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MARLA LOVE: Good morning, Cornell.
[CHEERING]
I wait all summer for this view. You look beautiful. Welcome to Cornell University and new student convocation.
[CHEERING]
My name is Marla Love and I'm your Dean of Students. I want to first begin with the land acknowledgment that respects Indigenous peoples as the original inhabitants of the land we occupy as well as recognizing their long history in and their enduring connections to their traditional homelands. Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogohono, the Cayuga Nation.
The Gayogohono are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of the Gayogohono dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogohono people, past and present, to these lands and waters.
Today I get the honor of serving as your emcee for the new student convocation. But every day it is my goal to make your college experience fulfilling, enriching, and transformative. I'm thrilled that you're able to join us for new student convocation this year. Whether you're a first year or transfer student, we are so glad you are here for convocation. We are thrilled to have all of you in Schoellkopf Field and to continue this tradition of welcoming you to this campus. As you wrap up your orientation week, please take this moment to relax and let us celebrate and welcome all of you to the Cornell community.
Cornell is home to the world renowned faculty, dedicated staff, and passionate students like yourselves. I along with my colleagues are here to provide you the opportunities that inspire your educational journey at Cornell while creating an inclusive campus community that supports your personal, social, and intellectual growth. You are joining the Cornell community that is full of endless opportunities. Whether you are a first year student or transfer, I hope you take the words of our speaker as motivation to pursue your academic community, your academic community, and personal goals with big red spirit.
Speaking of spirit, with the help of the Big Red Cheerleading Squad, I would like to take a moment to recognize some University leaders who are here with us today and ask the deans to join me on stage.
[APPLAUSE]
All right. Before I get to the deans, I would like to recognize Provost Mike Kotlikoff, who's standing here in front. Wave to the people, Mike.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you for joining us today to welcome our new students. Now, as I introduce your college dean to the microphone to welcome you to Cornell, please respond with your fellow students in cheering for your new community. Don't worry. I know this will be a new sort of situation. You're like, I'm cheering for somebody I haven't yet met or maybe you have met.
But the cheer squad is going to help you and I am too. And I'm full of energy this morning. I've had great coffee. So we're going to do this, OK? OK, first we're going to start with Ben Houlton, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
[APPLAUSE]
BEN HOULTON: All right, how are you doing out there? All right, CAL students, welcome. You are about to embark on a life changing set of experiences. I encourage you to embrace them. And let's make the world a better place than we found it. Go CALs.
MARLA LOVE: Go CALs.
[APPLAUSE]
Next we have Neema Kudva, the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.
[APPLAUSE]
NEEMA KUDVA: Hello, everybody. Congratulations to the new AAP students, all 144 of you. It's the smallest and mightiest college. So welcome to Cornell, and I'll see you all of you on Wednesday in Milstein Hall for class.
MARLA LOVE: Yay AAP.
[APPLAUSE]
You can cheer however you want. You can stand up. You can kill it. We also have the marching band back there helping us out. So shout out to the marching band.
[APPLAUSE]
Next we have Michelle Smith, the Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences.
[APPLAUSE]
MICHELLE SMITH: It is my great honor to welcome all 1,185 new Arts and Sciences students.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: All right. Next we have the business schools. We're going to have Andrew Karolyi, the Charles Field Knight Dean of the Cornell's SC Johnson College of Business, Jinhua Zhao, the David J. Nolan Dean of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics Management, and Kate Walsh, Dean of the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration.
[APPLAUSE]
ANDREW KAROLYI: Students in the College of Business.
JINHUA ZHAO: Congratulations to all of Dyson's newest world changing, trailblazing students, 258 of you. Congratulations.
[APPLAUSE]
KATE WALSH: And a warm welcome to the world's number one hoteliers.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Please join me in welcoming Kavita Bala, Dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
KAVITA BALA: If you are interested in computer science, information science, or statistics and data science, wave. Raise your-- great. Good to see you. Welcome from Bowers CIS, the first college at Cornell named for a woman.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Up next is Lynden Archer, Joseph Silver Dean of the College of Engineering.
