10-04-21 entire issue hi res

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The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 138, No. 17

MONDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2021

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8 Pages – Free

ITHACA, NEW YORK

News

Arts

Sports

Weather

Mid-Autumn Celebration

Coolness in Question

Winless Season

More Rain

Students gathered on Ho Plaza to celebrate the MidAutumn Festival Friday night.

In his latest column, Stephen Yang ’21 asks: “How do we prove we’re cool?”

Page 3

| Page 4

Football falls to a losing record of 0-3 after a 21-10 loss against Bucknell University on Saturday. | Page 8

HIGH: 70º LOW: 61º

Ithaca Rallies Against Texas Abortion Ban

Saturday’s Rally for Reproductive Rights garners support from dozens on Ho Plaza

By SARAH YOUNG

like “bans off our bodies” to show their support for the movement.

Among these residents was Joan This past Saturday afternoon, a large Adler ’71, a Cornell alumna and former crowd gathered in front of Willard Planned Parenthood employee who has Straight Hall erupted into applause as the lived in Ithaca for most of her life. She words “nobody’s most personal medical was at the protest because of her experidecisions should be controlled by poli- ences working for Planned Parenthood ticians, neighbors, complete strangers or and watching her friends navigate getting abortions. anyone else” rang out.

“I came of age in an era before Roe On Oct. 2, Cornell’s Planned Parenthood Generation Action helped v. Wade made abortion legal and I have organize the Ithaca Rally for Reproductive friends that had illegal abortions; they Rights on Ho Plaza in response to the were harrowing experiences,” Adler said. recent Texas abortion bill which outlaws “It's just horrifying to think that in abortions after six weeks of pregnan- Texas right now, women are going to be desperate enough cy. The rally drew a that they may once diverse crowd, comagain seek out and posed of Cornell and “I’ve been doing this for have that kind of Ithaca College stu50 years, and it’s enough black market expedents and faculty, already. It’s just been an rience, which is so local residents and incredibly traumatic others from across outrage.” in itself.”

New York State.

Adler hoped that “I think we are Yvonne Fischer support for the rally one of over 500 could help reduce [marches], so Oct. stigma against 2nd is a big day for abortion access protests and rallies,” said Planned Parenthood, where she worked up until last year.

Presley Church ’24.

“Planned Parenthood is a gynecologiThe speaker lineup for the rally included a range of students, profes- cal service. It provides all kinds of logical sionals and representatives including care for women, including abortions, assembly member Anna Kelles (D-125), both surgical and through medication.

Prof. Zillah Eisenstein, politics, Ithaca We also have transgender services and College, and Krista Ochoa, grad, a stu- very full STI services. It's a judgment free zone. It's very loving, it's very respectful,” dent from Texas.

“I think it’s really important to show Adler said.

Local psychotherapist Yvonne Fischer that this is something that people care noted that the march was predominantly about,” Helena Brittain ’22 said.

Brittain, like other Cornell students, women — which she hopes will change came to the march in order to express in the future..

“I've been doing this for 50 years, and her frustration about the recent Texas abortion ban, which she noted “dispro- it's enough already. It's just been an outportionately impacts people from low-in- rage,” Fischer said. “We have fought and come backgrounds, people of color and won, and now we're still having to fight.

This is not just a woman's issue.” young people.”

In addition to the students that filled Ho Plaza, groups of Ithaca residents Sarah Young can be reached at attended, brandishing signs with slogans syoung@cornellsun.com.

Sun Staff Writer

BEN PARKER / SUN SENIOR EDITOR

Planned Parenthood | Some participants hoped that Saturday’s rally would serve as a way to help eliminate stigmas and increase education surrounding Planned Parenthood.

BEN PARKER / SUN SENIOR EDITOR

Impassioned participants | Some sitting members of the crowd of passionate protesters display handmade and printed signs as they listen to many speakers on Ho Plaza.

S.A. Discusses Financial Aid, Residential School Remembrance

By ELI PALLRAND Sun Staff Writer

At Thursday’s Student Assembly meeting, representatives and students questioned Jonathan Burdick, vice provost for enrollment, regarding extended delays in the distribution of financial aid money.

The assembly also approved a resolution calling on the University to officially recognize National Day of Remembrance for the U.S. Indian Boarding Schools, debated Professional Fraternity Council diversity reporting standards and heard election results from the S.A. freshman and transfer races.

For the past two years, some students’ financial

aid has been delayed for months into the semester.

According to Burdick, at the time of this S.A. meeting, roughly 630 students — seven percent of students receiving aid — still had not received their aid and another 600 had not had their financial aid award appeals processed.

With more appeals to arrive, the S.A. condemned these shortcomings in its first meeting of the semester.

Financial aid delays have increased stress for affected students, as well as worsened a student employee shortage. Logan Morales ’22, a student manager in two dining units on campus, said he can’t hire students who have employment holds placed on their

accounts because their aid packages are still under review.

