11-12-25 entire issue hi res by The Cornell Daily Sun

The Corne¬ Daily Sun

CORNELL REACHES SETTLEMENT

$60 million deal with Trump administration announced Friday

were yet to be funded. Grants that were previously deemed ineligible for funding will also be restored in full.

Nov. 7 — The University reached a settlement with the federal government to restore over $250 million in federal funds, according to a statement sent by President Michael Kotlikoff to the University community on Friday.

Cornell has agreed to give $30 million to the federal government and invest an additional $30 million into research to strengthen U.S. agriculture over the next three years.

The settlement stipulates that all funding to Cornell will be restored for grants that were paused and those that

The federal government also agreed to close all ongoing Civil Rights Title VI investigations into Cornell. The University does not admit to any wrongdoing and “expressly denies liability with respect to the subject matter of the Investigations,” according to the settlement.

Under the agreement, the University must provide the federal government with anonymized undergraduate admissions data, including race, grade point average and standardized test scores broken down by speciﬁc colleges on a quarterly basis in compliance with existing reg-

ulations. The data will be subjected to a “comprehensive audit by the United States.” However, the information will be “maintained conﬁdentially and exempt from public disclosure,” according to the agreement.

The settlement states that “no provision of this Agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula.”

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Gabriel Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@cornellsun.com.

How Does Cornell’s Settlement

Compare to Four Elite Colleges’ Deals?

By AMELIA GARCIA Sun Multimedia Contributor

Nov. 11 — Cornell became the ﬁfth university to reach a settlement agreement with the Trump administration on Friday, agreeing to a mix of ﬁnancial and policy concessions to restore federal funding and dismiss civil rights lawsuits.

The Sun compared Cornell’s numerical and policy agreements to the four earlier deals struck at Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University and the University of Virginia.

By the Numbers

Columbia’s deal was the ﬁrst reached and remains the most crushing, with the university seeing a $200 million ﬁne to be paid over three years. Columbia will also pay $21 million to a class claimant fund to directly compensate Columbia employees who experienced antisemitism at the university since Oct. 7, 2023.

Cornell agreed to pay $30 million to the federal government and invest an additional $30 million into research to strengthen U.S. agriculture over the

next three years, marking the second-highest payment to the federal government and overall settlement amount thus far.

Brown’s deal does not include any payments to the federal government, but instead commits $50 million over the next decade to Rhode Island workforce development programs.

UPenn and UVA’s settlements do not include ﬁnancial concessions.

By the Policies

The five universities that have reached settlements agreed to significant policy and financial concessions and have since seen their federal funding restored.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Amelia Garcia can be reached at agg76@cornell.edu.

Kotlikof Holds Virtual Town Hall

Nov. 8 — In a virtual town hall event, President Michael Kotlikoff addressed Cornell’s settlement with the federal government that reinstated frozen research funding, ﬁelding pre-screened questions from the Cornell community on Friday afternoon.

The $60 million deal effectively restored over $250 million in suspended federal funds and ended several federal discrimination investigations into Cornell. Over 80 grants totaling $40 million previously suspended by the Department of Defense were reinstated immediately, Kotlikoff said at the event.

Kotlikoff gave a brief introduction before answering questions asked in a Q&A-style discussion led by Kyle Kimball, vice president of University Relations. Among other topics addressed, Kotlikoff said the University remained ﬁnancially insecure despite the reinstatement of research funding. He also defended the University’s incorporation of federal guidelines for discrimination as a training resource for all faculty and staff.

The guidelines outline the federal government’s stance on discriminatory practices in higher education, which deem race-based decisions on admissions and hiring, diversity equity and inclusion programs, transgender athletes in sports and more as “unlawful.”

The Sun compiled the questions Kotlikoff was asked as well as his responses.

“Have the [stop-work orders] been lifted and how many, if any, amounts can you give us?”

In February, the federal government began issuing stop-work orders, rising to

over 120 orders and amounting to about $250 million in cuts by May. Stop work orders are directives from a contracting ofﬁcer to a contractor to stop all or parts of work for 90 days, at which point they expire or are extended. Provost Kavita Bala conﬁrmed that the number of active stop-work orders remained essentially unchanged in an October interview with The Sun.

In a statement on Friday, Kotlikoff said the University reached a settlement with the federal government to restore over $250 million in research funding.

See SETTLEMENT page 5

Zeinab Faraj and Benjamin Leynse can be reached at zfaraj@cornellsun.com and bleynse@cornellsun.com.

Federal ﬁnances | Cornell reached a settlement with the Trump administration to restore over $250 million in federal funding.

By ZEINAB FARAJ and BENJAMIN LEYNSE Sun Features Editor and Sun News Editor

By GABRIEL MUÑOZ Sun City Editor

AMELIA GARCIA / SUN CONTRIBUTOR, SOURCE: CNN, CREATED WITH DATAWRAPPER

MING DEMERS / SUN FILE PHOTO

Research resumes | Cornell is set to regain over $250 million in research funding.

LEV KATRECZKO / SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Midday Music in Lincoln: “Music to My Eyes” 12:30 - 1:30 p.m., Lincoln Hall B20

Building Vibrant Downtowns: Supporting Small Businesses and Revitalizing Local Economies 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., MVR 2250

Free ZUMBA! 6:30 - 7:15 p.m., Noyes Community Recreation Center

Cornell Glee Club Fall Concert 7:30 - 9 p.m., Sage Chapel Tomorrow www.cornellsun.com

SUNBURSTS: Study Season

With Tanksgiving on the horizon, Cornellians continue studying for prelims and preparing projects

By SUN PHOTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT

SUNDOWN STUDYING | Students study under the moonlight in the Uris Library Cocktail Lounge.

