Thank you for dropping by and taking the time to read my blog; sorry you couldn’t be spending the weekend doing something besides defending yourself against mostly-faceless internet assailants, but that’s unavoidable.

I will be very straightforward in my response:

If everything is as you say, then I should not need to criticize the coordinators of the project, because anything wrong would be your fault. I acknowledged when the blogs were announced that the policy announced by admissions stipulated very little and did not imply any sort of censorship was in place; I do not believe any is besides whatever you impose upon yourself.

A blog can be whatever you want it to be, I don’t dictate the terms of your self-publishing. You can write about your school however you like, and you will probably still get readers–though as case studies have shown, that might not always be the case. In Cornell’s situation, you will probably still get readers no matter what you write; the blogs are fairly visible.

All I’m saying is that I’m not really interested in what you’ve been writing about so far, I’m a prospective student, and so far this blogging project has failed in my eyes as a recruitment tool–as far as “me” is concerned. I have noticed something of a backlash on the cornell blogosphere and saw a critical editorial in the Sun. That’s what I’m working off of when I say that they’re “crashing and burning.”

Here is what I wrote to your fellow blogger, caroline, on her site:

Dear Caroline,
I am a prospective student, and a recent reader of your blog. I value the insight these casual details add to my image of daily life at Cornell. At the same time, I must confess I have some fear that your remarks taken as a whole might appear to be a somewhat sanitized image of everyday student life, given your close ties to the promotional efforts of the university and the sponsored nature of your blogging. I’m not saying you need to post pictures of the last frat party you went to, but I would hope that you and your fellow bloggers don’t censor yourselves to the point that you’re no longer worth reading. Thanks for putting yourself out there on the net anyways, and for standing up to the criticisms.

I don’t put MIT higher than Cornell’s on the basis of writing quality, but rather on the basis of content… which is how I judge all student blogs, first and foremost.

I will keep reading your blog, Jenna, hoping that it will offer me some more insight. But you don’t seem to really want to offer that. What did you say on Christian Montoya’s blog? Oh right: “Do prospective students sitting in their bedrooms in Long Island really want my insight on events or policies that we care deeply about as Cornell students? Probably not.”

Don’t make things black and white. You can offer more insight into life at Cornell than you do now without tarnishing the school’s name. Don’t think so poorly of your audience that we can’t understand or don’t want to read about something besides superficial fluff.

You’ll see the 6 of us (the Cornell bloggers) defending ourselves– and what we write– quite a bit when we read stuff like this. Why? Because nobody tells us what to write. We choose what to say, how to censor ourselves, etc. and any criticism sent our direction is completely personal. It’s not fun logging into your blog and clicking on one of the incoming links and seeing your words torn apart by a high school student, but then again that is the risk one takes when publishing something like a blog in such a public arena.

Bear in mind that you’re not attacking the coordinators of the project, Cornell Admissions, or our supervisors– just us, and what we choose to write about. When we started the project, we got together with a lovely woman in the Office of Web Communications who said, in a nutshell: “no cuss words, no nudity, no detailing of your Friday night hookups” and we were off. That’s it.

Now forgive us for not adhering completely to your definition of what a “blog” should be, and forgive us for not tarnishing our school’s name. Morgan is right on target here.

By the way, I read MIT’s blogs… and I don’t think they’re much different than ours in terms of writing ability.

As some have moaned about with the Cornell student blogging, it would help if the writing was more topical and of a better quality. If all sponsored blogs stepped it up to the level of, say, MIT’s blogs, I’d be more satisfied. Those are rosy, sure, but they’re very well written and very convincing. The fact that they repsresent perhaps one half of a somewhat bipolar school attitude notwithstanding–they’ve been known to contradict and disagree with unofficial MIT blogs on TheU or elsewhere.

What I’d care more to see, over suspicious-looking student blogs, would be more Adcom blogs. Those are my favorites…

If Admission goes out and prints a blog that’s highly authentic and relevant but manages to get the college’s name drug through the mud by an adult audience, then that’s really a huge problem. In the end, it just isn’t worth the risk. That’s why I wrote so much about student blogging not being a good idea in the numbers. (If you stick your neck out and do it right, you’re only going to really attract 20-30% of the market. If you do it wrong, then you’re putting out marketing fodder that no prospect will believe.) A large part of me wishes it were as simple as marketing to one, young audience, as most private companies have the luxury of doing. I like to play devil’s advocate and wish that all these stakeholders could understand what it takes to be authentic and relevant. At the same time, it’s a highly unrealistic expectation on my part. For Admission to ignore the interest of the other stakeholders when crafting college PR would be to pamper one part of the body while poisoning another—in the end, the whole person dies.