> This is false.
> ...your comments are speculative and groundless.

I think employees often lack the perspective to see the view from the larger
outside world, off campus.

Here is a  link to the University charter, it may help:

http://trustees.cornell.edu/Shared%20Documents/cornell_charter.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/jpv4k2w

Clearly, as the state established the school with a charter in 1865, and
most recently amended the charter in 2002, this clearly means that the state
has the ultimate control over the entire University, its assets, and every
penny of money.  The fact that a certain amount of delegation has been done
to board of trustees does not change this basic fact.

Some short quotes:

"The said corporation [Cornell] may take and hold real and personal property
to such an amount as may be or become necessary for the proper conduct and
support of the several departments of education heretofore established...."

And as for the Veterinary Medicine labs, where Peter has worked:

"All buildings, furniture, apparatus and other property heretofore or
hereafter erected or furnished by the state for such college of veterinary
medicine shall be and remain
the property of the state. The Cornell university shall have the custody and
control of said property, and, as the representative of the state university
trustees, shall, with whatever state moneys may be received for the purpose,
administer the said college of veterinary medicine..."

So, when assets are liquidated, state funds are wasted, as every penny is
administered by the Trustees, under the direction of the State.  

> "In fact, the University appropriated, sold, gave away or threw away most
of the contents of the Dyce Lab."

Hope you snagged some of the good "give-aways"!  :)

No one really cares what either of us think about it, what matters is what
our elected officials in the legislature think about it
And maybe the USDA, as they have been writing big checks, and expecting some
Ag Extension to get done.

If Entomology no longer wants to be the home of the Cornel beekeeping
extension effort, that's fine, but I did not see an orderly transfer of
assets and funding to the Cornel Co-op Extension group.  I see this as
Entomology having treated the "department" as their own fiefdom, rather than
part of Cornell's obligation as a land-grant school and a recipient of
significant USDA and state funding specially earmarked for such extension
work.

In my absence, Peter, who was merely reflexively defending his employer,
seems to have been accused of a personal ethical lapse.  THAT is
"speculative and groundless".  Peter is subjected to multiple levels of
oversight and control, and his purchase of items or taking of items offered
free is not unethical.  Any ethics issue lies with those would decide to
sell or give away assets, not with those who take them up on the offer.   (I
got my stereo dissecting microscope at a VA Tech "yard sale" for pennies on
the dollar, and after a little fiddling, it was as good as new, made
tracheal mite and nosema post-mortems a breeze, back when they were a thing.
Colleges sell stuff all the time.)

The point here was that no attempt was made to transfer the assets intact to
Cornell Co-Op once Entomology was unable to force a feudal contract upon the
state's beekeepers to "fund" the resurrection of another stand-alone
beekeeping research/extension post from within their fiefdom.  

To be blunt, the mixing of R&D with extension creates a terrible dichotomy
in a one-man department, and never meets either goal to anyone's
satisfaction.  If nothing else, this is the lesson Nick Calderone's
frustrating situation would best teach us - a one-man show cannot be all
things to all people.

I serve on boards of directors for a few companies, NGOs, and endowments.  I
also put my own money where my mouth is when I do.  When a line-item
function is allowed to disappear from a menu of services, this should only
be by overt decision to halt or not fund the service.  What we seem to have
here is that a service is still being funded by both the State and the USDA,
but not being provided, with the money being frittered away on other, less
mission-critical "Ag Extension" of the traditional type.

So, I'm gonna ask around, and see if the USDA and State, who hold the "purse
strings" are aware that the dollars currently allocated somehow do not
include any extension work related to bees or pollination.  My guess is that
the recent administration push to support "Pollinator Protection" might
prompt a realization that the "wheels have come off".

Now that I am back from vacation, I see that one of weather stations on a
roof where I have some hives reported a low of 32.4 F on Jan 2nd.  This is
the single event closest to "freezing" (32 F = 0 C for the non-barbarians
out there) we've had this winter in the City.  

We've had so many flight days, the bees are burning more stores on "fuel"
for useless sorties than they would in cluster.  On Christmas day, there
were roses blooming en masse in multiple places, notably on the median of
West St between the World Trade Center memorial and the yacht harbor.
Strange days.  Fondant will be on the menu, like it or not.

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