“There’s an understaffing crisis in dining units, and I cannot hire people who have holds on their accounts,” Morales said. “One person I was going to hire told me that their hold was resolved, but they’re still waiting for it to be removed from the system… so I can’t put them into the payroll.”

Burdick began his testimony on a somber note.

“We’re not succeeding in financial aid. We haven’t been succeeding in financial aid for a while, in numerous conditions,” Burdick said.

See ASSEMBLY page 3

2 The Cornell Daily Sun | Monday, October 4, 2021

Daybook

Daybook

Monday, October 4, 2021

A LISTING OF FREE CAMPUS EVENTS Tomorrow Dancing “Asia” on the Global Stage 9:40 - 10:55 a.m., Virtual Event Cornell Hawks Carving Exhibit & Meet-and-Greet With Artist David Cohen 11 a.m. - noon, Virtual Event B Invested: the Value of B Corp Certification Noon, Virtual Event Form and Object: A Talk by Tristan Garcia Noon, Virtual Event Cover Crops Field Day 1:30 - 4 p.m., Willsboro Research Farm Moral Psychology Brown Bag Series 4 p.m., Virtual Event DAVID SANDERS / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Gargoyle | Artist David Cohen will be displaying his life-sized sculpture of the Red-Tailed Hawk, Big Red, and her

first mate Ezra, two hawks who have been featured on the Cornell Lab of Orinithology’s live streaming bird cams.

Above, a female red-tailed hawk watches over her chick in a nest outside a West Harlem apartment on May 3, 2021.

Today Becoming Organic: Nature and Agriculture in the Indian Himalaya. Shaila Seshia Galvin 11 a.m., Virtual Event Introduction to Citation Management Sith Mendeley Noon, Virtual Event

www.cornellsun.com

ORIE Colloquium: Prof. Jeff Linderoth- Subspace Clustering With Missing Data via Integer Programming 4:45 p.m., Virtual Event

What the Hell Is Water? What It will be Like When Community Enagagement Is Part of the Culture on Campus 2 to 2:45 p.m., Virtual Event

H.R. Within Banking 5 p.m, Virtual Event

Language Resource Center Speaker Series Karen Lichtman 4 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., Mann Hall, 102

Master of Engineering Info Session 5 p.m., Thurston Hall, 205

Tips for Behavioral Interviews 4:45 - 5:45 p.m., Virtual Event

New York Small Scale Food Processors Association In Partnership With Cornell Cooperative Extension 7 p.m., Virtual Event

W W W .

C O R N E L L S U N .

C O M

The Cornell Daily Sun | Monday, October 4, 2021 3

News

Students Celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival Hosted by the Cornell Chinese Students Association, celebration fills Ho Plaza on Friday

By PAREESAY AFZAL Sun Contributor

Ho Plaza saw large crowds enjoying cuisine, games, dance and other festivities offered by several Asian-affinity groups at the Mid-Autumn Festival hosted by Cornell’s Chinese Students Association Friday night, after a two year hiatus.

The festival, which takes place at the end of fall harvest, is an important tradition in many East Asian and Southeast Asian communities, such as mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Taiwan. Powered by the full moon, which is believed to be at its roundest and fullest at the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar, the Festival is a time for gathering, giving thanks and praying, with similar observances in other parts of Asia, like the Japanese moon-viewing festival, o-tsukimi.

The Cornell’s Asian-interest social, professional and cultural organizations that hosted the event set up booths for Lantern-making, Tinikling –– a traditional Philippine folk dance –– and other activities that people could participate in and collect stamps for. The stamps could be used towards free food, drinks and mooncakes, the consumption of which is a tradition at the festival, after which it is also called the Mooncake Festival. At the festival, most goers spent their last stamp choosing between the red bean and the white lotus mooncake.

“The stamp card system is definitely for attendees to get food, but also to meet the organizations,” said Ava Tan ’23, one of the organizers.

Tan said that the festival’s aim was to bring everyone together to celebrate the holiday and provide exposure to the cultural organizations.

“I’m excited about the festival returning, since I was a first-year when [I] last took part,” Tan said.

The space in front of The Cornell Store on Ho Plaza was transformed into a pavilion where groups shared their dances and music. Dance teams like LOKO, one of Cornell’s K-pop and hip-hop dance groups, and Cornell Lion Dance performed. Music groups such as Yamatai Taiko, Cornell’s Japanese taiko drummers, and Cornell Eastern Music Ensemble performed traditional music pieces, some with a contemporary spin.

“Dance unites a lot of people in many cultures,” said Sofia Vaquerano ’22, the president of the Cornell Filipino Association, when asked about what CFA’s booth means to her. “[Tinikling] has been passed down in our culture for many generations.”

Vaquerano said that the CFA’s booth was intended to be interactive by offering festival-goers the chance to experience Tinikling.

