When I went to high school, a reminder constantly echoed throughout the hallways: “Tuck your shirts in!” It became the mantra of my teachers, constantly nagging us to tuck our cheap white Oxford shirts into our standard issue dress trousers. I fear I’ve lost most readers already — uniforms (usually shirt/tie/blazer) are an almost ubiquitous part of the British school system — but this piece isn’t really about clothing at all, it’s about the maintenance of standards throughout an institution.
Whether a shirt is tucked in or not tucked in is important not for the mere result it produces (slightly less scruffy highschoolers), but rather for the principle. It signals that the small, trite aspects of institutional life are some of the most important to maintain, precisely because they are so easy to overlook. Oscar Wilde once wrote that we should treat the trivial things of life seriously: that which we encounter most often should command our most attention.
Cornell is overlooking the ‘trivial’ to an alarming degree. I can name a few examples from my own experience, but I’m sure that there are many, many others. The Olin Library elevator (broken for months), the McFaddin Hall dryers (broken for a year), the Uris Library bike pump (broken for years). These aren’t grave injustices, but each of them, in their small way, contributes to a sense that Cornell is neglecting the day-to-day and mundane, in favour of the rare and grand. Fixing elevators or dryers isn’t sexy, and routine repairs don’t garner glossy press releases written or public praise. This is precisely the point. The erosion of large institutions, from railways to air traffic to hospitals, is rarely down to some force majeure, but instead an accumulation of small neglect — mistakes, small trends, or ignored problems which build upon each other until they reach an unavoidable level.
But, one might respond, where’s your evidence? Cornell seems to be doing pretty well: applications are through the roof, its endowment is bigger than ever and it's navigating our political climate reasonably well. Yes all these things are true, but a failure of maintenance and attention to detail, especially at one of the most expensive schools in America, leads to one distinct feeling: cynicism. The longer the elevators remain broken, the tables remain wobbly and the dryers stay unusable, the sense that Cornell is simply more focused on spectacle rather than on students can’t help but rise to the surface. When David Duffield donated his mammoth cheque to the (now Duffield) College of Engineering earlier this month, changes were implemented fast. Within hours of the announcement, banners had been replaced, websites updated and even my lecture slides had the new logo. Cornell moves fast for the monumental, for its donors, but for its students: not so much.
I am grateful for our donors, and that Cornell continues to attract them, but let us not forget that we are donors also, at a cost of attendance of $96,268. In a time when there is drama and spectacle constantly surrounding us, I want an institution that cares about the details, cares about the elevators and cares about us.
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Wyatt Sell '27 is a (British) student studying Electrical & Computer Engineering. His fortnightly column, An Englishman's Perspective critiques popular social, cultural and political phenomena at Cornell and beyond. He can be reached at wsell@cornellsun.com.
