Dear Editor:

I have two comments about the article appearing Aug. 6 at the Cornell Web site: Cornell University's 'Any person ... any study' named nation's best college motto by magazine.

I think the university administration should be very careful to monitor how this motto is interpreted by the public and the media, insofar as it is the words of the founder. I challenge our scholars in Ithaca to research exactly what Ezra Cornell meant by those words and to publish a defining pamphlet endorsed by the university administration. I don't think Ezra Cornell's mission was to provide full scholarships to applicants of dubious qualification; rather, to provide instruction in any subject to any person who wishes to be so instructed, consistent with the university's fairly applied policies of admissions, tuition, etc.

As if that were not enough for the university administration to ponder, it should confront the fact that not every subject is offered for instruction [!!!]. Comparison in this regard with other Ivy League academic institutions is not flattering to Cornell, given the founder's dictum. As one example of a subject not offered, and probably not ever having been offered at Cornell, is Armenian studies ... language, history, culture, religion, etc.

I suppose that fulfilling the founder's dictum takes money. If I were a person of means, I would endow a chair of Armenian studies; but, alas, I am not. Meanwhile, I would be content to have the university administration "tone down" how it lionizes -- and allows others to extol -- the words of the founder, so that I am not reminded of the two things I am alleging in this memo, that 1) competitively unqualified applicants are routinely admitted and funded well beyond tuition, justified by a misinterpretation of the founder's words, and 2) there are many subjects of value to the university's public, academia and the world which are not offered, for whatever reason, by my alma mater.

With respect,

Robert A. [Bob] Boyajian, B.S. Eng. '74; M.Eng. '75