ARTS AND BOOK TOWERS | Architecture, Art, and Planning students lock in at the Mui Ho Fine Arts Library.

BIRD’S EYE | Two students work together at Temple of Zeus.

COFFEE AND CANVAS | Students caffeinate and refuel in Novick’s Cafe.

WINDOWS INTO THE MIND | Students study in Olin Library as seen from the Arts Quad.

QUIET ON SET | Students study by the ﬁreplace in the A.D. White Library.

Adelaide Chow / Sun Staf Photographer

Photo

Jaein Ku / Sun Staf Photographer

Annie Park / Sun Staf Photographer

Adelaide Chow / Sun Staf Photographer

Stephan Menasche / Sun Assistant Photography Editor

TO THE STRAIGHT | Students take a break from studying while walking past Willard Straight Hall.

STUDY BREAK | Students chat in Malott Hall.

Annie Park / Sun Staf Photographer

All Forms of Sexual Assault, Misconduct Increase in 2025 University-Wide Survey

By IRIS LIANG Sun Senior Writer

Nov. 7 Editor’s Note: This article discusses sexual assault on campus.

Sexual assault and related misconduct at Cornell increased across all measures of harassment, stalking and nonconsensual sexual contact in 2025, according to the results of a campus-wide survey released in a statement to the Cornell community on Tuesday.

According to the statement from Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi, Vice President and Chief Human Resources Ofﬁcer Christine Lovely and Executive Director of the Ofﬁce of Civil Rights and Investigations at Weill Cornell Medicine Brittney Blakeney, the Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct is mandated to be conducted every two years by New York state law.

The survey measures students’ experiences with, and knowledge of, University policies and resources related to sexual assault, sexual and gender-based harassment, stalking and dating and domestic violence.

In 2025, 49 percent of respondents reported sexual or gender-based harassment, up from 45 percent in 2023 and 44 percent in 2021, according to the survey. 17 percent of respondents experienced stalking this year, compared to 13 percent in 2023 and ﬁve percent in 2021. 15 percent of respondents reported nonconsensual sexual contact, which encompasses penetrative sex, kissing, groping and choking, according to the overview of survey results. This number

rose from 11 percent reported in 2023 and 2021.

The increase in NSC is driven primarily by a rise in reports from undergraduate women, which rose to 35 percent in 2025, from 23 percent in 2023. According to the overview, “consistent with ﬁndings from previous SARM surveys, Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous-identifying women report disproportionately higher rates of nonconsensual sexual contact.” Reported rates decreased among undergraduate men, from 9 percent to 8 percent, and graduate and professional women, from 6 percent to 5 percent, over the same period.

The anonymous survey was open from April 8 to May 12, and was available to 6,000 randomly selected undergraduate and graduate students from the University’s Ithaca, Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell Tech campuses.

However, low response rates, along with

“response patterns suggesting hesitancy to disclose detailed information about incidents, limits conﬁdence in the accuracy of these estimates,” according to the overview, “Given these limitations in the 2025 survey data, the estimates of NSC and related harms are best interpreted with greater caution than those from prior administrations of the SARM survey.”

Of the 6,000 survey recipients, only 15 percent responded. This is an almost 60 percent decrease from a 36 percent response rate in 2023 and a 38 percent response rate in 2021. Undergraduate men were also the least likely to complete the survey, with a response rate of fewer than 10 percent. Graduate and professional men and women had the highest response rates of around 19 percent, while around 15 percent of undergraduate women invited responded.

“LGBAQ” students reported the highest rates of sexual or gender-based harassment,

at 65 percent. The gap is especially prevalent among undergraduate men, with 44 percent of heterosexual respondents reporting harassment, compared to 81.3 percent of LGBAQ respondents.

SARM also detailed the context of sexual misconduct incidents, including perpetrator/victim characteristics, location and response. Among undergraduate women, NSC occurred most often in residence halls, with 29 percent of incidents, fraternity chapter houses or annexes, 20 percent, off-campus housing unofficially affiliated with clubs or student organizations, 11 percent, and other off-campus residences, 23 percent. 68 percent of undergraduate women indicated that the assault took place in a North Campus residence hall, 28 percent reported West Campus, and four percent identified Collegetown/South Campus.

Alcohol was involved in a majority of incidents, and in 50 percent of cases, respondents reported being “conscious but incapacitated by alcohol or drugs.” In 62 percent of cases, the perpetrator had consumed alcohol prior to the incident, and in 55 percent of cases, the victim had done so.

In response to incidents of NSC, 23 percent of students said they had contacted a Cornell or community-based resource, a “sizable increase from the 2023 survey when about 11% of students reported contacting a resource,” according to the overview.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Iris Liang can be reached at iliang@cornellsun.com.

As SNAP Benefts Dwindle, County Resources Are Strained

By ATTICUS JOHNSON Sun Staff Writer

Nov. 10 Organizations providing food aid in Tompkins County have been strained for resources ever since the Trump Administration announced that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program beneﬁts would only be partially funded starting Nov. 1.

The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily sided with the Trump Administration and kept the $4 billion in SNAP funds the Administration was holding onto frozen.

Across Tompkins County, where 7,200 people receive SNAP beneﬁts, organizations are experiencing a marked increase in demand for basic food needs. In response to the SNAP beneﬁts freeze, the county recently pledged $50,000 in extra funds to purchase food for affected residents.

On campus, Anabel’s Grocery implemented a discount-or-donate program, where customers can self-select a 50 percent discount if experiencing “serious ﬁnancial need” amid the government shutdown. Patrons also have the option to donate $1 alongside their purchase if they are not struggling to offset some of the costs of the discount.