[APPLAUSE]
LYNDEN ARCHER: All right, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Cornell and welcome to the College of Engineering. In the next four years, we're going to put you on quite a journey where the commitment to excellence you will see at every turn. And fundamentally, we want to create engineers who want to make a difference in the world. So welcome to Cornell and engineering.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Next is Rachel Dunifon, Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology.
RACHEL DUNIFON: Hello, Human Ecology. Congratulations and welcome to our fabulous trailblazing new Human Ecology students.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Alexander Colvin, Kenneth F. Khan class of '69 Dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
ALEXANDER COLVIN: Thank you. Welcome to the 308 amazing new ILRies. Go Big Red.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: And last and certainly mighty, Colleen Barry, Dean of the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.
[APPLAUSE]
COLLEEN BARRY: Last but not least, join me in giving a Big Red welcome to the new public policy school students. Welcome to Cornell and welcome to the Brooks School.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Thank you deans so much. Now let's give it up for the Cornell cheerleaders.
[APPLAUSE]
CHEERLEADERS: Let's go Red, let's go Red, let's go Red, let's go Red, let's go Red.
[CHEERING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Go Red. Go Red.
[CHEERING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Red!
[CHEERING]
MARLA LOVE: Thanks once again to the Cornell cheer team. Next up is the Student Assembly President. The Student Assembly represents all Cornell undergraduates with an elected body of 20 members. Please join me in welcoming your Student Assembly President, Patrick Kuehl, class of '23 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
[APPLAUSE]
PATRICK KUEHL: Good morning, everyone. It's been wonderful to get to some of you face to face over the last couple of days. Thank you, Dean Love, for the introduction, and thank you to the Tatkon Center for all of the hard work that has gone in the last week. Additionally, I'd like to thank President Pollack, the trustees, the provost, the vice presidents, the deans, as well as all other faculty and staff for their tireless dedication to our University.
I'll start by saying that regardless of how you're feeling right now or the path that you took, each and every one of you belongs here. Some of you might have spent every year up to this point doing everything you could to be sitting right where you are now. And I know that many of you are realizing that the journey forward from this milestone is much less clear.
Often as students, we are asked about our futures, what impact we want to have, and what work we want to do. Nerve wracking questions to be asked when you're still figuring it all out. I've been there and I'm with you. It's a scary feeling to be standing on the edge of the future with no idea what lies beyond. You may find that though you thought you would be, you're not interested in what you're studying. That's OK. I'm a transfer student myself, and I've changed my majors seven times since I got to college.
[LAUGHTER]
I have taken classes from agriculture to philosophy, all in the search for something that I can't get enough of. Not only do I now know what I love, I also know what I don't. Figuring this out for yourself is more than just important. It's downright essential. The road to find what you love might get hard while you're here. You may face stress. You may face anxiety. And you'll almost certainly face adversity.
Recognize these moments for what they are, momentary hurdles in a forward march. Let them shape you and mold you into a dynamic and resilient person. Use the resources around you to get help when you need it. It is easy to forgo hard decisions and instead to start throwing yourself at what you feel expected to be. But one of the greatest things about higher education is that no one here expects you to be anything. They just want to see you succeed.
Make the hard choice to step into the unknown and explore. Separate yourself from the material and career building draws of this world and look inward. Use this time here to truly discover your purpose. Whatever your path forward looks like, follow that spark inside of you that makes your eyes light up and that makes you want to do more.
An opportunity has presented itself to you here, an opportunity that few in this world get. The opportunity to be surrounded by masters of their fields. The opportunity to browse more books than can ever be read. And the opportunity to participate in organizations run by students just like yourselves making real change in this world.
Search for those classes, activities, and people that excite you and inspire you rather than make you feel compared and dejected. It is so easy to begin benchmarking your own success on the achievements and failings of others. What's hard is to be compassionate and empathetic to your fellow students. Every person has their strengths and every person has their weaknesses. Education is not and should not be a competition even if it may sometimes feel that way.
When you're urged by your subconscious to take pride in success over others, think forward to the moments when you will be struggling, when you need support from your peers. Take a moment and lend a hand to those in need. It never hurts to have another friend. This University, this community is ours to build.
