FRIDAY, OCT. 23
Fall 2026 | ISSUE 6 WHAT’S INSIDE:
A&C
Photo Page
‘Evil Dead Burn’ Movie Review
Womens Volleyball
Last call for midterm registration BY GRANT TERWILLIGER Editor-in-chief
If you want to see a change in New York at the local, state or congressional level the last chance to register for voting in midterms is Oct. 24. Voters can register through the New York State Board of Elections website for Election Day on Nov. 3. Empire State Service Corps member Khadeejah Memon said she has been working to foster greater civic engagement and voter turnout in the midterm elections. Memon said that she voted in the last presidential election and found that it was more intimidating than she had originally thought and said she wished that she felt a little more confident in voting. “I think that our voices need to be heard. That there’s a huge gap in generations,” Khadeejah Memon said. “The majority of people that are voting on laws that affect us are people that are 45 and older. That these things don’t affect them as much as they affect us.” According to The Civics Center, only 38% of young people ages 18 to 24 are registered to vote in New York State, while 78% of people aged 45 and older are registered to vote. If all young people ages 18 and older were registered to vote there would be 158,000 more voters. The statewide offices on the ballot for the midterm elections statewide are the governor, the lieutenant governor, the comptroller, the attorney general, assembly members, New York State Senate, U.S. representatives and the U.S. Senate race. Local positions may also be up for election. SUNY Plattsburgh has a voter registration and voting guide on their website that walks through the process of
Via Adobe Stock
registering and provides information on where to vote and different ways to cast your vote. Other websites such as vote.org and vote 411 are resources for finding out who is on your local ballot and how to register. Daniel Lake, professor and director of the institute for ethics in public life, said that most people who don’t vote either don’t think their vote matters or don’t know how to vote. “I was telling my students, change your registration to vote here if you want it to matter because this is a competitive race,” Lake said. “If you care about the politics and policy and what
they stand for, we’ve got a pretty strong difference in terms of agenda and ideas between Constantino and Gendebien. And we’ve got a close race.” There are several ways to cast your ballot including voting at your designated polling location on election day, requesting an absentee ballot, and voting early in person at a designated location in your county. A contingency with the midterm elections is the possibility of control of the Senate or House of Representatives flipping from Republican to Democrat, currently both chambers are republican. If control of one of the chambers
of Congress changes then the current administration may find it harder to pass legislation. “If we don’t do the bare minimum of voting, then we’re giving up our power in a political system that is based on the idea that we have the power,” Lake said. “They work for us.”
Email GRANT TERWILLIGER cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
Women’s Soccer secures East with Win BY MATTHEW PITARRESI Athletic Communications Associate
The Plattsburgh State women’s soccer team continued its quest to finish the regular season unbeaten in conference play as the Cardinals entered the final week of regular-season competition. After clinching a spot in the State University of New York Athletic Conference (SUNYAC) Tournament last weekend, Plattsburgh State turned its attention to securing first place in the SUNYAC
East Division as it welcomed SUNY Cobleskill for a conference matchup at home. The Cardinals wasted little time getting on the scoreboard, as senior defender Lia Parker (Cadyville, N.Y./Saranac) found the back of the net in the ninth minute to give Plattsburgh an early 1-0 lead. The Cardinals controlled play throughout the opening half, generating 27 shots while holding Cobleskill without an attempt to carry their one-goal advantage into halftime.
Plattsburgh continued to apply pressure after the break, recording 30 shots in the second half. The Cardinals doubled their lead in the 73rd minute when sophomore forward Lauren Marotta (Fonda, N.Y./Fonda-Fultonville) scored to make it 2-0. Just 27 seconds later, senior forward Lilley Keyser (Keeseville, N.Y./AuSable Valley) added another goal to extend the advantage to 3-0 and put the game out of reach. The Cardinals dominated the
match offensively, finishing with 57 shots, including 26 on goal, while limiting Cobleskill to just one shot for the entire contest. Plattsburgh also held a 12-0 advantage in corner kicks, while its defense surrendered just one shot on target to secure the shutout victory. With the victory, the Cardinals improve to 9-2-4 overall and 6-01 in conference play, clinching the SUNYAC East Division title. Plattsburgh State returns to action Saturday on the road against
Cortland in a rematch of last season’s SUNYAC Championship game, with the overall No. 1 seed in the conference tournament on the line.