“We encourage people to take [the discount] only if they are experiencing some kind of ﬁnancial difﬁculty,” said Trisha Bhujle ’26, a coordinator of Anabel’s Grocery. She said that the discounts were part of “living our mission.” Bhujle also serves as a teaching assistant for the Dyson course, AEM 3385, which manages the grocery.

In the broader Tompkins community, organizations such as Mutual Aid of Tompkins County and the Salvation Army have seen increased demand, even before SNAP beneﬁts were paused earlier this month.

Captain Dave Kelly of the Ithaca Salvation Army said that there was a “40 percent increase [in need] since June,” both due to a general increase in the cost of living and the SNAP freeze.

In the past, Kelly said the store “would run out of things, but we could get things back fairly quickly.” After benefits lapsed, he said demand “is going to put a strain on the sustainability of what we have.” Kelly, who works closely with and rents out space to the food pantry, Ithaca Kitchen Cupboard, said that in order to meet expected demand, IKC purchased twice the amount of food than usual in anticipation of the first week without SNAP benefits.

This week, Kelly said they saw “twice as many families as most Mondays,” and that more people came to IKC this Monday than any other day on record.

Outside of traditional food banks, Mutual Aid of Tompkins County — which operates online as a place for people to ask other community members for aid regarding necessities like diapers or baby food — has been another organization feeling the strain of the SNAP freeze.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

IRIS LIANG / CREATED WITH DATAWRAPPER

Kotlikof Addresses Settlement, Finances, Federal DEI Guidelines

By ZEINAB FARAJ and BENJAMIN LEYNSE Sun Features Editor and Sun News Editor

SETTLEMENT

Continued from page 1

According to Kotlikoff, the Department of Defense has now restored 84 grants previously subject to stop-work orders, which equals an estimated $40.7 million. There is also a potential of $129 million in funding from the DOD to be restored for future years.

At the same time, Kotlikoff emphasized that not all of the funding has been returned, with the ongoing government shutdown complicating the government’s ability to return the funds.

“How does this agreement affect Resilient Cornell, the austerity budgets [and] do we still need to do Resilient Cornell?”

The launch of Resilient Cornell was announced on Oct. 16 in a statement to the Cornell community by Kotlikoff and other top University administrators. According to the statement, the initiative was designed to help decrease costs across all campuses via a restructuring of the University’s operations and workforce. Previous statements from the University described Cornell as facing “acute ﬁscal pressures.”

When asked about the necessity of Resilient Cornell, given the settlement and the restoration of federal funding, Kotlikoff emphasized that the issues that led to the formation of Resilient Cornell were apparent at Cornell before the stop-work orders and the frozen federal funds.

“We didn’t agree to this settlement because of our ﬁnancial issues, and the settlement itself doesn’t resolve those ﬁnancial issues,” Kotlikoff said.

Kotlikoff said that in the next few months, University administrators will be “walking through a[n] open process” with the Cornell community about how to achieve ﬁnancial sustainability and goals in the future.

“I’m reading in different articles that we have agreed to abide by the 2025 DOJ guidance, but that’s not how the agreement reads, can you describe how you see the difference?”

Kotlikoff emphasized that the Department of Justice guidance only represents guidelines and that “the University did not agree to

abide by [the guidance] as law.”

The DOJ released the “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding regarding Unlawful Discrimination” on July 29 to “ensure that recipients of federal funding do not engage in unlawful discrimination.”

The guidelines state that race-based scholarships or mentorship programs, hiring decisions and certain DEI initiatives constitute “unlawful practices.” The guidelines also state that “permitting males to compete in women’s athletic events,” including “those self-identifying as ‘women,’” violates federal law.

In the University’s settlement with the federal government, it “afﬁrmed” its compliance with federal civil rights laws and “agree[d] to include the Department of Justice’s ‘Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination’ of July 29, 2025 as a training resource to faculty and staff.”

“The agreement is being a little bit mischaracterized,” Kotlikoff. “We agreed to use the 2025 Department of Justice guidance as a resource for training our faculty. We have lots of resources to train our faculty and it’s important to understand and address the government’s view of eliminating discrimination on campus.”

“Why did you negotiate with the government at all?”

Kotlikoff told the townhall that he has been asked “a lot” why the University decided to negotiate with the government and pointed out that it has been a “very, very difﬁcult time” for faculty, staff and students at the University — speciﬁcally for those whose research funding was cut.

“All of that compelled us to try and understand what the issues were with the government and also to see if we could resolve those amicably,” Kotlikoff said.

He also explained that the government expressed “reasonable concerns” about discrimination on campus, which, he explained that the University has addressed in the past couple of months.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Zeinab Faraj can be reached at zfaraj@cornellsun.com. Benjamin Leynse can be reached at bleynse@cornellsun.com.

Eric Stickel Named Chief of CUPD

By ZEINAB FARAJ

Nov. 6 — With more than 17 years of law-enforcement experience, Eric Stickel has officially been promoted to chief of police for the Cornell University Police Department, according to a Thursday announcement by David Honan, associate vice president for public safety.

Stickel will replace former police chief Anthony Bellamy, who announced his retirement from the position on Sept. 12. Bellamy was CUPD’s first Black chief and has more than two decades of experience on the force. Following Bellamy’s retirement, Stickel served as the interim chief of police.