No administrator and no amount of money can force camaraderie upon a group of people. It takes active participation from each and every one of us to support one another, to learn from each other, and to build something bigger than ourselves. It doesn't matter who you are or where you came from. You have a part to play and a place to be in this community.
So as I stand before you today, I would urge you to engage your peers rather than push them away, to find belonging from purpose rather than exclusivity, and to extend an arm and an ear to those who are struggling. Thank you and welcome to Cornell.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Apologies, Patrick didn't graduate last May. He's graduating this coming May. He's class of 2024. Thank you, Patrick. Next I have the opportunity to introduce my boss, Dr. Ryan Lombardi, who serves as the Vice President for Student and Campus Life and has been in the role since August of 2015 overseeing programs and services such as housing, dining, the health center, student organizations, resource centers, athletics, and recreational services.
Ryan's leadership and the work of this division impacts virtually every student at Cornell. His belief in the transformative nature of higher education was the impetus for SEL's purpose, to inspire transformation. This purpose sets the foundation for all of the work of SEL, which strives to create a campus environment that enables student transformation. It is now my pleasure to introduce you to your Vice President for Student and Campus Life, Dr. Ryan Lombardi.
[APPLAUSE]
RYAN LOMBARDI: Good morning, class of 2027 and new transfer students. We're feeling good? Welcome to Cornell.
[APPLAUSE]
I know when you walked in there were some clouds above that was keeping it a little cool, but that's why you have fans. So keep those things moving. We'll try and keep this moving too. I want to welcome you not only to this amazing place but certainly most importantly, welcome to the Cornell family.
And I want to thank you, Patrick, for your remarks and your wise words around the power of community. And let me also thank the orientation team for all they have done to help with your transition this week. Let's give it up for the orientation team please.
[APPLAUSE]
I want to join in welcoming all of you to this community officially. Now, it may feel like you've already been here for a month's worth of meetings and orientations and maybe a few social gatherings too, but it's only been a week at most. And today makes it official. You are a Cornellian.
You've probably heard of Cornell alumni making headlines around the world doing amazing work. You're a part of that community. Just as importantly, there are countless Cornellians, students currently here, doing great things that don't make the headlines but are tremendously important in our communities. You're a part of that family now too.
And we like to celebrate this community as enriching and wonderful. And it is. But it can also be a little bit intimidating at times. So let me be clear. We want you here and you belong here. Every student and alum that have been here before you, they started in the exact same place. New, uncertain of the future, and surrounded by people they likely felt were more accomplished than them. But never forget that you're not alone. You're joined by every Cornell student in history and that puts you in pretty good company.
Today I would like to grant you two powers in your first year at Cornell, powers that I know will help you navigate this year successfully and help make the community stronger. Now, I'm not going to whip out some Marvel thing going on here, but I am going to give you two powers today.
The first power I'm granting you is the power to ask. Ask your roommate about their family and their home. Ask your professor about their research interests or why they became a professor. Ask someone how to get to the Lab of Ornithology. And if you don't know what that is, be sure to check it out. Ask someone who is working in the dining hall how their day is going.
And please, something I cannot emphasize enough, ask for help. Any kind of help. The staff and the faculty here at Cornell have dedicated their careers to helping you thrive while you're here. And I can assure you, no student has ever graduated Cornell without experiencing a setback, a challenge, or at least a change in plans. You should expect that. It's OK. Patrick's changed his major seven times. It's actually an essential part of the learning process. So please ask for help. Doing so is normal and necessary part of the Cornell experience.
The second power I'm going to grant you is the power to listen. When you ask something of someone, how you listen to their response is critical. In my opinion, listening is the more important of these two powers. Of course, you'll listen to professors, even if it's an 8:00 AM class. But make sure you put just as much effort into listening in other moments too.
Listen to your roommate when they're struggling or when they share a moment of joy. Even if you are not friends outside of the room roommates, still listen to them. Listen to the people on the TECAT bus. Listen to people who work on campus. Not just your professors, but the people fixing things, the people cleaning things, those helping you study, the people doing research. Listen to people with whom you don't agree and try to understand them. Try to understand them as a person, not just the idea in the moment.
