 Students and faculty have chronicled Cornell in works of fiction . The most notable was The Widening Stain which first appeared anonymously . It was since revealed to have been written by Morris Bishop . Alison Lurie wrote a fictional account of the campus during the Vietnam War protests called The War Between the Tates . Matt Ruff captured Cornell around 1985 in The Fool on the Hill . Richard Fariña wrote a novel based on a real 1958 protest led by Kirkpatrick Sale against in loco parentis policies in Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me . 