Stickel is an alumnus of nearby Lansing High School, where he works as the girls soccer team’s head coach. During his time with CUPD, he has been awarded the Frank G. Hammer Officer of the Month and Tompkins County STOP DWI Award of Excellence. According to the Cornell Chronicle, Stickel is a drug recognition expert who is trained to recognize the signs of impairment in drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In 2021, Stickel and

Segregant Scott Salino were honored with the Director’s Citation for assisting a fellow officer during a life-threatening medical emergency.

“Chief Stickel has demonstrated unwavering dedication, professionalism and leadership throughout his tenure with CUPD,” Honan told the Cornell Chronicle. “This promotion is a well-deserved recognition of his service and vision for the future of CUPD.”

Stickel studied criminal justice at Lycoming College, receiving his bachelor’s degree in 2007. He also graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy’s program and is a master’s student at the University of Virginia’s Master of Public Safety program.

“I believe that relationships are only built at the speed of trust,” Stickel told the Cornell Chronicle. “Investing in social capital and our youth has been a driving force in my life. I’ve been involved in all kinds of things — school events, town parades, coaching — and I want to bring that same involvement and connection into my role now as police chief.”

Student Assembly Announces Election Results for Fall 2025

By ANANT SRINIVASAN Sun Contributor

Nov. 11 — The Student Assembly announced the results of its Fall 2025 election on Tuesday. Out of 16 ﬁrst-year and four transfer candidates running, four ﬁrstyear and one transfer student were ultimately selected to represent their respective classes.

Voting started Monday, Nov. 3, and ended on Monday, Nov. 10.

The Sun compiled the newly elected representatives’ statements submitted to The Sun during the voting period.

Freshman Representatives

This year’s elected freshman representatives are Jai Anand ’29, Myshay Causey ’29, Arman Fard ’29 and Ellie Porter ’29.

In total, 1,493 votes were cast, representing a 39 percent participation rate. There was a 38.6 percent increase in total votes cast compared to the Fall 2024 Student Assembly elections. The election process used rankedchoice voting, and after 11 rounds of counting, Anand received 273 votes, Causey received 278 votes, Fard received 221 votes and Porter received 230 votes.

In an email statement to The Sun, Anand outlined goals to ﬁx inconsistent bathroom cleaning schedules in ﬁrst-year dorms. He aims to “push for a fairer and more consistent system across North Campus” that adjusts to account for differences in usage patterns and students assigned per bathroom.

Anand plans to “keep a Google form open year-round so anyone can anonymously share questions, comments, concerns” with the Student Assembly.

Causey’s campaign highlighted mental health challenges faced by ﬁrst-year students at Cornell. In an email statement to The Sun, she promised to “limit Cornell stressors (like unnecessary fees) and create more social events for freshmen to ﬁnd their place on campus!”

“I promise to stay an assemblywoman that actively encourages students to speak out and tell me about their problems,” she wrote in the email statement.

Fard emphasized his main goal to “improve water quality and sustainability across campus” in an email statement to The Sun. He envisions a system to cycle out water fountain ﬁlters once dirty on a cost-effective, routine basis.

Fard noted that his “on-the-ground” campaign style has created genuine connections and communication channels that would help him better understand and represent the student body.

In an email statement to The Sun, Porter wrote that “students shouldn’t be paying a ﬂat rate for housing or [Cornell Academic Materials Program] CAMP only to ﬁnd that essentials like laundry and printing aren’t included.” She calls for the University to give students free allocated access to laundry and printing services.

“I will create spaces for dialogue by hosting town halls and instituting policies requiring other assembly members to do the same,” she wrote in the email statement. Transfer Representative

This year’s elected transfer representative is Zachary Yabut ’28.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun. com.

Assembly agendas | The Student Assembly announced their Fall 2025

Sun Features Editor

Zeinab Faraj can be reached at zfaraj@cornellsun. com.

