s speech was filled with praise for the Cornell community’s recent and upcoming achievements, awards and projects. He noted the ever-unfinished nature of success and the often under-appreciated role of Cornell employees in these institutional successes.