For many, four years on East Hill too long. But in his farewell column, senior Andrew Daines thinks about what four years really means.

As his days on East Hill dwindle, columnist Andrew Daines '10 considers the value of extracurriculars activities, and notes the significance of being an active participant in campus affairs.

My first class at Cornell was Terrence Irwin’s 200-level Ethics lecture. It was a big-ideas kind of course. What is justice? What is fairness? When is it right to punish, praise or blame? I loved it — all of it — and have since devoted my undergraduate experience to grappling with its big ideas in the philosophy department, among other places.

To be sure, Professor Irwin deserves an ode, some poetic praise for his thoughtful manner, elegant curriculum and ever-present fanny pack. But this ode must be put on hold. There is a more pressing matter to consider. Why, when I think back on that course, do I remember not just late nights with classical texts or in-class repartee, but the ugly irony of a cluster of ethics students swapping answers to last night’s take-home quiz right outside the lecture hall, minutes before class? Why must I recall my neighbor to the right leaning forward to bum an answer off of another student, only to find out she had solicited a baby-faced, and now snarling, T.A.? Do we not care about doing the right thing or, at the very least, keeping our noses clean?

POWERPOINT NUMBS THE BRAIN

If the perfect university anti-discrimination statute had been devised, Cornell would have adopted it already (and not by a single tie-breaking vote). What we have now in the Student Assembly’s Resolution 44 is an imperfect proposal that, by most accounts, will fail to pass Presidential muster. Whether the search for an ideal discrimination or hate-speech statute is in vain, I cannot say.

I couldn’t turn down a Saturday night ride along with Cornell Emergency Medical Services. No way. For a while now I have been anxious to rejoin the uniformed helping people business. After a series of waivers and speeches from the Director of Operations committing me to complete inaction in the event something interesting happened, I realized my chances of even wiping a runny nose as an EMS observer were next to zero. Still, I was excited. I hadn’t stayed up past midnight in a while, and I would be close to the action. If anything truly awful went down, I’d be in position to waive the waivers and get my hands dirty.

Why give? Depending on context and audience, this simple question can get diced into smaller, more interesting ones. It can become a query into others’ motives. Why is that people, in actuality, text “HAITI” to 90999? It can urge us to find the basis for charity. Generally speaking, why ought we give, and not hoard? It can beg the defender of a cause to justify the cause itself.

I wish I could write two columns. Column A would always be fresh. I mean, I gotta stay hip, gotta sell some papers. But Column B would be full of revisions and responses to feedback from last week. You see, I tend to get a few e-mails back after each of my columns, with about a 50-50 split on laudatory vs. critical. And I always write back. But last Tuesday Peter Finocchiaro’s critique of my column on faith at Cornell was a little more public and a little more off base than I am used to. So, since The Sun’s editorial staff isn’t exactly chomping at the bit to give me more space, here goes: a little of Column A and a little of Column B.

My circuitous path to Cornell included two-year stops at the U.S. Naval Academy and the Island of Borneo, where I served as a Mormon missionary. My cocktail hour inquisitors often focus their questions on the discipline and adventure of that period in my life. They want to explore the differences between Cornell and life in uniform — military or priestly. What was basic training like? How about the guns? Did you meet a headhunter? (In order: awful, awesome and I think so, but Borneo is the same as America in at least one way … you don’t just ask a guy if he’s a killer.)

I attended exactly three films put on by Cornell Cinema last year. In descending order of theater packedness: The Dark Knight; Waltz With Bashir; L’Enfant Sauvage. The first of these films was, well, awesome — as in the biblical sense of the word (not the contemporary, frater-natural lexicon). Waltz With Bashir was gripping — as in this graphic-novel looking thing gripped my throat and coerced me into caring about a massacre I had never heard of. L’Enfant Sauvage was boring — as in I was bored. The 18th Century frog doctor and his feral friend left me squirming in my seat before the Twizzlers and popcorn were all eaten.