Corrupt University : arson and death at the Cornell Heights Residential Club / H. William Fogle, Jr., Cornell '70 Engr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fogle, H. William, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cornell Heights Residential Club--Fire, April 5, 1967.

Cornell Heights Residential Club.

Cornell University.

Arson investigation--New York (State)--Ithaca.

Arson investigation.

Cold cases (Criminal investigation)--New York (State)--Ithaca.

Cold cases (Criminal investigation).

New York (State)--Ithaca.

Physical Description:

215 pages : facsimiles ; 29 cm

Other Title:

Arson and death at the Cornell Heights Residential Club

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] : FogBound Investigations, 2021.

Summary:

"Responding to a predicted shortage of teaching staff as post-secondary education expanded during the 1960s, Cornell University proposed a Six-year Ph.D. program allowing gifted students to complete requirements for an A.B. degree in three years, an M.A. or M.S. degree in their fourth year and a doctorate in their sixth. The Ford Foundation agreed to fund this accelerated education experiment for a period of ten years. The program launched with forty-eight secondary-school graduates in the summer of 1966. Eight Cornell students, three from this program, and a faculty member perished in a 5 April 1967 dormitory fire. Two subsequent May 1967 fires in residences occupied by students who survived the April fire convinced authorities that they were dealing with a serial-firebug, most likely one of the Ph.D. program students. A University policy of 'official silence,' a muted Fourth Estate, and town-gown complicity led to cessation of the criminal investigation the summer. A single lawsuit was quietly settled with the University conceding negligence, and within a year, the tragedy was officially forgotten. In 2013, the case was revisited by an amateur historian who discovered that the cover-up was still in effect a half-century later"--page 215.

Contents:

Introduction

The building and the program

The fires and the aftermath

A 21st century revisit

Afterword I

Abridged chronology: Cornell Heights Residential Club Fire, 1946-1975

Identification of individuals, 1967

HWF's "4 am fires" podcast script, 2020.

Notes:

In slipcase.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780578982588

0578982587

OCLC:

1280131863