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INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880

The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 134, No. 16 News Porchfest Brings Music to Streets

The eleventh edition of Porchfest found widespread appreciation of local music. | Page 3

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2017

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ITHACA, NEW YORK

16 Pages – Free

Arts

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Brutal Finish

Sunny With Light Wind HIGH: 88º LOW: 61º

A second-half breakdown at Yale handed Cornell football its second straight loss of the season. | Page 16

Porchfest wasn’t the only festival. The Roots and more were in town this weekend. | Page 9

Hate Crime Charges Up to Grand Jury Ex-Student

Faces Federal Gun Charges

Jurors decide next month if student faces hate charges

By JOHN YOON

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS

Sun Assistant News Editor

Sun City Editor

Prosecutors preparing to try John Greenwood ’20 — the white Cornell student who a black student said beat him and called him the N-word — will present grand jurors with the New York hate crime law and let them decide whether to charge Greenwood under the statute, the county’s district attorney told The Sun. Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said on Sunday night that prosecutors will read the descriptions of at least three potential charges, as well as the state hate crime law, to grand jurors and leave the decision up to the “impartial body of citizens from the community.” AL DRAGO / THE NEW YORK TIMES

By DREW MUSTO

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded Obama-era Title IX guidance on Friday, giving new recommendations that, if adopted by Cornell, would substantially change how the University investigates and adjudicates cases of sexual assault and misconduct. DeVos’s Education Department issued new interim guidance to schools,

See CHARGES page 4

See TAN page 5

CAMERON POLLACK / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Occupy | Since police arrested John Greenwood ’20 on Sept. 15, Black Students United has led a series of rallies and protests around campus, including delivering demands to Day Hall on Wednesday, above.

Prosecutors will subpoena witnesses and present all available evidence to the grand jury on Oct. 5 or Oct. 12, the district attorney said. The decision to wait for the grand jury to determine

Guides | Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded Obama-era Title IX guidelines, potentially changing Cornell’s practices.

DeVos’s Title IX Shifts Could Affect Cornell Sun Senior Editor

The student who said he was assaulted, a junior and Kappa Sigma member, spoke to The Sun from a local hospital on the condition of anonymity

Former Cornell student Charles Tan ’17, who was accused — and cleared — of murdering his father in 2015, pleaded not guilty to new federal gun charges on Saturday afternoon in Syracuse. Two years after avoiding a conviction in the death of his father, Tan is facing several charges in federal court, including a weapons charge, all stemming from 2015, according to court documents filed in August. In the new federal indictment, Tan is accused of illegally receiving a firearm and ammunition with the intent of using them to commit a crime and convincing someone else to lie to buy them for him. If convicted, Tan could face at least one year in prison or be deported to Canada. These charges are TAN ’17 tied to the seconddegree murder charges brought against Tan in February 2015 after the death of his father, Liang “Jim” Tan, which a judge dismissed in November 2015. Charlie Tan was 19 and a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 2015 when police discovered his father shot dead in their suburban Rochester home, The Sun previously reported. Tan’s trial ended in a mistral in October 2015, and a judge dismissed the charges in November 2015, finding that a deadlocked jury was unlikely to reach consensus, The Sun reported. Some jurors in the murder trial had said that, through deliberations, vote totals fluctuated significantly, with some minds changing “every day,” The Sun previously reported.

like Cornell, that receive federal funds. That new guidance allows schools to use a stricter standard in adjudicating sexual misconduct complaints, lets them give parties the option of voluntarily entering informal resolutions like mediation, and permits schools to give just the accused party the ability to appeal a case outcome, as in criminal law. All of these new guidelines, See DEVOS page 4

whether hate crime charges apply, rather than having Ithaca Police charge Greenwood under the state hate crime law now, seemingly created a slight rift between the district attorney's office and City Hall. Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 said in an interview late on Sunday that he believes the victim was targeted because he is black and said Greenwood, who is 19, should be charged with a hate crime. “As somebody who’s had the opportunity to review the investigation, speak with our investigators and review the hate crime statutes, I believe this was a hate crime,” Myrick said. “If it were up to me, I would charge it as such.” “We’ll follow the lead of the district attorney because this is the way the system works,” Myrick added. Van Houten said that if police were to charge Greenwood under the hate crime law now, a grand jury

would still have to indict the student under state law because the charges would be felonies. It makes more sense, he said, to simply present the evidence to grand jurors and let them decide once. “There’s just no reason for the police to add more charges,” Van Houten told The Sun. “Adding charges by the police would be completely superfluous.”

“We’ll follow the lead of the district attorney because this is the way the system works.” Mayor Svante Myrick ‘09

Professor to Join Trump Economic Council By JAMIL RAHMAN Sun Assistant Sports Editor

President Donald Trump has appointed Prof. Emeritus Richard Burkhauser, policy analysis and management, to the third and final position in his Council of Economic Advisers, the White House announced on Sept. 15. Back in November

BURKHAUSER

shortly after the election, members of the Trump transition team reached

out to economists to serve as policy advisors, according to NPR. Members of the team contacted Burkhauser to see if “[he] was interested in applying for a job” for the thenPresident-elect. “I think it would be extraordinarily exciting to be part of an administration that uses Republican ideas to do something for

workers in the middle who have not enjoyed the benefits of economic growth for the last 20 or 30 years,” Burkhauser told NPR back in November. Burkhauser signed a petition against Hillary Clinton’s plan during the campaign season, and told NPR that he believed the See TRUMP page 11


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