Joseph A. Palermo: Brutal Weather is a Factor in the Cornell Suicides
[Joseph A. Palermo is Associate Professor of History at Cornell University.]
Having spent ten years on the Cornell University campus as a graduate student, lecturer, and visiting assistant professor, I can tell you that it is one of the most beautiful and picturesque college campuses in the country. Its waterfalls and gorges surrounding the oldest part of the college fulfill Ezra Cornell's vision for a lovely spot where students would do their best work. Perched up on the East Hill overlooking Cayuga Lake it's an amazing setting, especially in the fall when the foliage changes.
But the winters are long and brutal. Coming from California it was quite an adjustment for me. The cruel thing about Ithaca is the gray sky. The air hangs thick and moist over the finger lake and the fog gets socked in over the town. The sun disappears behind dark cloud cover around the first week of November and doesn't reemerge until around the first week of May. That means December, January, February, March, and April are pretty damn miserable, especially March and April. In those two months where "spring" is supposed to begin to emerge, the weather seems to get colder, grayer, more blistery and blustery, the winds pick up, cabin fever sets in....
The suicides are the tragic consequence of going to school on top of an ice-age glacier zone. But it sure is beautiful. And the summers, when they finally come, (and thank goodness they always do), with the lush foliage and green grass and bushy trees everywhere, Ithaca is really a paradise -- for a few months. Then the air begins to shift in September and October and after a few winters there you understand at that time of year that you're not going to see the sun for six months so you try to drink it in as much as you can....
My advice to Cornell students during the brutal months of March and April is to go to the Chapter House or to Rulloff's or the Nines join your friends and drink lots of beer and eat pizza and chicken wings and listen to live music every night after you're done studying for your exams and writing your papers. Then go home and crawl into bed. Don't even take a peek at those gorges when you're crossing over them.
Read entire article at The Huffington Post
Having spent ten years on the Cornell University campus as a graduate student, lecturer, and visiting assistant professor, I can tell you that it is one of the most beautiful and picturesque college campuses in the country. Its waterfalls and gorges surrounding the oldest part of the college fulfill Ezra Cornell's vision for a lovely spot where students would do their best work. Perched up on the East Hill overlooking Cayuga Lake it's an amazing setting, especially in the fall when the foliage changes.
But the winters are long and brutal. Coming from California it was quite an adjustment for me. The cruel thing about Ithaca is the gray sky. The air hangs thick and moist over the finger lake and the fog gets socked in over the town. The sun disappears behind dark cloud cover around the first week of November and doesn't reemerge until around the first week of May. That means December, January, February, March, and April are pretty damn miserable, especially March and April. In those two months where "spring" is supposed to begin to emerge, the weather seems to get colder, grayer, more blistery and blustery, the winds pick up, cabin fever sets in....
The suicides are the tragic consequence of going to school on top of an ice-age glacier zone. But it sure is beautiful. And the summers, when they finally come, (and thank goodness they always do), with the lush foliage and green grass and bushy trees everywhere, Ithaca is really a paradise -- for a few months. Then the air begins to shift in September and October and after a few winters there you understand at that time of year that you're not going to see the sun for six months so you try to drink it in as much as you can....
My advice to Cornell students during the brutal months of March and April is to go to the Chapter House or to Rulloff's or the Nines join your friends and drink lots of beer and eat pizza and chicken wings and listen to live music every night after you're done studying for your exams and writing your papers. Then go home and crawl into bed. Don't even take a peek at those gorges when you're crossing over them.