The Corne¬ Daily Sun

Independent Since 1880

143rd Editorial Board

JULIA SENZON ’26

Editor in Chief

ERIC HAN ’26

Associate Editor

SOPHIA DASSER ’28

Opinion Editor

SOPHIA TORRES ’26

Advertising Manager

SYDNEY LEVINTON ’27

Arts & Culture Editor

JAMES PALM ’27

Assistant Arts & Culture Editor

JENNA LEDLEY ’27

Assistant Arts & Culture Editor

MELISSA MOON ’28

Assistant Arts & Culture Editor

SOPHIA ROMANOV IMBER ’28

Assistant Arts & Culture Editor

KAITLYN BELL ’28

Lifestyle Editor

MAIA MEHRING ’27

Lifestyle Editor

KARLIE MCGANN ’27

Photography Editor

MATTHEW KORNICZKY ’28

Assistant Photography Editor

STEPHAN MENASCHE ’28

Assistant Photography Editor

MIRELLA BERKOWITZ ’27

Video Editor

JADE DUBUCHE ’27

Multimedia Editor

HANNIA AREVALO ’27

Graphics Editor

HUNTER PETMECKY ’28

Layout Editor

RENA GEULA ’28

Layout Editor

CHRISTOPHER WALKER ’26

Games Editor

ALLISON HECHT ’26

Newsletter Editor

The Editorial Board

DOROTHY FRANCE-MILLER ’27

Managing Editor

MATTHEW KIVIAT ’27

Assistant Managing Editor

VERA SUN ’27

Business Manager

ALEX LIEW ’27

Human Resources Manager

BENJAMIN LEYNSE ’27

News Editor

VARSHA BHARGAVA ’27 News Editor

ISABELLA HANSON ’27 News Editor

CEREESE QUSBA ’27 News Editor

REEM NASRALLAH ’28

Assistant News Editor

ANGELINA TANG ’28

Assistant News Editor

KATE TURK ’27

Assistant News Editor

GABRIEL MUÑOZ ’26 City Editor

JANE HAVILAND ’28 Features Editor

ZEINAB FARAJ ’28

Features Editor

JEREMIAH JUNG ’28

Assistant News Editor

KAITLIN CHUNG ’26

Science Editor

MARISSA GAUT ’27

Science Editor

ALEXIS ROGERS ’28

Sports Editor

MATTHEW LEONARD ’28

Assistant Sports Editor

SIMRAN LABORE ’27

Weather Editor

Te Cornell Daily Sun’s Editorial Board is a collaborative team composed of Editor-in-Chief Julia Senzon ’26, Associate Editor Eric Han ’26 and Opinion Editor Sophia Dasser ’28. Te Editorial Board’s opinions are informed by expertise, research and debate to represent Te Sun’s long-standing values. Te Sun’s editorials are independent of its news coverage, other columnists and advertisers.

Don’t Settle for the Settlement

Cornell played the game.

The University lobbied historic amounts. Administrators talked to the federal government. They worked to make a case to alumni and the American people about Cornell’s value and values.

After nine months of crucial research projects and the livelihood of faculty members being held in limbo, Cornell has reclaimed over $250 million in federal research funding and settled its civil rights lawsuits — for the price tag of $60 million, split between the federal government and an investment in agricultural research, as well as a laundry list of policy agreements.

It is natural to view the settlement agreement as the decisive ending to a chapter. But while the funding freeze and active litigation may be settled, the impact of this agreement is not. The legacy of the settlement will not be evident within the written text of the agreement, but rather in its subsequent use cases and implications.

Keep your eyes on the impacts. Do not be resigned. We must carefully observe, question and criticize the inﬂuence of the federal government and administrative choices on our academics, admissions and research.

1. Agricultural Research Investment

The partial diversion of ﬁnancial concessions away from the federal government in the settlement process constitutes a partial win for academic independence. Further, Cornell’s commitment to a $30 million investment in agricultural research deeply aligns with the University’s mission and legacy.

However, it is essential to pinpoint who

Nate Foster

Nate Foster is a professor of computer science in the College of Computing and Information Science. He can be reached at jnfoster@cs.cornell.edu.

“Any Person, Any Study” — If You Can Keep It

Last Friday, Cornell made a deal with the Trump administration. The settlement restores millions in federal funding while avoiding explicit limits on university autonomy. Cornell’s leaders have framed the deal as a deft compromise — a way to move forward without betraying our principles.

At a town hall, President Michael Kotlikoff said, “Cornell simply, in this agreement, agreed to obey the law.” Unlike other universities, he emphasized, Cornell did not accept an outside monitor or agree to provide data to the government “beyond what they are permitted by the law.” Nor, he added, did Cornell agree to follow interpretations of the law that “have not been adjudicated in the courts or interpreted by judges.”

But the text of the settlement tells a more complicated story. Cornell agreed to submit detailed admissions data to the government, to provide federal guidance on hiring and diversity policies as a resource in required training for faculty and staff and to certify compliance every three months under penalty of perjury.

In a statement, Cornell’s AAUP chapter observed that the pledge to share admissions data appears to go beyond what is legally required and noted the federal guidance conﬂicts with settled civil rights precedent. There are also concerns that the settlement provides openings for ongoing government pressure and risks chilling effects.

Meanwhile, Trump administration ofﬁcials are celebrating the deal as a victory. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon

called it a “transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEI policies.” A White House fact sheet said the president is “holding elite universities accountable,” highlighting Cornell’s promise to provide “all relevant data” to “rigorously assess” compliance with “merit-based admissions.”

So, is the settlement a clever negotiation or a capitulation? The answer isn’t yet clear and will play out in the months and years ahead, on campus and in courtrooms.

But to me, the deal feels like a retreat.

In Sweezy v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court identiﬁed four “essential freedoms” for a university: “to determine for itself on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study.”

Seen in this light, any agreement that allows politicians to shape admissions, hiring, or campus programming — whether directly or via indirect pressure — concedes ground that was not traditionally up for negotiation. Accepting terms that cast as suspect legitimate efforts to expand diversity forfeits one of Cornell’s greatest strengths and lends credibility to efforts that seem designed to narrow opportunity.

The sense of disappointment is especially sharp because Cornell has long led by example. Diversity and inclusion aren’t new ideas on the hill. Ezra Cornell’s promise of an institution “where any person can ﬁnd instruction in any study” has guided the University since its founding.

To continue reading, visit www.cornellsun.com.

Committee on the Future of the American University

Te Committee on the Future of the American University is a group of 18 faculty appointed by the provost to explore how the university can evolve to best serve future generations while pursuing its core mission of education, scholarship, public impact, and community engagement. Tey welcome ideas and feedback at fau@cornell.edu.

Join Us in Imagining the Future of Higher Education

will actually beneﬁt from such research.

The New York Times reported that “The agricultural research planned by Cornell will involve the use of artiﬁcial intelligence and robotics in farming.”

Novel AI technology can be utilized to more effectively monitor and predict climate patterns and crop health. Data-driven decisions can be leveraged to obtain higher crop yields and minimize waste.

But efﬁciency comes at a cost. AI models degrade the environment through requiring staggering amounts of electricity and water, with climate impacts that hurt agriculture itself. Data centers disproportionately affect minority and low-income areas, which pay health costs for private gain in the name of technological innovations.

These costs are hitting our own community. In the neighboring town of Lansing, a proposed data center has raised environmental concerns, including the potential use of lake water intake to dissipate exhaust heat.