“This is a chance for us to show just one aspect of our culture,” Vaquerano said, “[The]

CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mooncakes | Mooncakes were one of many tradition foods eaten at the Mid-Autumn Festival Philippines is many cultures, not just one, as it sometimes is glued together [to be].”

Musical arts were not the only performances present at the festival. Cornell Wushu, a Chinese martial arts organization, also performed a routine.

Other stalls drew in people for a game of cornhole, cups of bubble tea or a short experience in drumming. The Hong Kong Student Association’s station asked visitors to solve a riddle to earn stamps.

For Bryan Ku ’23, the organization is not only a means to bring Hong Kong cultures’ awareness to campus, but also a “safe haven for all Hong Kong students at Cornell.”

“It’s a home away from home for us,” Ku said. “Most of us are from Hong Kong; we grew up there and have our families there. This is a second home.”

Pareesay Afzal can be reached at pa323@cornell.edu.

V.P. for Enrollment Joins Student Assembly, Fielding Questions on Financial Aid and Holds on Employment Student Assembly members also discuss University acknowledgement of Indigenous mistreatment According to Burdick, half of the outstanding aid packages are being reviewed by individual counselors, and the other half are held up due to paperwork issues — such as discrepancies between tax and FAFSA/CSS data — which Burdick said has been communicated to affected students.

Burdick also said that the majority of students with outstanding aid have received an estimate, which doesn’t give them access to their funds, but acts as a credit on their bursar bills, covering expenses like housing and tuition and prevents the accumulation of late fees.

In response to daily hardships faced by students whose aid has been delayed, like being unable to pay for housing and groceries, Burdick said the financial aid office has already waived registration and late fees, and would prioritize the cases of students facing emergencies like eviction as well as using emergency funds as stop“Why do we do this?’ gap measures when and nobody had a good necessary.

“If anybody is facanswer...” ing a consequence [of delayed aid] where Jonathan Burdick they don’t have the money they need to pay those basic bills on a monthly basis, they absolutely should be coming to the financial aid office,” Burdick said.

In his preliminary remarks to the assembly, Burdick characterized the financial aid office as having been in a state of crisis for many years.

“When I arrived in [the financial aid office] in 2019 at Cornell, Cornell was already in what I would characterize as a financial aid crisis, not in the sense of spending or ability to fund students, but we had had some years of not understanding fully, and certainly not implementing fully, our responsibilities with compliance to the federal government” Burdick said with regard to accurately reporting aid distribution.

Burdick blamed the current crisis primarily on a lack of personnel in the financial aid office. He told the assembly that at one point during the summer, 16 of the financial aid office’s 33 paid positions were vacant.

Since then, Burdick reported that 12 vacancies have

been filled, with two more hirings in progress. A new 1. The U.S. unofficially recognizes Sept. 30 as a national director of financial aid has been hired and the position day of remembrance for the still-unfolding atrocities comof deputy director for undergraduate student services has mitted against Native American children at these schools: been created and filled. conversions to Christinanity, mental, physical and sexual On financial aid policy, Burdick sometimes agreed violence, including the gravesites of upwards of 6,500 with the S.A. outright and condemned University policy. children recovered at these schools.

When Joseph Mullen '24, vice president of internal oper“I find it necessary to bring awareness to the issues that ations, called a University policy preventing students from directly impact universities’ Indigenous students,” said taking campus jobs while their account is on a financial Yanenowi Logan ’22 .“We have an inherent obligation to our communities and ancestors to not allow this to be aid-related hold “ludicrous,” Burdick agreed.

“I just found out about that policy last week, and I swept under the rug.”

Through this resolution, all students are encouraged asked people who are experts in my area ‘Why do we do this?’ and nobody had a good answer, so it’s sort of lost to wear an orange shirt on September 30th to honor the in the mists of time why that’s the policy,” Burdick said. Indigenous children who never survived these institutions.

“My inclination is to think that’s something we need to change.”

But Burdick also defended the financial aid office staff Eli Pallrand can be reached at epallrand@cornellsun.com. and, in response to a question from Morgan Baker ’22, vice president of finance, about holding the office accountable to deadlines, said he believes the problem isn’t the current employees.

INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880 “People have been working very hard. We have people who’ve done thousands of reviews Editor in Chief Business Manager just on their own, just to make sure that we Kathryn Stamm ’22 Anushya Alandur ’23 got out as much as we could,” Burdick said.

“But the collective resource that the financial ALL DEPARTMENTS (607) 273-3606 aid office needed has been missing for at least Business: For questions regarding advertising, classifieds, subscriptions or delivery a year.” problems, please call from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday.

