INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 132, No. 28
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2015
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ITHACA, NEW YORK
16 Pages – Free
Opinion
Arts
Sports
Weather
Can’t Live Without You
Take to Task
High Hopes
Thunderstorms HIGH: 71º LOW: 58º
Shay Collins ’18 critiques Motion City Soundtrack’s new album, Panic Stations.
Columnist Masc. Dom. Top ignores his counselor’s advice to avoid romantic attachment. | Page 7
| Page 10
Men’s soccer prepares to face the Pennsylvania Quakers with only one 2015 victory. | Page 16
Recent Graduate Dies Design for New, Rebuilt Connor McGinnis ’15 was involved in Cayuga’s Waiters, CUJazz, Greek life Chapter House Unveiled By REBECCA BLAIR
By DAVE JANECZEK
Sun Assistant News Editor
Sun Staff Writer
Connor James McGinnis ’15 died Sunday surrounded by family and friends, four months after his graduation from Cornell. He was 22. McGinnis was born on March 8, 1993 in Newton, Massachusetts, according to his obituary. After attending high school at Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, Florida, he came to the Hill, where he majored in information science and minored in music and computing in the arts. At Cornell, McGinnis was a Phi Delta Gamma brother, a member of CUJazz and a singer in a capella group “Connor was truly one Cayuga’s Waiters. of a kind and he will Cayuga’s Waiters took to Facebook Wednesday to never be forgotten.” express their grief. “Connor was truly one Cayuga’s Waiters of a kind and he will never be forgotten,” the group wrote. “Sending all our love and prayers to the McGinnis family during this tragic time.” After graduating from Cornell, McGinnis took a job as a software engineer for IBM in Dublin, Ohio, according to the obituary.
The Chapter House’s architects presented a preliminary design plan to rebuild the iconic pub to the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission at their Sept. 22 meeting, taking the first step towards redevelopment of the fire-damaged property. The plans include a complete replacement of the 400-404 Stewart Ave. building to house the Chapter House on its first floor and apartments on its second through fourth floors. Bryan McCracken, historic preservation planner for the City of Ithaca, explained that initial plans to preserve parts of the original building were deemed unfeasible after a second inspection of the property. “The building was exposed to the elements for three or four months,” he said. “The engineer who evaluated the building determined that significant
additional damage had happened after the fire due to its exposure to the elements. A lot of the walls were saturated with water, floors were buckling and there were a lot of structural issues.” The design was presented to gauge the commission’s initial, informal opinions on the proposed redevelopment. McCracken stressed the preliminary nature of the designs, noting that the architects, Jason K. Demarest of Ithaca and Andy Sprague of Studio Mosaic Architecture in Corning, are still making changes to the plans in preparation for formal applications to the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commision. “Usually a project for new construction will go through several iterations before the whole Commission is comfortable with [the project].” McCracken said. “At this point it’s hard to tell
Bouncin’ back | A rendering shows plans for a new Chapter House
See CHAPTER HOUSE page 4 COURTESY OF CSP MANAGEMENT
structure, which will connect to the upper floors of two adjacent houses to the north.
See McGINNIS page 5
Steeling the show
Fall Creek Gorge,Near Student Housing, Tests Positive for Lead Contamination By RUBY YU Sun Contributor
MICHAELA BREW / SUN SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
An exhibit at the Jill Stuart Gallery in the Human Ecology Building explores the idea of wearable art.
Soil in Fall Creek Gorge by Ithaca Falls, less than two blocks away from the Gun Hill apartments where many Cornell students live, tested positive for lead contamination this past June, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA tested different locations along the base of the gorge and found that the samples contained lead in excess 400 parts per million, the maximum allowable level. The City of Ithaca announced on June 16 that it will collaborate with local regulatory agencies to rectify the situation.
The site of contamination was loose stone and lead contaminated once the location of the Ithaca soil from a quarter of an acre on a Gun Factory, which closed its steep slope and walkway in the Falls doors in 1986, Creek Gorge,” according to the to the “My friends and I went according EPA. Due to the release. factory’s proximi- down the gorges and we The area was ty to Fall Creek, barricaded and the EPA tested were right [near] where signs were posted for metals that the Ithaca Gun Factory to caution public could have origivisitors in June. used to be.” While some nated from the fear the negative gun factory. Dylan Ciraldo ’16 health effects that The EPA could be caused by announced in a press release that it will begin a lead contamination, the City of Ithaca clean up effort expected to cost has not indicated a need for panic over approximately $400,000. As part of the contamination. Still, Prof. the efforts, the EPA will “remove See LEAD page 5 approximately 200 cubic yards of