In December 2009, Governor Paterson made New York one of the country’s toughest states against drunk driving. The new law mainly protects children from the dangers of driving while intoxicated but the legislation also includes a provision that requires all DWI offenders to install a mandatory ignition interlock device in their vehicles.

If Rep. Mark Kirk’s ’81 (R.-Ill.) six percent lead over Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias holds in the race for the Illinois Senate seat currently held by Sen. Roland W. Burris (D.-Ill.), Kirk will join a short list of Cornell graduates that have earned spots in the more selective branch of Congress.

Charitable donations at Cornell have increased in the past year, making Cornell the third highest fundraising institution in the nation behind Stanford and Harvard, according to the Council for Aid to Education.

Students and alumni gathered in Washington, D.C., over the weekend for a conference focused on leading, collaborating and networking among alumni. The event, called the Cornell Alumni Leadership Conference, attracted hundreds of alumni, along with current students, faculty and administrators.

Though he may not have planned for it, Victor LaValle ’94 is quickly following in the footsteps of past generations of famed Cornell authors, knocking at the doorstep of literary greats like E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon.

In light of Senator Ted Kennedy’s passing last week — the loss of the patriarch of America’s “royal” family — I’ve been thinking about legacy and its role in present day America, as well as within the country’s university system.

Though Ted Kennedy inarguably had a profound impact on American politics during his 46-year reign in the Senate, the degree to which his success was “deserved” so-to-say is debatable. While he may have been the beacon of modern American liberalism, championing equality and a better life for the underprivileged, he was hardly a man of pristine moral stature.

For an art form that often lives in the shadow of its live-action big brother, animation finally received its share of the spotlight on Saturday at Cornell Cinema’s special event, Homegrown Animation. Headlined by Tara Cooper ’08’s ten-minute short Until the Lake Froze Solid, the program included nineteen animated shorts made by Cornell students over the past six years, as well as a Q&A session with Tara about her MFA thesis film. Although there was no red carpet or hordes of paparazzi waiting outside Homegrown Animation was both a showcase of the cream of the crop of Cornell animation projects and some well-deserved face time for the incredibly talented artists whose work rarely earns the attention that it’s due.

The changing face of the University will continue with the realigning of the Alumni Affairs and Development Office, which is implementing a strategic plan to tighten up resources and increase efficiency. Although the nation’s dismal economic climate was an impetus for the reorganization, the plan has been in the making for a year and a half.

“We’ve been doing strategic planning for about 18 months,” said Charles Phlegar, vice president of AAD. “Over the summer, we took reports from six committees that had looked at our organization. The financial catastrophe … heightened the need to perform more quickly.”

Two Cornell alumni were chosen Sunday to fill senior posts in the Treasury Department, which faces the daunting task of saving the nation’s crumbling economy. President Barack Obama nominated Alan Krueger ’83 as the assistant secretary for economic policy and David Cohen ’85 as the assistant secretary for terrorist financing.

Apart from Krueger and Cohen, Obama also chose Kim Wallace to be the assistant secretary for legislative affairs. The three positions will only be made official after a confirmation from the Senate.

“With the leadership of these accomplished individuals and our whole economic team, I am absolutely confident that we will turn around this economy and seize this opportunity to secure a more prosperous future,” Obama said in a White House press release.

The 105-year-old Creative Writing program at Cornell played a key role in shaping 20th century American literature, several acclaimed literary scholars said at a panel discussion yesterday.

At a talk sponsored by the Creative Writing program as a part of the Spring Centennial Plus Five Reading Series, English department panelists Prof. Roger Gilbert, Prof. Mary P. Brady and Prof. Molly Hite, discussed Cornell writers Prof. emeritus A.R. Ammons, Thomas Pynchon ’59, Manuel Munoz ’98 and Loida Maritza Perez ’87.