Ultimately, Burdick said that most outNews: To report breaking news or story ideas, please call after 5 p.m., SundayThursday. standing financial aid awards would be released in the first weeks of October, with SEND A FAX (607) 273-0746 the beginning of pre-registration for Spring VISIT THE OFFICE 139 W. State Street, Ithaca, N.Y. courses in November serving as a hard deadT HE SUN ONLINE www.cornellsun.com line to release all aid.

E-MAIL sunmailbox@cornellsun.com In addition to discussions about financial aid, the S.A. also voted on Resolution 30, Postal Information: The Cornell Daily Sun (USPS 132680 ISSN 1095-8169) is published by the Cornell which calls for Cornell University to declare Daily Sun, a New York corporation, 139 W. State St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. The Sun is published Monday, Orange Shirt Day as an official day of recogTuesday and Thursday during the academic year, and every weekday online. Four special issues — one nition and solidarity with Indigineous chilfor Cornell Days in April, one for seniors in May, one for alumni in June and one for incoming freshmen in July — make for a total of 89 issues per year. Subscriptions are: $84.00 for fall term, $86.00 for dren who were victims of United States and spring term and $170.00 for both terms if paid in advance. Standard postage paid at Ithaca, New York.

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The resolution passed with a vote of 17-0-

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A&C

4 | The Corne¬ Daily Sun | Monday, October 4, 2021

&

Who Even Is David Sedaris?

TILDA WILSON SUN GRAPHICS STAFF

David Sedaris opened his reading at the State Theatre on Sept. 25 by telling us that, unlike his friend Ann Patchett, he was perfectly willing to be the reason people crowd into a theater and risk COVID-19. “I bought all these outfits,” he explained, stepping out from behind his podium and doing a slow twirl. Back at his microphone, he informed us that he’d chosen this pair of his signature culottes because the red patterned fabric looked like it was taken from the drapes at a cheap motel.

I’ll admit the pattern looked like it would fit right in at a Best Western, but I find it hard to believe his pants were cheap. In a 2016 essay entitled “Shopping in Tokyo,” Sedaris described purchasing a pair of “artfully handstitched Clown pants” that cost “as much as a MacBook Air.” Out of context this kind of purchase seems bizarre and frivolous, and perhaps it is, but in Sedaris’ case it can also be seen as a sound investment in his personal brand.

David Sedaris revels in being the kind of person who spends thousands of dollars on ostentatious clothing or taxidermy owls or, in one essay, an “eighteenth-century scientific model of the human throat.” In writing, he presents himself as over-the-top to the point that it’s difficult to believe he’s not making it up or exaggerating. When he shows off his culottes, it’s like he’s proving himself to his audience: “Yes,” he seems to say,

I

“I’m really like this in person.

After reading his 2018 collection Calypso, I began to wonder if Sedaris’ writing leaned too far into this wealthy and eccentric persona to be relatable in the way his earlier collections are. Sedaris

the vaccine, it was difficult not to look around at his fully masked audience and think “easy for you to say.”

Still, the reading reminded me of the kinds of themes and tensions that Sedaris navigates so beautifully in his best writ-

JULIA NAGEL / ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

writes about his day-to-day life, but now that this day-to-day life consists of purchasing homes rather than the minimum wage employment of the “Santaland Diaries” days, his writing has become less observational and more performative. The essays Sedaris read on Saturday displayed moments of this issue. When he talked about deciding COVID-19 was no longer an issue the moment he got

ing. The two full essays he read told the story of the kind person his father became in his final days of life at an old folks home, and his father’s history of sexually abusive behavior towards his children. There’s something impossible to articulate about caring for and about family members who have done inexcusably horrible things. Instead of trying to explain it all, Sedaris finds the space to

laugh at the absurd, contradictory, and sad in his life. This humor finds room for the audience to laugh too — at Sedaris and at ourselves. Perhaps we don’t all wear culottes, but on some level we all know what it’s like to have a complicated relationship with family, and it’s a relief to be able to laugh about it.

After the reading, Sedaris did a short Q&A. I noticed for the first time that the audience was mostly older adults after he informed us that he no longer allows college students to pick him up from the airport because their trunks are always full. In the back of the signing line, my friend and I exchanged jokes about how angry he’d sounded — scrunching up faces and saying things like “kids these days” and “the youths.”

Then, when we finally got to the front of the line, he looked at my other twentyyear-old friend and said “Who are you?

Are you fourteen?” On the walk back to our car we laughed and laughed about our encounter, repeating the question “who are you?” back and forth ad nauseum. David Sedaris could entertain us, but he doesn’t know us. By the time we reached the car, the topic shifted, and I found myself trying to articulate what it was like when my grandfather died after years of intentional distance from his family. Buckling my seatbelt, I glanced back at the trunk of our car. OK, so he’s not wrong about that.

Tilda Wilson is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at mrw286@cornell.edu.

