Cornell Is Skorton's Heart Patient?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice puff piece on Cornell's handling of their financial situation. (The article is here but you might need a subscription to read it all.)

The article praises President David Skorton for personally responding to emails from concerned faculty members and for pursuing a policy of "openness."

But it also draws an interesting connection to Skorton's background in cardiology:

As a physician, Dr. Skorton often had to deal with the unknown and deliver
bad news. That experience has helped shape his philosophy that in difficult
situations, transparency is best.

I'm not sure what the proper analogy is here. Hardening of the arteries with the potential for a heart attack unless costs are cut? Yet we must balance this with the need to continue to eat good-tasting foods (spend money on faculty, financial aid, and Milstein Hall)?

If Skorton has a lot of practice delivering bad news, maybe he should have been the one to inform the Cornell community that the university had misplaced 45,000 social security numbers.