To the Editor:

Re: “Assembly members defend decisions,” Letters, Nov. 3

Some Background:

The Student Assembly invited Cornell Cinema to apply for activity fee funding in the late 1980s. At that time, and since its inception in 1970, the Cinema has been a hybrid organization, run by a professional staff, with students serving in an advisory capacity and as employees actively engaged in the organization. There are legions of Cornell alums who were involved with the Cinema as students and consider that involvement to be a significant part of their Cornell experience.

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.

To the Editor:

Re: “In Defense of Our Cinema,” Opinion, Nov. 2

Thanks to The Sun, I’ve heard the different sides of the Student Assembly vs. the Cornell Cinema funding controversy. I like to believe that I am unbiased in the subject. Have I attended movies and programs at the Cornell Cinema? Yes. Have I waited on line to attend an event at the Cornell Cinema only to be told I was on the wrong line and the event is now full? Yes. Have I applied for and obtained funding for a student organization from the Student Assembly? Yes. Have I been told because I didn’t correctly state an estimate in my budget that I was not getting funding? Yes. It’s safe to say that I’ve had a good and bad relationship with the Cornell Cinema and Student Assembly.

Following years of debate about how to fund Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, a federally owned research center managed by Cornell, prospects for its financial backing appear better after the National Academy of Sciences called the facility “unique” and “unmatched” in its ability to detect dangerous Near-Earth Objects.

Arecibo itself dates back to 1960, when former Prof. William E. Gordon, engineering, proposed the creation of an observatory to research the ionosphere. The facility now houses the world’s largest radio telescope, with a main reflector dish that measures 1000 feet in diameter and covers 18 acres.

As departments across the University make cuts to their annual budgets to offset a $200 million budget shortfall, Weill Cornell Medical College is reaching deep into its pockets to scrounge more than $2.6 million — a sum that the University truly does not have to spare.

This exorbitant payment will be handed over to the U.S. government in order to resolve charges brought against the medical college for filing fraudulent claims in order to secure millions of federal research money from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. Unfortunately, this incident was not an isolated one for Cornell. The University has spent millions in the past to cover up similar charges of fraud surrounding research funding.

Congress passed the $409.6 billion omnibus appropriations bill last night, approving a number of earmarked spending projects that will be attached to next year’s fiscal budget. The bill — which President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law today, according to Politico — allocates a number of earmarks for Cornell research.

Among them, Cornell hopes receive $2.2 million to begin construction on a Grape Genetics Research Center in Geneva. As of last night, however, the electronic system that charts which projects are included in the bill had not been updated, according to Stephen Johnson, Cornell’s vice president for government and community relations.

“We’re hopeful that [the projects] are in there, but reluctant to say until we can verify,” he said.

Last week, lawmakers gathered in Albany to meet with New York Gov. David Patterson in response to his new budget that failed to include funding for research programs that were funded last year. One noticeable absence was $450,000 in funding towards Cornell’s Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors. According to Newsday, without these same funds that the program received last year, the researchers would be forced to discontinue their work. The proposal also did not include the $300,000 for a hotline for breast cancer patients and their families based out of Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Re: “Students Express Indignation Over SAFC Procedures,” News, Feb. 6

In regards to the article “Students Express Indignation Over SAFC

Procedures,” it seems that the author, and for that matter members of the student community, have forgotten the purpose the SAFC serves. The organization is entrusted with over a million dollars of the student activity fee, and it would be creating an extreme injustice if the “human element” mentioned in the article becomes a factor of funding. This “human element” gives way to a much more likely outcome than “understanding,” which is an increase in human error and favoritism of certain organizations.