The Self-Branding of the Cool Kids

first began to notice how coolness manifests at Cornell when I became a frequent visitor of the Green Dragon Cafe. When I was a freshman, I would flock there almost every day to avoid spending time in my double on North Campus. For a freshman still in search of his communities on campus, the student-run cafe was the space where I felt the most at home. In the dungeon-like cafe, I spent my formative college years pretending to study, missing my 11:59 p.m. deadlines and meeting some of my best friends at Cornell.

A huge part Green Dragon’s appeal is to not only see people there but to be seen by these people. Such visibility gives me a platform to express myself. After all, self-expression is fundamentally contingent upon the presence of an audience, and Green Dragon precisely offers that. It was a liberating experience to feel that I can be authentic with my self-expression and that it’s absolutely fine not to like the same things as the rest of the campus.

With three years of observation under my belt, I can say with confidence that I’m not alone in my experience. Trust me, no one goes there just for the coffee. It’s about the vibe, the music (it can be hit or miss depending on the barista), the aesthetics and most importantly –– the people. These people are essential to shaping the space into an inclusive enclave, a rarity on Cornell’s campus. That’s the primary reason why I became a regular,

ARTS & CULTURE

but I also can’t deny that the coolness associated with the space plays a role in my constant visits.

People who go to Green Dragon are cool. That’s what many people probably think. But more importantly, it’s also what many who do go to Green Dragon would like to think is true. Yet proving yourself as cool is not as simple as just being in the same space. You might be cool if you go to

We have nothing to lose for being inclusive.

Green Dragon, but you’re actually cool if you can prove that you belong there.

Now back to the question –– how do we prove that we’re cool? We kind of know that, and we are already kind of doing that, yet we are somewhat at a loss when we’re asked to explain why we do what we do.

The public has always struggled to articulate what it means to be cool. The amorphous quality of coolness often becomes its very mystifying aura. This has in turn made the concept under-discussed in our cultural discourses despite its pervasiveness. Yet this layer of perplexity makes

total sense; coolness is inherently elusive as it is rooted in our expression of youth subcultures. These are symbols, tastes and styles that are never meant to be widely circulated. These are cultures that are supposed to be on the margins and away from the mainstream. Proving that you’re cool is essentially proving that you’re “in the know” of these youth subcultures.

Articulating coolness essentially means being youthful, deviant and rebellious.

These qualities are manifested through the expression of your tastes. Being cool essentially means being tasteful; the music you listen to has to be underground, and you have to make a statement of resistance with your fashion choice.

You have to dress your part, be in the right space and know the right people.

Your taste is manifested not only through your own tastes but also through the tastes of others. If you’re friends with those who are already deemed as cool, then you’re infinitely cooler than the rest of us. And here we are with this vicious cycle of clout chasing.

Cool kids continue to gatekeep to maintain their power and status within the communities, and aspiring cool kids do whatever it takes to prove to the cool kids that they’re worthy of a place in their communities. And that’s how the hierarchy of coolness is perpetuated by the tension between two classes –– people who are already deemed as cool and people who want to be deemed cool.

Sounds a bit like Greek life rather than youth subcultures, no? It saddens me to witness how this is happening even within

Stephen Yang Rewiring Technoculture

safe enclaves on the margins. Sociologist Sarah Thornton coined the term “subcultural capital” to describe the hierarchical logic of differentiation happening within youth subcultures. What we are witnessing now is the exploitation of subcultural capital as means to elevate ourselves.

We’re losing everything if we don’t dismantle the subcultural hierarchy in these spaces. We have nothing to lose for being inclusive, yet we will lose everything if we continue to perpetuate the self-destructive hierarchy rooted in the exploitation of alterity and marginality.

So yeah, before it’s too late, tell the newcomers there’s no need to prove to anyone that you’re cool. Tell them they’re inherently cool if they’re being authentic already.

Stephen Yang is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at sy364@cornell.edu.

A&C

Monday, October 4, 2021 | The Corne¬ Daily Sun | 5

An Afternoon With The Sirens of 114 Central Avenue

AMY WANG SUN ARTS STAFF

On Saturday, Sept. 25, I was tired of everything. I wanted to get the laundry done by noon, but due to oversleeping and the sad reality of our dorm’s laundry room, the whole process took me several more hours than I planned.

At the end of this I badly wanted to get away. A memory of whalesong was thrumming in my mind.

Evening, earlier that week. After a rain there was a glorious sunset, a profusion of grey-blue clouds scattered like

nal reality’ that whales face.” And for good reason. Although the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) moved humpback whales from “Vulnerable” to “Least Concern” status in 2008, several populations are still considered endangered by the NOAA. And so in the darkened room that housed the source of that siren’s song, what loomed over me was not photos or paintings of whales, nor even a sculpture — but a structure like a tent made of nets, stretched all the way from floor to ceiling. Light spilled over it from below, unearthly: now violet, now green, now a

beauty was threaded through with their significance, entwined in the mesh like any strand of fiber. Not only a celebration, the installation felt like a memorial — and a warning of things to come.