Email MATTHEW PITARRESI cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
FRIDAY, OCT. 23, 2026
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Elizabeth Kolbert to Give First Casella Sustainability Lecture BY GERIANNE DOWNS Associate Director of Communications
New Yorker Magazine staff writer and science reporter Elizabeth Kolbert will be on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus for a discussion on how, her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “The Sixth Extinction,” is still relevant 10 years after its publication Friday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. in 200 Yokum Lecture Hall. Kolbert is a two-time National Magazine Award winner and recipient of the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her work at the New Yorker. The author of “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change” wrote “The Sixth Extinction” as a scientific cautionary tale. In it, Kolbert reported how 65 million years ago, a mass extinction took out dinosaurs and three-quarters of the species on Earth. A decade ago, scientists feared another extinction event was underway. “The message I wanted people to take away from “The Sixth Extinction,” and still want them to take away 10 years later, is that today one species, which, of course, is our own, has become the dominant force on planet Earth,” Kolbert said. “And that species is changing the world in ways that are having all sorts of unfortunate effects, one of which is the loss of many, many other species.”
Provided by SUNY Plattsburgh Communications Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Elizabeth Kolbert in front of a marine research tank.
Casella, which has allowed us to create the lecture as an annual special talk within the weekly CEES Seminar Series. The $50,000 Casella gift, along with additional support from the Plattsburgh College Foundation Grant and Sally Webb Endowment, among other sources, gives the university the opportunity to bring to campus a nationally recognized leader in environmental sustainability each year through 2030. “For this lecture, we wanted to make sure we had a speaker who appealed to not just the university community, but to the regional community as well, and Elizabeth Kolbert’s writing does just that,” Lesser said. “She is an internationally acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and her writing on environmental issues in her novels, the New Yorker, and other magazines and journals speaks to the general public and the scientific community in a powerful and meaningful way.” Lesser said he wrote to Kolbert’s agent, “and absolutely delighted when she agreed to come to Plattsburgh to speak,” he said. He said it’s not just because her writing speaks to climate change and the other environmental issues that plague the planet.
Inaugural Casella Sustainability Lecture Series Kolbert, the inaugural speaker in the Casella Waste Systems Environmental Sustainability Lecture Series, said her talk is aimed at a general audience given that she usually writes for The New Yorker, “which is a general interest magazine — one of the few still standing, I would add. Another (reason) is that I don’t have any specialized knowledge — I’m not a climate scientist or an ecologist or a botanist — so really I can only write for a general audience, a group of which I am a member,” she said. Dr. Mark Lesser, professor in the Center for Earth and Environmental Science ‘Could be Our Students Someday’ and organizer of the center’s weekly “She also finds and conveys the hope CEES Seminar Series, said he was appreciative of the “very generous gift from for solving these problems,” he said. “She
visits with scientists around the world who are working on these problems and makes their work relatable to a general audience. I think this is a vital message for our students — that the world is filled with people who are trying to make a difference, but what Kolbert does is not only bring these efforts to light; she goes beyond the amazing research being done and humanizes these amazing scientists in a way that I think allows our students to realize this could be them some day.” “I think the same is true for the general public. We are all much more open to changing the way we do things, or what we believe, when we can directly relate to the problem — here in Plattsburgh a good way to make someone more receptive to talking about climate change is to talk about how often Lake Champlain freezes over, and then we can talk about the science behind that. Kolbert does exactly that, but all around the world,” he said. Scientists ‘Speak a Different Language’ “If scientists were better communicators, there probably wouldn’t be a need for science journalists,” Kolbert said. “It’s hard for scientists to speak to the general public. I don’t think it’s that they are unclear or lack empathy, though. I think they just speak a different language — let’s call it ‘scientese.’”
She said the way to begin is by using the sort of language people use in everyday conversations. “For instance, science is conducted using the metric system — degrees Celsius, liters, meters, etc. Americans don’t think in the metric system. We think in degrees Fahrenheit, gallons, yards. So that’s one place to start. I often describe myself as a translator. I am trying to translate ‘scientese’ for the general public. I think scientists have trouble even understanding what people don’t understand. ”But if you look at scientific papers, they are not written for a lay audience. They are written for other scientists, and generally only people who already have a very deep knowledge of the field can understand them,” Kolbert said. “And that’s how you advance in science, by writing that sort of paper. So really scientists need to know how to write in two languages, and that’s tough.” Elizabeth Kolbert’s appearance as part of the Casella Waste Systems Environmental Sustainability Lecture Series is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Lesser at 518-564-4139 or email mless004@plattsburgh.edu.
