I was at Cornell a summer, and the most central place there is the bookstore and the two major libraries. You don't go anywhere without going by or through there. The library was a place that you wanted to spend time whether you had work or not. I would like to see Rivera made more spacious, more amenable to study. Put a coffeehouse in outside it.
Technology is great but there is nothing like picking up a book and feeling it.
I have always enjoyed the College experience for sort of the same thrill I get out of going to a big city, which is seeing lots of very interesting people confined in an area going about their business One of the best experiences I had as a college student was going to UCSD and walking through the Price Center and seeing Cesar Chavez giving a talk there. It is a thrill to see people like that. I have a nightmare vision and an ideal vision of the future of the University. My nightmare vision is that it will become a glorified technical school. A series of glorified technical schools with a small humanities faculty whose job is to teach scientists to write grammatical sentences.