“What are we doing here at Cornell?”

This is the question Ross Brann, the dean of Cornell’s Alice H. Cook House, asked in an open letter to the entire Cornell community.

The letter, which was published in the Cornell Daily Sun, was sparked by two events in Brann’s life: a dinner he had with an alumnus who expressed his disappointment in the school’s faculty, and the Lincoln at Gettysburg Book Project discussion in which several students fell asleep.

To the narcoleptic students, Brann asked:

Admittedly the speakers were not rock stars or celebrities, merely highly gifted and marvelously articulate thinkers. I grant that Wills’ Lincoln at Gettysburg might not have gripped everyone equally (no work could). But…this was the first intellectual experience Cornell offered its new students. Unless the camerapersons were dispatched from rival institutions to capture images of disinterested Cornell students we have a problem: what are you doing here at Cornell? …Have you already opted out [of intellectual discourse] because all that matters these days is getting in and passing successfully through with degree in hand?

Simply put, Mr. Brann, the answer is ‘yes.’ For many students, college is a necessity – i.e. something they must do to reach their career goals – and an Ivy League degree is simply a fancy bullet point for their resume.

Sadly, with each new generation, this mentality of disinterest continues to spread.

To his colleagues, Brann said:

[For] all our significant cutting edge research, the first order of our business at Cornell is the education of our students. Some of us are apparently absent from our offices, unavailable or disinterested during orientation and registration when students are thinking about their courses of study. If we fail to advise our students in conversation about their programs and engage in reflection with them about their choice of courses how can we hope to succeed in conveying the significance and value of thinking and ideas? What are we doing here at Cornell?

A better question, Mr. Brann, would have been: can a student’s disinterest be eliminated with this top-down approach, or do students need to overcome their blasé attitudes on their own?

The answer is unclear, but considering students are already showing disinterest in their coursework, what makes you think they would dedicate the time and effort it takes to go see a faculty adviser?