At the back of the room there I found a padded bench, wide enough for perhaps two people. It didn’t seem too popular. I sat down and closed my eyes.

Time seemed to dilate. Whalesong washed over me, ebbing and flowing.

Occasionally other visitors would pass in and out, but in the room with the echoing music, I felt like a pebble in a stream.

craved open air.

Imagine my surprise when, opening the door to the roof, I heard those wails and squeaks again. The siren’s song had followed me. I walked out towards the edge, and took in the view: the sun, the trees, and beyond them Cayuga Lake, with whalesong billowing out into the bright sky.

A row of reclining chairs were laid out nearby. I walked over and laid down. A light-show played above, which on the way out I would learn was “Cosmos,” a homage to Carl Sagan by Leo Villareal.

Eyes closed again, I noticed more

deep and abyssal blue. The sound came from above. At times high-pitched and piercing, at times low and resonant.

Always haunting, like the spirits of those

Eventually, I got up and climbed the spiral staircase that led to a small platform overlooking the installation.

One could almost — but not quite —

nuances in the sounds. Sometimes, they resembled barks — a big dog and a small dog. Sometimes a rooster, or a door hinge. At one point, something that sounded like a call and response. It made me reflective.

In my desire for escapism, had I smeared the humpbacks with my alltoo-human ideas of otherworldliness?

Unlike Homer’s sirens, whales have no wings with which to take flight. They are bound to the ocean as it warms and fills with nets, as much as we are bound to the Earth, for all our airplanes and attempts at rocketry.

Just days ago, the U.S. removed 23 species from its endangered species list — due to extinction. And while the humpback may no longer be teetering on the edge, it seems an awful tragicomedy that we humans, once an insignificant population of bipedal apes, now hold their doom and salvation in the palms of our knobby hands.

Yet they sing on, these “improvisational composers” who change their song with every breeding season, who leave us only to wonder at its meaning.

A lullaby, a threnody, or a love song for life with all its terrors, from the blue light of birth to death’s watery cradle?

Who is to say? And who is to decide how long they have left to sing?

After a while I picked myself up from the seat and went back down the stairs, still with the music playing at my back, filling the air with the scent of imaginary salt.

COURTESY OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

tattered sails over the opal light. As the chimes from McGraw began to sound, they were threaded through with a different kind of music. Shrill chirps and clicks; long, mournful bellows — as if campus had been transported directly into the mesopelagic zone. It sounded like something dying. It was transcendent.

The moment that I’d found out about it, I’d promised to myself that I would go listen to the whales at the Johnson’s new installation, Siren — Listening to Another Species on Earth.

A collaborative work by sound artist Annie Lewandowski, artist and coder Kyle McDonald and scenic designer Amy Rubin, Siren was part of the Whale Listening Project at Cornell, running from Sept. 23 to 26.

And so I went. Over the bridge and through the woods — that is to say, over Fall Creek via the suspension bridge past Risley and through the woods past University Avenue. The day was warmer than I’d expected. I stepped into the Johnson a sweaty and disheveled visitor, not a student journalist of good comportment.

Still, I’d made it! That was the important thing. Instantly it was audible. Even from one floor down, in the sunlit lobby, I could hear that same singing — ethereal and disconcerting, pained, mesmerizing.

I placed my water bottle in one of the collection bins. I readied myself. I went up the stairs.

According to an article by David Nutt of The Cornell Chronicle, “Lewandowski wanted to represent ‘the beauty of the interior world through the creative mind of the singer’ as well as ‘the harsh exter-

COURTESY OF THE WHALE LISTENING PROJECT

lost at sea. Like a shrine to forgotten gods in an underwater cavern.

But this is our epoch. A human epoch.

And in it, not even gods are invulnerable. As Siren’s description explained: “According to research at the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, 70 to 85 percent of humpbacks and North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine show signs of entanglement scarring.”

Though the ropes were undoubtedly artificial, the lighting gave them an organic look, like kelp or coral. But this

get a good view of the entangled nets, the spectral light. The sounds, however, were just as audible. I entertained fanciful thoughts of climbing up onto the rim of the staircase to get a better view, but decided against it. No vista was worth a fractured hip.

Instead, I climbed. Up, up, and out — or so I thought — of the installation proper. I had never been to the upper levels of the Johnson, and I thought I should at least get a look while I was here. The other exhibits seemed incidental. After that underwater temple, I

Amy Wang is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at saw289@cornell.edu.

ARTS & CULTURE

Opinion

The Corne¬ Daily Sun Independent Since 1880 139th Editorial Board KATHRYN STAMM ’22 Editor in Chief

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Business Manager

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Tom the Dancing Bug

by Ruben Bolling

H

Happiness 101: A Survey Course

ow can I be happy at Cornell?

Better yet, what does happiness in college even look like?

