Well, I think my mom has opened up a can of worms for my poor little Cornell over at Hot Air. The latest update from see-dubya is about President Skorton’s remarks at the vigil on Thursday afternoon. Namely, his inclusion of the VTech shooter as the 33rd victim in “our family.” By “our family,” we obviously mean the collegiate community at large. (Don’t you feel open and tolerant now that you know we have a family?)

I thought see-dubya’s analysis about the reasoning behind Skorton’s analysis was spot on:

Why in the world did President Skorton give that shout-out to the Korean communities at Cornell? One of two possible explanations is that Skorton thinks they were feeling a great degree of racial guilt for the sins of their monstrous blood-brother. (”Racial guilt” isn’t something most people feel these days, but it is indoctrinated in Ivy League schools.) I’m sure he and most of the Cornell faculty blubber themselves to sleep over the collective sins of white dudes around the world, so it’s only logical to think that Korean-Americans need some special affirmation when a Korean student does something bad. But no need to worry, my friends. President Skorton has absolved you of the stain of Cho.

The other possibility: maybe he was trying to head off an Ugly Racial Incident. But for President Skorton’s brave inclusion of the Korean American Community in his address, Cornell’s vast Intolerant Redneck-American Community would have perpetrated an outrageous wave of despicable hate crimes upon every Korean in Ithaca.

First of all, anyone who doesn’t walk around the hill all day might need a little context: Cornell University suffers from institutional racism. How do we know? Well, the Black community tells us, the Latino community tells us, the Asian community tells us, and of course, the rich, white, liberal community suffering from white-guilt tells us. And in this case the verb “to tell” includes hostile takeovers of various buildings on campus (ever since they put a bank in Willard Straight, making armed takeovers a felony of sorts, the administrative building, Day Hall, has been all the rage).

Obviously, because of Cornell’s record of institutional racism, Skorton would have to be very very careful in how he addressed the VTech shootings. Because they were race-based, like everything else in the world. Obviously. So, he lovingly brought Cho into our family and had the chimes ring not 32, but 33 times in honor of the victims fallen at Virginia Tech.

Shocking and outrageous? Absolutely. Anything out of the ordinary for a Cornell president? Not at all. I suppose it’s easy for non-Cornellians to get shocked and outraged at specific incidents like the VTech vigil, but for someone who is here day in and day out, stuff like this kind of blends together. I’m not saying that I excuse it or even ignore it. On the contrary, it really is disgraceful and worthy of anger. I just have bigger battles to fight on campus than Skorton’s latest purchase of a racial off-set. Seriously, if every conservative Cornellian got themselves in a tizzy over each and every exhibition of liberal idiocy, we would get pretty tired, pretty fast. That’s why I’m satisfied to let non-Cornellians like my mom and in this case, see-dub, take the wheel in Cornell-bashing. (I can only engage in so much self-hatred before it starts to get to me. ;))

P.S. I would prefer if people did not use this incident as an opportunity to say, “See, we should boycott all Ivy League institutions! All of those bastions of liberal propaganda! We’ll show them.” Um, no, you won’t show them. They’ll be happy. The reason I go to Cornell (and pay President Skorton’s salary, via loans at this moment) is so that someday I’ll be able to play on the same playground as the brainwashed liberals that come out of Harvard, Yale, Cornell, et al. (And I’ll be the winner, since everyone knows that conservatives win in the end). How would me going to a lower institution stick it to the man in this case? It wouldn’t. It would just further empower them.