How we listen defines us as individuals and will define Cornell moving forward. You have so much freedom now. The freedom to go where you want when you want, the freedom to choose your major. I'm not going to make fun of Patrick again. The freedom to go to class or not. The freedom to eat dessert at Morrison Dining Hall every single day. That's right. I do that.
You also have the freedom to communicate how you choose. You're going to say things you'll look back on and wish you hadn't, whether out of frustration or ignorance, hopefully, or just the process of learning. We will extend grace to you while you learn. And I would ask that as a member of this community, you do the same for others. Extend good faith and see others as people with their own lived experience as we all share in our moments together here at Cornell.
Now, you know these two powers have just granted you, asking and listening, they aren't really powers at all. They're skills that we all possess. But whether you choose to use them, that's the decision that you have in front of you with that freedom you now have. This journey before you is a great responsibility and an amazing opportunity. I believe in our ability to make the most of it, and I'm excited to see what you do, and I'm excited to see where we go together. Congratulations and welcome to Cornell. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
And now let's give a really big red welcome to the Cornell Chorus and Glee Club, please.
[APPLAUSE]
(SINGING) Oh, they tell me of a home far beyond the skies. They tell me of a home far away. And they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise. Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day. Oh, the land of cloudless day. Oh, the land of an unclouded sky. Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise.
Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day. They me I'll go home. They tell I'll go home. They tell me I'll go home where my friends have gone. They tell me of a land far away where the tree of life in eternal bloom sheds its fragrance through the uncloudy day.
Oh, the land of cloudless days. Oh, the land of an unclouded sky. Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise. Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day. They tell me of a king in his beauty there. They tell me of a king in his beauty there. [HARMONIZING]
In a city that is made of gold. Oh, the land of cloudless skies. Oh, the land of an unclouded sky. Oh, they tell me of a home where the storm clouds rise. Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day. Oh, the land of cloudless skies. Oh, the land of an unclouded sky. Oh, they tell me of a home where the storm clouds rise. Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: It's now my pleasure to introduce the president. Martha E. Pollack is the 14th president of Cornell University and Professor of Computer Science Information Science and Linguistics. She took office on April 17, 2017. An expert in artificial intelligence with the research focus on natural language processing, automated planning, and the design of assistive technology for people with cognitive impairment, President Pollack is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.
From 2000 to 2017, Dr. Pollack was a faculty member at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where she also served as Dean of the School of Information, Vice Provost for Academic and Budgetary Affairs, and finally Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs. She earned her PhD and master's in computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania and her Bachelor's in Linguistics from Dartmouth College. It is my distinct pleasure to introduce your President, Dr. Martha E. Pollack.
[APPLAUSE]
MARTHA POLLACK: Class of 2027, welcome to Cornell and welcome to all of our new transfers. Give yourself a big round of applause.
[APPLAUSE]
It is so great to have you here on such a perfect day. Weather's always like this in Ithaca every single day. Seriously, I'm delighted to have the chance to welcome you all here and to speak to all of you together as you begin your time at Cornell. Now, I really only get two chances to address the entire class at Cornell all at once here in Schoellkopf Field. And I can only do it here because to fit 4,198 new Cornellians even without your friends and family, we need a football stadium.
So the first chance I get to talk to all of you is when I meet you here at new student convocation. And the second is when you head on to your post Cornell adventures at your commencement. So I know it's pretty hot. I know you're excited. I know you've got a lot on your mind. You have buildings to find. You have friends to make. You're ready to get started with what will be for all of you an incredibly exciting and formative time in your lives.
But again, the next time I get to talk to you all as a class together will be at commencement, which for most of you will be in May of 2027. That's three years, nine months, and at least 1,680 hours of class from now. Yeah. So I want to take a few minutes today to talk about three things that I hope will make all of you able to make the most of every one of those days, months, and hours.
The first thing I want you to know, and it's not a surprise. Dr. Lombardi said this and Patrick said this. I want you to know and never doubt that you belong here. Our admissions staff are exceptionally good at what they do. And if they chose you to be a member of the class of 2027, it's because they saw in you a Cornellian. They saw in you someone who would take the opportunities that they would find here and run with them.