Agricultural investment must not be an act of greenwashing. It must center sustainability, especially through the inclusion of Indigenous voices, which have been historically silenced, including by Cornell.

The Morrill Act of 1862 provided grants in the form of federal land to states to fund colleges “to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts.”

But there were cruel implications of this act — land-grant institutions built their endowments off the disenfranchisement of indigenous people and the selling and exploitation of the land.

To continue reading, visit www.cornellsun.com.

When ChatGPT can do your homework, you might wonder: What’s the point of a university? These days, many people are questioning what universities are good for, and whether they might be as out-of-date as dial-up internet. Maybe today’s universities should be changed: different kinds of classes, different kinds of degrees, different kinds of campus life. Or maybe they should evolve into something that doesn’t look like today’s colleges at all.

What do you think Cornell should look like in the coming decades?

These are the kinds of questions we’ll be asking you in the coming months. “We” are the Provost’s Committee on the Future of the American University. Our job is to work with you — the Cornell community — to envision what Cornell should become in the coming decades.

At a time when technology is transforming rapidly, the federal government is shifting how it works with universities, and many people see colleges as too expensive, too out of touch or too liberal, how do we want to move forward as a community? What is our vision of who we can be?

To answer these questions, we’ll be holding a series of community events. The ﬁrst event took place last Tuesday, when students, faculty, staff and community members met to debate the question, “Does AI do more harm than good in higher education?”

The discussion, moderated by Doug Sprei from the College Debates and Discourse Alliance, centered on whether and to what degree AI tools support learning or do the learning for us. Some students described the beneﬁts of having access to a 24/7 personalized tutor to answer their questions, while others decried outsourcing thinking to a machine. One professor described how different Cornell is today from his college

experience in the 1960s and ’70s, likening AI to the barbiturates that were popular then: something that seems fun, but in the end just wastes your time.

Participants debated whether the goal of higher education is to learn facts and skills in preparation for a particular career or whether the goal is to learn how to think. Many agreed that AI could aid the ﬁrst goal, but not the second. The conversation highlighted the complex trade-offs in considering how we should incorporate AI into the learning experience at Cornell.

Our next event will be on Nov. 18, when John Tomasi of Heterodox Academy will be speaking on “The University at a Crossroads — and How We Can Build Cultures of Open Inquiry.”

In an age of political polarization, universities have been caught in the crosshairs. As largely left-leaning institutions, they are often accused of siding with the left and sidelining conservative and libertarian perspectives. The federal government has cited the need for open inquiry — the freedom to question common assumptions and viewpoints — as a reason to withhold grant support and pursue Justice Department inquiries into university practices.

Yet at the same time, this pressure can itself threaten open inquiry when it limits the topics and perspectives that are deemed allowable at universities. Tomasi will discuss a third way: how universities can intentionally build a culture where students, faculty and staff can feel comfortable engaging with a variety of viewpoints and constructively disagree with one another.

We invite you to bring your concerns and ideas (and disagreements) to this conversation.

Signed, Phoebe Sengers, co-chair

Lali Tobin

Te Lali Times

Lali Tobin MPA ’27 is an Opinion Columnist and a master's student at the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Her monthly column, Te Lali Times, explores public policy and politics through diﬀerent lenses. She can be reached at ltobin@cornellsun.com.

Scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, it's hard to avoid the wave of strong opinions on politics. Social media influencers who once shared makeup tips or dance challenges are now discussing political endorsements, reminding others to register to vote and explaining policies in short videos. For many students voting for the first time, these creators are often the most prominent and influential voices they encounter. Whether this shift is positive or negative for honest civic engagement remains to be seen. Te growing presence of influencers in politics is no accident. Campaigns and advocacy organizations understand that traditional advertisements and yard signs no longer reach 18-to-24-year-olds. So instead, they collaborate with influencers who already command large, trusted audiences in

Mihir Steingard Common Matters

TikTok Democracy

an attempt to tap into genuine youth civic participation. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey indicated that almost half of adults under 30 years old receive at least some news from TikTok and many trust inﬂuencers more than established political ﬁgures. With most Cornell students being between 18 and 28, this trend has a direct impact on our campus.

Influencers help lower the barriers that typically discourage young voters. Traditional news outlets tend to be dense, technical or out of touch. Influencers translate policies into relatable, everyday experiences — connecting climate policy to the weather in your city or tuition reform to student loans or reproductive rights to college culture. When an influencer says, “Tis policy could raise your tuition bill,” it lands more effectively than a full-length political news article. And with the lack of standardized civics classes in the U.S., influencers take on the role of the informal teacher in the classroom of American politics, one that is always connected to its pupils.

Still, relying on inﬂuencers for civic education and political facts comes with its own set of risks. Algorithms reward engagement not accuracy, independent of whether that engagement comes from controversy or collaboration is irrelevant. Tis gives space for inﬂuencers who push sensational or polarizing content to the top of feeds. As a result, misinformation can spread as fast as genuine political insight as more and more creators prioritize clicks over clarity. A viral post containing false or misleading claims can sway thousands before fact-checkers can step in. For students who are already juggling their coursework, jobs and extracurricular activities, verifying everything they encounter online is often an unrealistic task.

At Cornell, these dynamics are evident. Student organizations often utilize Instagram to promote voter registration and campaign initiatives. During election seasons, it’s common for students to share inﬂuencers’ videos discussing

candidates or ballot measures. Unfortunately, many of these shared posts lack proper sourcing or nuance, creating a blur of motivating calls to “go vote” alongside oversimplified viewpoints that misrepresent significant issues. Te real challenge for students is differentiating between genuine political education from the overwhelming digital noise.