For me, a quick answer would be a good grade on the Spanish prelim I’ve been dreading. That would certainly take some stress off my shoulders. But, that still doesn’t answer the question. Does a good grade on a test make me happy? Let me pose this scenario differently. Do good marks on a single exam give me more day-to-day life satisfaction than, say, a consistent workout regime, good relationships with my friends or even just healthy habits? For you, the answer may vary, but for myself, I’d say that any three alternatives would make me happier than an “A.” So, maybe the question of happiness is harder to answer than it seems.

Why am I rambling on about happiness? Well, it’s been on my mind a lot recently. Not because I’m undergoing some kind of spiritual awakening or anything of that nature. Rather, I’ve been mulling it over because I’ve been academically obligated to. Seriously, for the past five days, I’ve been tasked with keeping a daily happiness diary where I report up to fourteen times a day how happy and how anxious I’m feeling at any given moment. To all you engineers and STEM majors feeling a little jealous right now, yes, this is a real class assignment and, yes, it’s for a grade.

Eat your heart out.

Good-natured ribs aside, the diary was a project assigned to us as part of my European Politics class’s unit on world happiness trends. Similar to the observational studies that produce country data , our diaries asked us at episodic moments in our day to categorize our general happiness and anxiety levels on a scale from zero to ten. Throughout the week I had moments as low as a four and as high ten but overall, I averaged about a seven-anda-half for happiness.

What was more insightful, though, were the patterns that emerged throughout my week. Exercising, isolated moments with friends, dinner with my roommates and moments of purposeful activity consistently scored the highest, grabbing eights, mostly nines and a few tens.

On the other hand, finishing a good interview, getting a good grade on an

assignment or finding out I made it into a new club seemed to underperform at the seven-level. They were still happiness-inducing but not to the same extreme. Big picture accomplishments that should’ve been making me jump for joy weren’t eliciting that response. This posed another question: At a school fueled by high (and sometimes over) achievement, what could make me happier than success and accomplishments?? What can I glean from this to be a “happier” person?

I’d say the clearest conclusion I drew is that consistent little wins made me happier than the achievement of a large goal. Going back to the grade example, instead of setting an end-product goal of an “A,” I say “my goal is to study twenty minutes each day.” Accomplishing something like that is not only more attainable but allows me to be happy seeing growth rather than focusing on some far-off result.

Focusing on instilling success-inducing habits can be more satisfying than the success itself.

Outside of school, it was important for me to find a community of people who I care for and care for me. My happiest episodes came when I was sharing a moment with someone else. Even if it didn’t have the sparkle of a new job, I found that it was these minutes I spent together with people important to me that made a lasting impression on my day.

Now, my self-evaluation isn’t designed to be taken as advice. But, maybe my musings can offer you some advice on happiness. I’d say that at the bare minimum, our happiness diaries were an interesting foray into reflection. “Am I happy?,” is a question we don’t get to ask ourselves enough as college students.

We’re told to shoot for the stars, get high-powered internships and earn good grades because those are markers of success, but success and happiness are not one and the same.

For me, it was the stuff in between achievements that got me out of bed in the morning. Acing Happiness 101 may mean something else for you but don’t forget it’s a survey course. Don’t plod along without asking the right questions. “Does this make me happy?,” “Am I happy now?” — these are questions whose answers may require a little bit more thought than anticipated.

We’re told to shoot for the stars, get high-powered internships and earn good grades because those are markers of success, but success and happiness are not one and the same.

Comics and Puzzles

The Cornell Daily Sun | Monday, October 4, 2021 7

Sundoku Fill in the empty cells, one number in each, so that each column, row, and region contains the numbers 1-9 exactly once. Each number in the solution therefore occurs only once in each of the three “directions,” hence the “single numbers” implied by the puzzle’s name.

(Rules from wikipedia.org/wiki/ Sudoku)

Puzzle 3784

HOPSCOTCH 6 9

5

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I Am Going To Be Small

Mr. Gnu

by Travis Dandro

Mr. Gnu

by Travis Dandro

“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Pick up a copy of

The Sun American Affairs Desk

by Mark Kaufman

The Corne¬ Daily Sun

Sports

MONDAY OCTOBER 4, 2021

8

FOOTBALL

Cornell Falls to 0-3 after Loss to Bucknell Red fails to overcome Bison’s fourth-quarter surge

JULIA NAGEL / SUN ASSISTANT PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

In a rush | Cornell is seen playing against the Virginia Military Institute in its September 18, 2021 Homecoming game.

By WILL BODENMAN and LUKE PICHINI Sun Assistant Sports Editor and Sun Sports Editor

In the battle of the ’Nells, Cornell and Bucknell both sought their first victories of the season after getting off to slow starts. To start the season, the Red sustained two competitive losses to VMI and Yale, while Bucknell was outscored by its opponents, 106-9, in its first three games.