Cornell is an amazing place, a place where our faculty work to address some of the most vexing issues we face as a society, to understand the deepest questions about our world, to create and preserve all that we treasure as human beings, and most importantly, to teach the next generation of global citizens and leaders. That's you.
For all of our students, Cornell is a place of almost limitless potential, an academic community where you're going to equip yourselves with the tools you will need to lead the lives that you aspire to. Here you will have the chance to develop not just the knowledge but the skills and the perspective and the habits of mind to understand the world around you and to have an impact on that world, a world that for the past 158 years has been shaped and advanced in countless ways by the expertise and the creativity of generations of Cornellians.
People have taken the opportunities they found here and used them throughout their lives to make this world in some way better and richer, to fuel human progress, and to add color and music to the sweep of human history. And every single one of them was once a new student just like yourself. And every single one of them was challenged here, just as all of you will be challenged.
So again, I want to repeat what you heard from Vice President Lombardi and from Patrick. A Cornell education is rigorous. It's designed to be rigorous. And so there are going to be times when you feel that you're falling short, when you experience setbacks or even failures. Because you know what? In every single academic career, there are papers that don't come together. There are problem sets that refuse to be solved. Or in my own case, it was all of first semester of physics, which I was completely convinced I would fail. Spoiler, I didn't, but I was convinced I was going to.
And when things don't go the way you planned or the way you expected, well, that really just presents a new problem to solve or a new experience to learn from. So reexamine, reassess, reach out for help, and try again. The important thing is to keep moving forward, because you now are all Cornellians, and again, you belong here.
OK. The second thing I want to tell you is that the single best way to ensure that when you leave Cornell you have not just a Cornell degree but a Cornell education that, in the words of coach Ted Lasso, is to be curious, not judgmental. Who remembers that scene with the darts? Yeah. You remember that? Where's my Coach-- OK, we got at least one. Yeah, right. Those of you who don't remember it, go home and Google Ted Lasso curious not judgmental or even Coach Lasso darts and you'll see a wonderful scene.
There is no place, no place better than Cornell to feed and grow a curious mind. Cornell is a place where you can learn and explore without boundaries, whether you're interested in beekeeping or the biopsychology of memory, solar boats or sustainable agriculture, game theory or music theory, Czech or Chinese or Quechua, or fields of knowledge that you don't even yet know exist but that you will find fascinating when you discover them.
This is a place where you will meet people completely unlike anyone you've ever met before, people from different countries, different backgrounds, people who speak different languages, who see the world in entirely different ways. So be curious, not judgmental. Talk to the people you meet in your classes and your residence halls. You never know what you might have in common with the person who at first seems the most different from you.
Try out new clubs and activities. Make it a point to explore some that you might never have imagined trying until you got here, whether it's Bhangra dancing or billiards or the Big Red Band.
[CHEERING]
Or the Big Red Band.
[CHEERING]
All right, one more time. The Big Red Band.
[CHEERING]
There we go. But this is really important. Avoid overscheduling yourself. Make sure that you preserve time to just hang out and talk with one another and enjoy a cup of coffee. Read for fun. You're never going to find a better place than Cornell to do that and to open your minds and fill them, to sail away from the shore of the comfortable and the known and find out what's different, what will challenge you. You're here to develop the courage and the competence to take on the world in all its complexity.
But you can only do that, you can only succeed in reaching the potential that Cornell has for you if one indispensable condition is met. And that's the third and final thing I want to talk with you about today. That's our upcoming theme year, which is entitled The Indispensable Condition, Freedom of Expression at Cornell. That title quotes the words of the late Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, who called freedom of expression, quote, "the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom."
You're all very lucky. This is the first time we've ever had a themed year here at Cornell. And our reasons for engaging it could not be more important. Freedom of expression is indeed an indispensable condition, both of a Cornell education and of our academic distinction more broadly. And by freedom of expression, I don't mean just our First Amendment rights to free speech but the lived freedom to follow our curiosity wherever it takes us inside and outside of the classroom without external restrictions on what we may teach or learn or share.