Te University can help. Departments like Government and Communications — alongside student-led groups — can expand media literacy initiatives to help students critically evaluate online content. For undergraduate students, Cornell should require a civil literacy course to teach students how to register to vote in the State of New York — which all Cornell students have the right to do — and how to evaluate the information influencing their ballots. Workshops that focus on identifying misinformation or events that connect influencers with academic experts could effectively bridge the divide between digital trends and scholarly understanding.

It’s critical that we don’t overlook the value of influencers altogether. Teir capability to engage and mobilize young audiences is undeniable. In both 2020 and 2022, campaigns led by influencers played a crucial role in achieving record turnout among youth voters nationwide. Cornell students are no exception: many first-time voters will turn to the platforms they know bestWhile social media can mislead, it can also empower and amplify underrepresented voices. When used thoughtfully, social media becomes a tool that can educate the upcoming generation rather than manipulate. So the next time you find yourself scrolling through TikTok and come across your favorite influencer encouraging you to “go vote,” take their advice — and then go a step further. Learn what’s on the ballot, verify the information you see and decide your stance beyond the hashtags. Democracy deserves more than just a fleeting moment of your attention with a double tap.

Liking a Post Could Lose Your Internship

Vance (R-Ohio) has turned people's digital footprint into a tool for public and professional punishment — demanding consequences for those who posted comments deemed disrespectful towards Kirk. What makes this especially dangerous is not only that a sitting government oﬃcial is inﬂuencing private employment decisions but that he is doing so selectively

On Sept. 14, Vance said, “People who celebrate the killing of conservative inﬂuencer Charlie Kirk should be held accountable.” He then followed up the statement with a call to action, “Call them out, and hell, call their employer," Vance added as he guest-hosted an episode of the Charlie Kirk Show, "We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Mihir Steingard 28 is an opinion columnist studying Industrial and Labor Relations. His column, Common Matters, aims to show why common matters in politics, on campus and in society should matter to us, the common people. He can be reached at msteingard@cornellsun.com.

You could wake up tomorrow morning with your internship revoked and your life overturned. All you did was repost an Instagram reel criticizing Charlie Kirk after his death.

Right now, Americans' digital footprints are being used as a political weapon.

Most of us already know that in the age of social media, our digital footprint can impact us years down the line. To those who do not, one’s digital footprint is “the unique trail of data that a person creates while using the internet.” Put simply, a digital footprint is every post you like, website you visit and message you send online.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Vice President J.D.

Adrian Belmonte ’28 is an opinion columnist studying Government in the College of Arts & Sciences. Hailing from D.C. and Spain, his fortnightly column Saved By Te Bel has a voice as cosmopolitan as it is candid. Belmonte takes on politics and media with clarity and a touch of wit. He can be reached at abelmonte@cornellsun.com.

By his logic, you should call an employer on someone who isn’t civil towards Charlie Kirk after his death. Civility, as deﬁned by Oxford Dictionary, is “formal politeness and courtesy in behavior or speech.” Yet as the Supreme Court held in Snyder v. Phelps, “Tis Nation has chosen to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that public debate is not stiﬂed.” Being impolite does not cross the threshold — and is therefore, not a crime, and certainly not grounds for losing your job.

Vance’s rhetoric had real consequences on people who “celebrated” Kirk's death in the weeks after, especially those who went to social media to do so. Over 145 people have lost their jobs as a result of their role in social media discourse on Kirk, including an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University, an executive director of a nonprofit organization in Wisconsin and even a general manager of a burger restaurant in Minnesota. Te firings are not just for those who directly celebrated the death of Kirk. A Washington Post columnist of 11 years, Karen Attiah, was also fired for posting comments about Kirk on social media despite never celebrating his death.

Still, one could still argue that Vance isn’t suppressing views,

he's simply promoting civility. If that were true, he would apply that very standard to his own supporters.

On Oct. 14, Politico released a report detailing leaked messages sent in the Young Republican group chat of leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. Members of the group chat — many of whom are state and federal staﬀers — referred to Black people as “monkeys" and "watermelon people,” joked about putting their opponents in “gas chambers” and gloriﬁed slavery. Tey went as far as to talk about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide.

Vance’s response? Te supposed advocate for “civility” reacted to the messages saying, “Tey tell edgy, oﬀensive jokes. Tat’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very oﬀensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.” Te stark contrast in Vance's reaction sends a clear and dangerous message. Your speech will only be used against you if you disagree with the values of his leadership.

For us as students (and job seekers), that message should be chilling. Our digital footprints are public, permanent and clearly, through the actions of Vance, easy to weaponize. Social media thrives on ambiguity — does liking a post mean you support the message or are you just acknowledging it? Te lines of interpretations are blurred giving space for others to control public perception of our intentions.

My message to you is simple. Understand the risks before you post, like or comment. I’m not advocating for self censorship, but I would be lying if I told you to ignore the risks associated with your digital footprint. Make sure what you post is what you truly believe and stand by. Own what you interact with, and if it gets you in trouble, so be it.

If your digital footprint follows you for life, make sure it’s one you can defend.

Martyr of Liberty or Hate?

more than 3,000 students, supporters and curious passersbys in Utah Valley University. Most tragically, leaving behind his wife and kids, Kirk was assassinated while advocating for the very thing that killed him: ﬁrearms. Political violence is intolerable, yet that’s not exactly what I come to speak of today.