‘Evil Dead Burn’ a gory mess
Email GERIANNE DOWNS downsg@plattsburgh.edu
BY GRYPHON AKRIDGE-PHILLIPS Staff Writer
BY ADAM BLANCHARD Managing Editor
The sixth installment in the “Evil Dead” franchise, “Evil Dead Burn” sticks to its bloody roots. Directed by Sébastien Vaniček, the “Evil Dead Burn” cast is full of actors I’ve never heard of, so take that as you will. Our main character is Alice Price, played by Souheila Yacoub. The movie starts with Alice and her husband William Price, played by George Pullar, arguing outside of a club. Will drives away drunk and swerves out of the way of an old lady standing in the middle of the road, caus-
Via Wikimedia The ‘Evil Dead’ logo.
ing him to flip his car and die. Alice attends her husband’s funeral alongside her in-laws, who seem to have it out for her. Going into this movie, I knew nothing about the “Evil Dead” franchise, but I had high expectations nonetheless. The movie had a slow start that felt natural. About a quarter into the movie, the pace picks up and gets into the gory moments that I had seen in the trailer. While the effects are amazing on their own, they don’t carry any weight. The kills are back to back, keeping the audience either on the edge of their seats or constantly wincing at the displays of violence. Despite this, some of the ways characters died made me think the Price family had a tradition of lobotomizing themselves. Like sure, let’s trust the person who was trying to kill us five minutes ago, what could go wrong? The movie tries to carry a message of psychologi-
cal abuse and domestic violence, apparent through the relationship between Alice and the Price family. I felt that it fell short in delivering anything meaningful. We get these moments where Alice feels pressured by her in-laws and her husband to fit into a certain mold, but they’re quickly brushed off for some goofy one-liner. Overall, “Evil Dead Burn” is a fun watch if you’re into crazy slasher horror movies filled to the brim with gore that serves no purpose besides shock value. It’s a good movie to turn your brain off to and enjoy some popcorn. Don’t worry about having to watch the five previous movies to get what’s going on in this one, they wouldn’t help much anyhow.
Email ADAM BLANCHARD cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
Sagittarius (Nov. 22 – Dec. 21)
Aries (March 21 – April 19)
Leo (July 23 – Aug. 22)
Keep control with projects you are working on and don’t hesitate to ask for help from others.
You may feel as if something important is missing from your life, however at this time you are unable to determine what it is.
Be careful with emotional involvements. An emotional risk you may have taken has uncertain consequences.
Virgo (Aug. 23 – Sept. 22)
Capricorn (Dec. 22 – Jan. 19)
Pay attention to your dreams as messages may await in them, you may soon enter a new cycle of emotions.
Look closely at your plans, there may be something that is not to your benefit.
Libra (Sept. 23 – Oct. 22)
Aquarius (Jan. 20 – Feb. 18)
Taurus (April 20 –
You may need to bring forth your willpower to cope with an emotionally trying event.
Gemini (May 21 – June 20)
A powerful beginning will bring a major breakthrough and will help you triumph over difficulties.
Cancer (June 21 – July 22)
When making timely decisions you may need to think quickly and clearly.
Make firm financial choices and stick with them.
If you find yourself facing a situation, it is a favorable enterprise.
Scorpio (Oct. 23 – Nov. 21)
Pisces (Feb. 19 – March 20)
You may be awaiting results from something you have started, focus your energy and will to fulfill your desires.
There may be visits from distant friends or family, any move at this time will be positive.
▪ Photography Editor Anya Kern
▪ Friday, Oct. 23, 2026
PHOTOSPREAD
Cardinals defeat Fighting Tigers on the road Photos by Anya Kern
Opposite Darby Collyear descending from a fake attack.
Sophomore Emily O’Brien backsetting it to middle blocker Brooke Anderson.
Libero KC Burke showing good sportsmanship.
Senior Iris Mulvey goes up for a jump serve.
Collyear gets up to tip the ball.
Plattsburgh State Women’s Volleyball faced SUNYAC newcomer SUNY Cobleskill on Oct. 10. The Cardinals swept the Fighting Tigers 3-0. The Cards move forward in SUNYAC play 2-0 and 11-9-2 overall.