Cornell University officials are hoping that student residential-housing outreach programs being launched this school year will help the upstate New York institution avoid the problems it experienced last spring when a conservative student publication offended many university students with an Ebonics parody.

Cornell officials say the outreach programs are expected to increase interaction and multicultural understanding among students at the Ivy League university. Although just 45 percent of the entire undergraduate student body lives in campus housing, the outreach initiatives are intended to reach all undergraduates, according to Susan Murphy, Cornell's vice-president for student and academic services.

"Residential programs are one part of the way you reach students," said Murphy. "There's always hope that you can use outreach programs to help prevent the type of incidents that happened last spring."

Last spring's controversy, which roiled the campus, began with an article published in the April 17, 1997, edition of The Cornell Review, a publication that touts itself as the "conservative voice at Cornell". The article -- titled "So, You Be Wantin' To Take Dis Class?", a piece editors described as a spoof of Ebonics-offered an Ebonics translation of course offerings at Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center.

Students angered by the article held a demonstration eleven days later on the Cornell campus to denounce the publication's editors for what was considered a racist attack on African American studies and culture. Protesting students disrupted traffic on public streets and burned several copies of The Cornell Review to symbolize their disapproval of the offensive article. They also demanded that university administrators end funding of the publication and mandate racial sensitivity training for Cornell students.

The article's publication and the subsequent protest by angry students drew strong response from Cornell President Hunter Rawlings.