Students who drop out of a class after midsemester, if allowed to do so by petition, are branded with a scarlet "W" (for Withdraw) on their transcript. That is, a student has already wasted time, done worse in their other classes, and is getting less credit, and then Cornell insists that their transcript has to show how they in effect failed the class. Why not give a person in trouble like that a break and put nothing on their transcript? They suffered enough already. Actually, why should an F grade show on the transcript ever? Shouldn't the record show what a student did do successfully?

So many students seem to be more interested in their grades than in learning. Given a choice they would learn less to get a better grade and wouldn't learn more if they thought it wouldn't improve their grade. Students often say the equivalent of "I don't have time to learn the material, I'm too busy studying." (Or doing homework.)

One third of the blackboard space in Olin 255 is not visible from all seats.
One third of the black board space in Hollister B14 is not usable, it is too low or blocked by the other board.
The electronics, lighting and room controls in almost all new rooms are hard enough to use that it is an issue in almost every seminar that uses the electronics.
The new ventilation noises preclude the occassional but thrilling intensity of a really dead-quiet classroom (as well as precluding some demonstrations that involve quiet sounds).

Gorge trail people and people walking West on 366 from various neighborhoods naturally want to cut, approximately, through the car garage. But walking through the car garage isn't nice. Why not just West of the car garage, just outside the baseball field center-field fence? Because there is no space. Some suggestions: move the baseball field west 3 feet. Or put a gait on the fence that lets walkers through but is closed for ball games. Or make the center field home run distance a bit shorter, and fence a bit higher. IS THIS FIXED IN THE NEW FIELD??

Its only negative. Its not a useful carrot to improve performance. As a stick it only works to cut at people's self esteem. Evaluating people for this promotion is a waste of time. If carrots are needed after tenure there needs to be a longer stream of them than this one for that 30 year period.

Actually, there is almost no opportunity or requirement for breadth in the undergraduate Engineering curriculum. Why not have a common broad engineering curriculum for the first 2 years? It couldn't hurt for a Mat Sci major to know a thing or two about a circuit, or a CS major to know in general terms how to figure out whether a bridge willall down. If not that, then we should drop the pretense and call distribution classes what they are, prerequisites. TO BE FIXED IN SPRING 2007??

NEWS FLASH. In 2006 TAM dropped its language requirement, finally.
Some departments (not comparative literature) have a language requirement for grad students. No history requirement, no music requirement, no philosophy requirement. T&AM, for example, requires that Ph.D. students pass a test in one of these languages: French, German, Russian, Chinese or Japanese. How is it that Hindi and Swedish are not counted as foreign languages? If graduate students need breadth, why narrow it to one of a few languages? Or why not require something likely to be useful to all students, that they learn to write in English? Or if that is too narrow, require or allow breadth in a wider range of topics.