INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 131, No. 3
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2014
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ITHACA, NEW YORK
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Cornell Store reorganizes its textbooks as part of a new Academic Materials Department. | Page 3
Sean Doolittle ’16 presents the winners, losers and WTFs of the 2014 Emmy Awards. | Page 16
The Arizona Diamondbacks drafted Brent Jones ’15 in the fourth round of the MLB Draft. | Page 20
Questions Remain After Fatal Simeon’s Crash Crash led to road safety,victim recovery efforts ‘One of the Worst Incidents’
By SOFIA HU
At approximately 4:09 p.m. on Friday, June 20, 37-year-old Viacheslav Grychanyi — a Students returning this fall may have truck driver from Spokane, Washington — lost noticed something new downtown: A control of the brakes on his truck and crashed large hole in the Commons’ facade where into the building on the corner of Aurora and Simeon’s Restaurant once East State Street while attemptwas. ing to turn right onto Aurora See page 3 to read Most of the walls have Street. The building, built in been replaced with boards, more about downtown 1872, housed Simeon’s the result of an accident on relief efforts occurring Restaurant, Cornell Barber June 20, in which a runShop and several apartments. since the crash. away tractor-trailer killed Eyewitnesses, including one and injured several as it Ithacan Nico Wright, said the into Simeon’s Restaurant driver blared his horns as the on the corner of Aurora and East State trailer-truck sped down State Street, at approxiStreet. mately 40 to 50 miles per hour before the crash. In the weeks following the accident, He was driving a commercial truck carrying which resulted in the partial destruction of four cars for Quality Relocation Services, said the building, Ithacans have rallied togeth- Ithaca Police Department Chief Jamie er to support those harmed and address See SIMEON’S page 4 highway safety. Sun Senior Writer
KELLY YANG / SUN NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
A tragic crash | The building on the corner of Aurora and East State Street, after a tractor-trailer barreled into it on June 20.
RILEY YUAN / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
From the ground up | A utility worker walks past the former Simeon’s storefront, which remains boarded following demolition.
Gorge Safety Program Honors Rand ’12 New Law: Univ. Must Pay By DAVE JANECZEK Sun Staff Writer
The University dedicated its increased efforts to promote safety around Fall Creek and Cascadilla gorges to Nathaniel Rand ’12, a student who died in a swimming accident in July 2011, in a ceremony at the Cornell Plantations Tuesday. In the wake of Rand’s death, his parents, Dr. Jacob Rand and Maggi Rand, pushed the University to better educate students about the dangers of swimming in the gorges and to increase safety measures along the gorges, The Sun previously reported. These efforts are now officially known as the “Nathaniel Rand ’12 Memorial Gorge Safety and Education Program.” “It always has been and always will be a challenge to educate everyone about the hazards that these remarkable formations of water and stone present,” President
David Skorton said at the dedication event. “With the Nathaniel Rand Gorge Safety Program, I really believe we now have significantly better ways to meet that challenge.” Todd Bittner, director of natural
areas for the Cornell Plantations and the chair of the University’s Gorge Safety Committee, said the University has completed multiple projects to increase safety around See RAND page 5
$130K in Stormwater Fees
Law aims to reduce burden on City residents By AIMEE CHO Sun Senior Writer
LINDSAY FRANCE / CORNELL UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY
Not forgotten | Maggi Rand receives a hug from Susan Murphy ’73 Ph.D. ’94, vice president for Student and Academic Affairs, at her son’s dedication ceremony yesterday.
Under a new law passed Aug. 6 by the Ithaca Common Council, Cornell will now be charged an additional $130,000 a year by the city for stormwater fees. The new law will lower Ithaca residents’ annual fees from $100 to $48, while Cornell and other tax-exempt properties — which do not currently make any formal payments toward stormwater fees — will be charged fees based on square footage of impervious surface, The Sun previously reported. Taxexempt properties that have
their own stormwater management systems can receive a credit of up to 20 percent of their fee, according to The Ithaca Times. Christopher Bordlemay, Cornell Water and Wastewater manager, said he supports the concept of a new stormwater utility fee structure, but that he disagrees with the speed at which the legislation was pushed forward. “More analysis related to rate structures needed to be performed in order to create a more long-term sustainable stormwater utility,” he said. See STORMWATER page 5
Cornell Prof Involved in Facebook Study Affecting 700,000 Unknowing Users By ZOE FERGUSON Sun Staff Writer
Two Cornellians — Prof. Jeffrey Hancock, communication and information science, and former doctoral student Jamie Guillory ’13 — authored a controversial study earlier this sum-
mer, part of which involved Facebook altering the news feeds of nearly 700,000 users without their consent. The study, published June 17, was part of an experiment to test whether social media websites have an effect on users’ moods by deliberately showing users content that
was happier or sadder than normal. Facebook controls the order — and has the ability to control the types — of stories users view in their news feeds, according to The New York Times. Facebook revealed in late June that it had manipulated users’ news feeds in the interest of psy-
chological testing. The research was published in an article titled “Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks,” in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “[The results of the experi-
ment] indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions,” the study said. Hancock and Guillory analyzed the results from Facebook’s research and coauthored the artiSee FACEBOOK page 5