Though the Red had a better track record than the Bison in the early stages of the season, that did not show on Saturday afternoon. After holding a narrow lead through the first three quarters, Cornell lost control as Bucknell surged with two fourth-quarter touchdowns to defeat the Red, 21-10.

Both the Red and the Bisons struggled to get things moving early, failing to score in the first quarter before entering halftime with a touchdown each.

Penalties and struggles in the run game plagued the Red’s

After holding a narrow lead through the first three quarters, Cornell lost control as Bucknell surged with two fourth-quarter touchdowns to defeat the Red, 21-10. first two drives. The highlight of the first two drives was a 47-yard dime thrown by senior quarterback Ben Mays to senior wide receiver Curtis Raymond III, but the drive ultimately stalled at the Bucknell 39-yard line.

Senior punter Koby Kiefer landed a beautiful punt to give the Bison possession at their own 1-yard line. Fifthyear cornerback Kenan Clarke’s defensive pass interference penalty on wide receiver Dominic Lyles allowed the Bison to gain 15 yards, but they were unable to move the sticks before punting back to the Red. On the next drive, Mays found Raymond again for another deep gain, bringing the Red to first-and-goal.

Senior running back Delonte Harrell capped off the drive backer Ben Allen was injured during the drive.

From this point forward, the game started to change for with a three-yard touchdown run up the middle to give the Red. Bucknell quickly capitalized on a few big catches Cornell a 7-0 lead.

Bucknell immediately responded with a touchdown by wide receiver Marques Owens to bring the ball to the drive of its own, opting to alternate the more mobile quar- Cornell sixteen yard line. To start the fourth quarter, runterback Tyler Beverett with passing specialist quarterback ning back Danny Meuser pushed for a fourth-down conNick Semptimphelter. After driving to the Cornell 1-yard version and then Bucknell took the lead off of a touchdown line, Beverett rushed in for a touchdown on a QB fake to reception by tight end Christian Spugnardi. The Bison, already possessing the momentum, did not let go for the tie it up for the Bison.

After a rare sack allowed by the Cornell offensive line rest of the contest.

On the Red’s ensuing drive, Mays was picked off by against Mays on third-and-long, Kiefer’s punt took a fortunate bounce to the Bucknell 30-yard cornerback Sterling Deary, whose dancing return navigated the Bison all the line with under five minutes left in C ORNELL @ B UCKNELL way up to the Cornell 28-yard line. In the half. Sophomore defensive lineman great field position, Bucknell quickly Connor Morgan delivered a huge sack capitalized, moving the sticks and then on Beverett to force a third-and-long topping off the short drive with a twothat the Bison were unable to convert. Game: 1ST 2ND 3RD 4TH FINAL yard QB fake run by Semptimphelter.

With two minutes left in the half, Cornell 0 7 3 0 10 Down 21-10, the Red needed a the Red got the ball back deep in its Bucknell o 7 0 14 21 spark. Senior wide receiver Javonni own zone after facing a penalty for running into the kicker. Mays put together Cunningham appeared to provide that a quick and efficient drive, including a pass to senior wide spark with a big kickoff return to the Bucknell 45-yard line. receiver Devan Cross past midfield, before throwing an Fifth-year quarterback Richie Kenney then replaced Mays, interception to Bucknell safety Jonathan Searcy on third and the decision appeared to pay off. Kenney completed down, forfeiting the ball in field goal range and bringing passes to senior wide receiver Thomas Glover and fifth-year the half to a close. wide receiver Alex Kuzy, moving the Red down to the goal Although Bucknell got the ball to start the half, the line.

Bison were stopped on 3rd-and-8 and punted to the Cornell could not punch it in, and at the most inopCornell 24-yard line. Mays drove the Red to score on portune time, Kenney was stripped of the ball. Bucknell the next drive after a designed eight-yard QB run up the recovered in the end zone for a touchback, effectively ending middle and a deep pass to fifth-year wide receiver Turner the Red’s hopes of a comeback with five minutes remaining DePalma placed Cornell in the red zone. After failing to in the game.

From there, Bucknell went into clock control, and the convert on third down, Red kicker Scott Lees booted a 27-yard field goal to give the Red a 10-7 lead with 7:34 Bison secured a 21-10 victory over the Red. Cornell, now 0-3, faces a tough date in Cambridge next weekend to face remaining in the quarter.

On the next drive, Bucknell was again forced to punt a Harvard team that pulled off a 38-13 victory over No. 24 after senior cornerback Kolby McGowan stopped a Beverett Holy Cross on Saturday. run on 3rd-and-11. On Cornell’s subsequent drive, Cornell was forced to punt after Mays missed his targets on a few Will Bodenman can be reached at wbodenman@cornellsun.com. deep passes and on a disrupted screen pass. Bucknell’s line- Luke Pichini can be reached at lpichini@cornellsun.com.

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