OP-ED: So We’re Just Not Going to Address the Naked Hercules Statue? That’s Normal for Us? Ok.

When you stepped onto campus for the very first time, probably the summer before your senior year of high school, and were lead bright-eyed throughout Cornell’s bucolic paths and hallowed halls on a prospective student tour, what cute little trivialities did your tour guide tell you? Was it good old Happy Dave, cheerfully smiling and swiping cards at the entrance to the ugly duckling of Cornell’s dining halls? Maybe it was the pumpkin that ended up on the steeple of McGraw tower that one time?

Well, it goes without saying that you were never told about the enormous, naked, bronze-clad statue of Hercules that goes utterly unnoticed between Uris Hall and Statler.

I mean, seriously people, that’s not normal. Fountains are normal. Murals are normal. Hell, even more statues of Touchdown would be normal, if we cared enough about the football program. Instead, we’re just signing off on the poor decision making of some bygone administration official who thought “Yep, a giant, fully nude, mythological strongman is what we really need on campus.”

And don’t get me wrong, I love statuesque portrayals of early Greco-Roman mythologies as much as the last guy. Temple of Zeus has a great collection! But I don’t think I need any Archimedean powers of deduction to point out that our boy Herc looks a little out of place when planted right in the middle of Uris and Statler. Although, to be fair, this could be an artistic decision; placing him outdoors in the cold might explain some less impressive aspects of the statue’s features.

The question that remains is why, despite all of these curiosities, do we never talk about our bronze-bottomed eye-candy friend? Have we all been collectively resigned to never speak of his magnificently meaty haunches? Is he some avant-garde art protest installation who, through a scheduling error, missed his Arts Quad destination to be erroneously deposited off the sidewalk instead? Is Hercules’s proximity to Uris and Statler’s high-traffic and highly depressing classes, such as Biochemistry and Real Estate Finance, cursing him to remain unnoticed by the many downtrodden students that pass by him each day?

Regardless, for some inexplicable reason, the collective student body has accepted this misplaced metallic might of a man as a part of our campus, our commutes, and dare I say, our hearts. While his unorthodox presence may puzzle onlookers, I find some comfort in knowing Hercules will continue to be ignored by generations of Cornellians well into the future.

Just try not to look at his dick.

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