Now, freedom of expression is under attack right now in this country from across the political spectrum. On the one end, there are those who believe that free expression must be curtailed to stop the expression of hateful or dangerous ideas and to create an environment that always feels welcoming to all. And on the other, there are those who say that any effort to create a diverse, inclusive environment is itself a curtailment of free expression rights.
In fact, this argument is even used to attempt to restrict instruction in some subjects, including some that are key to understanding our nation's complex history. And ironically, that's being done with the same stated goal, protecting students from feeling discomfort in the classroom. But learning to engage with what challenges us is a core part of a University education essential to intellectual growth and to the ability to lead and thrive in a diverse society. And being exposed to ideas that we disagree with is key to how we become capable adults, how we learn to evaluate information and develop our own considered beliefs.
Curtailing the ability to speak freely, making rules about what we can teach, what we can learn, what questions we can ask, all of that threatens the bedrock on which our academic excellence is built and on which our democracy depends. Because if we ever accept limits on what we can say and what questions we can ask, if we ever give anyone the right to make those decisions for us, we also allow them to decide what we're allowed to learn and what we're allowed to know.
Now, in my experience, the most complex challenges arise when there are two deeply held values. In this case, between Cornell's core value of free expression and our equally core value of being a community of belonging. Sometimes those values come into tension and that can be challenging. But we're a community of scholars. We're a community that can deal with these complex, messy, and deeply felt ideas. We can and must explore them, and that's what we will do in the year ahead. Engage in discussion and debate openly and with respect for one another.
We'll do it in ways that reflect the breadth and depth of our academic excellence and the diversity of our community across disciplines and media. Through a wide range of events, we'll have the opportunity to explore the complexities of free expression and how those questions interact with everything from AI based large language models to employment law to food science to online speech and doxing and more. There'll be lectures and conversations among invited speakers modeling civil discourse. There'll be music and poetry and film and art that explore different perspectives on free expression.
And in honor of Cornell alumni Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, class of '54, and Martin Ginsburg, class of '53, there will be a performance of Scalia Ginsburg The Opera, an important, timely, and delightful demonstration of civil discourse and respect for difference that we hope to demonstrate this year at Cornell.
I am incredibly excited about everything that lies ahead and about the ways that all of you, the remarkable class of 2027, will learn and explore and make Cornell your own. Welcome to all of you. Welcome to Cornell.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: Thank you, President Pollack. Students, we are at the end of convocation. So I just want to give you a few reminders. We hope you will join us immediately following the event for a barbecue lunch just outside the stadium. So up the stairs and out to the parking lot there.
As you've heard from the President, we are officially kicking off our theme here focused on freedom of expression. To commemorate this theme here, the Office of the President has kindly provided giveaways to commemorate the year, which will be handed out at the tent in the Crescent lot during the barbecue.
As we end convocation and embark on the beginning of the academic year, we would like to bring you into one of our longstanding Cornell traditions, the singing of the alma mater. If the deans, VP Lombardi, and President Pollack will join me on stage, we're going to show you how it's done.
As our musical experts here lead us in the song, we do this in a special way. So you're going to stand if you're able, as you're able. Follow their lead. Arms over the shoulders of your neighbors as you're comfortable.
All right. So you're going to give me a practice sway on the two and four, all right? We're going to sway this way. Then we're going to sway that way. Then we're going to sway this way. Then we're going to sway that way. Now, the choir is going to take it away. Yup. And you're going to just keep swaying.
[LAUGHTER]
You received a card when you came in. Now, it might be challenging for some of you in the middle to hold it. I'm so sorry. But you have the lyrics. So OK, you ready? You ready to do this?
(SINGING) Far above Cayuga's waters, with its waves of blue stands our noble alma mater, glorious to view. Lift the chorus, speed it onward. Loud her praises tell. Hail to thee our alma mater. Hail, all hail Cornell.
Far above the busy humming of the bustling town, reared against the arch of heaven, looks she proudly down. Lift the chorus, speed it onward. Loud her praises tell. Hail to thee our alma mater, hail, oh hail Cornell.
[APPLAUSE]
MARLA LOVE: That was beautiful. Thank you so much for being here and have a great start to the semester.
