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Cornell students were disappointed this past Saturday when campus police broke up a party at the school's Delta Chi fraternity house, but not too disappointed. Many students have reported that the party was already dying down when law enforcement arrived, although not because it was getting late.
"People were just streaming out," said Chet Simmons, a Delta Chi brother. "I just couldn't understand it. Who leaves a kegger at 11:30? That's like graduating in four years."
Freshman Maggie Wagner confirmed Simmons' account of the night. "Things were going well at first-great music, great Keystone-but then there was something that Chet, one of the brothers, said, something that really took the air out of the balloon," she said. "He just came down the stairs into the basement and yelled, 'Cornell! Ivy League aptitude, state school attitude!' It was horrible."
"There was a visible change in the atmosphere," said Johnny Fitzgerald, a Cornell sophomore who was next in line to play Beirut. "And there was this collective realization: 'We are kind of a state school, aren't we? Don't we get funding from the state of New York?' I tried to reassure myself, of course, that we're still an Ivy League school, and at least we beat Brown in the U.S. News rankings every year. But I just couldn't shake that feeling of inferiority."
Fitzgerald shook his head, looking down at the ground. "Man, I should've gone to Penn," he said. "And I would've, too, but I was afraid people would think I was going to Penn State."
Public safety officer Jim Edmonds said breaking up the party was one of the easiest things he had ever done. "Look, all I had to do was wave around my flashlight and yell a few cusses," he said. "It was really surprising how quickly this thing dispersed. You would expect more from these public school kids, you know?" Upon being corrected by the Noser, Edmonds said, "Oh, well-you know what I mean-they're practically public school kids, anyway."
"This, I guess, will be a really important lesson for me," Simmons told the Noser. "There are some things that just aren't said out loud, you know? There are some things that need to remain unspoken. And that was one of them."
Florida State University undergraduate and 2009 Rhodes Scholar Mark Taylor, who had been visiting a friend in Ithaca for the weekend and was at the Delta Chi party, had a different take on the lesson of the night: "These Ivy League kids can go fuck themselves."