I come to paint the very landscape Kirk found himself in: the effects of hate-speech into tangible, barbaric consequences. For campuses, administrations and individuals, it is time we define the difference between free speech and hate speech. Comparatively, I think of speech as something similar to market competition: diverse voices push ideas forward, sparking growth and innovation. When a few corporations monopolize the markets, progress dies in the hands of elites. Similarly, if speech is monopolized — when a small, hateful elite dominates discourse, ideas stagnate and freedom decays.

Like the Federal Trade Commission protects fair markets, we could imagine an independent body that safeguards speech from media monopolies and extremist groups. Such regulations would not police content. Rather, it’d ensure the diversity of voices by preventing hateful or exclusionary speech.

Tis is where problems arise, however. Under precedent like Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the speech of Ku Klux Klan members was protected under the First Amendment

unless it was “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and likely to incite or produce such action.” Tis standard creates an absurd paradox: even groups built on violent ideology are legally innocent until their words cross a vaguely deﬁned line.

Applied more broadly, today’s American climate must address that same dilemma: can we limit hate speech even when it does not present prima facie evidence of imminent harm? I think we can, and in doing so we must redeﬁne the term harm — this is where I dissent from the prevailing faith in universal free speech.

Stemming from John Stuart Mill, liberty ends where it inﬂicts harm upon others — yet we’ve been desensitized to see harm only when blood is drawn or chaos unfolds. But harm often hides itself. Yet, it still festers and corrupts our speech when we deny someone's identity and replace their existence, monomanically, as dispensable.

Michel Foucault, as always, beautifully adds that discourse is never neutral; power, like harm, hides in the freedom we claim to protect. When hate goes unchecked, it decides who gets to speak and who must stay silent. To redeﬁne harm, then, is to recognize that speech which dehumanizes is not free — it is domination disguised as liberty.

To continue reading, visit www.cornellsun.com.

Adrian Belmonte Saved By Te Bel

Take Back the Tap: Reducing the Waste of Single-Use Plastic Water Bottles at Cornell

By ELSA HUELSBERGEN Sun Staff Writer

Take Back the Tap is a student-led initiative at Cornell University that was ﬁrst established in the early 2000s when the Student Assembly passed Resolution 35 called “Taking Back the Tap.”

The campaign began as part of a movement to promote water sustainability on campus that encourage students to reduce their use of single-use plastic water bottles. The organization focused on spreading awareness about the safety of tap water on campus, especially from water fountains, and ensured that water cleanliness reports from the University remained accessible to the public.

Several years ago, the organization was more involved in implementing sustainability measures, but the campaign’s activity unfortunately declined after the original leaders graduated. Some of their achievements included supplying reusable water bottles to incoming students and adding a Take Back the Tap section in a climate education module of the new student orientation.

In recent years, Take Back the Tap has been revitalized by Kamila Muraharisetti ‘’28 who was inspired to become involved with sustainability efforts after taking Prof. Caroline Levine’s, literatures in English, Communicating Climate Change freshman writing seminar as well as Levine’s upper-level course on climate communication.

In her courses, Levine introduces students to the environmental costs of bottled water, among other climate concerns. The course also provides opportunities for students to work on sustainability projects and outreach within the Cornell community and beyond.

“I think it's really important to understand what's going on with buying bottled water, which is to say it's a real scam,” Levine said.It is usually taken from public water systems and then ﬁltered and put into bottles. Those plastic bottles have a very high carbon footprint because plastics are made out of petroleum products. They generally can't be recycled.”

She also acknowledged the racial and socioeconomic injustice involved with the plastic water bottle concern. In low-income communities where it may be unsafe to drink tap water, reliance on plastic water bottles is reasonable. For example, during the Flint, Michigan water crisis.

However, while using bottled water is an easy and often accessible alternative when drinking water becomes contaminated. But long term reliance on this solution distracts from efforts to improve water quality in low income communities, furthering the gap between equal access to clean water.

This issue is exacerbated when plastic water bottle use becomes normalized in communities where water is safe and drinkable, like on many U.S. college campuses.

While teaching these courses, Levine observed a lack of student awareness regarding the safety of Cornell’s tap water as well as the consequences of plastic water bottle use.

“What I discovered three years ago when teaching this course is that none, I think zero of my environment and sustainability majors knew that the water that came from the taps at Cornell was clean, and not only clean, but better quality than what's in plastic water bottles,” Levine said.

In a class assignment, Levine asked students to conduct interviews with other stu-

dents around campus to inquire about their water use.

It came to her attention that the majority of students did not believe that tap water was safe, so through her classes she prioritized the importance of bringing the Take Back the Tap initiative to Cornell’s campus.

In doing so, her former student Muraharisetti and others have worked together to spread awareness through the creation of infographics and stickers, tabling events and visits to Cornell classes.

One prominent goal of the organization is to create a variety of stickers using Canva, which display their organization's name “Take Back the Tap” along with designs that relate to water sustainability to spark curiosity and raise awareness about the campaign.

Levine mentioned that “[Muraharisetti] is encouraging Cornell students to put [stickers] on their water bottles, laptops or the back of their phones, so that other people will ask them about ‘Take Back the Tap.’”

Recently Muraharisetti has also visited freshman writing seminars where she discusses the goals of Take Back the Tap, introduces ﬁrst-year students to the campaign's importance and invites them to join the initiative.

Muraharisetti described future goals of the organization that include placing even more stickers and posters around campus and beginning a student ambassador program. She places emphasis on encouraging more ﬁrst year students to join, in order for the initiative to have a lasting impact.

Muraharisetti said “We are trying to start a Student Ambassadors Program that would help get more people to spread the message. We want people to take stickers and put them on their water bottles, but I think our

Wasteless water | Take Back the Tap promotes drinking tap water instead of single-use plastic bottles

ultimate goal is to spread awareness that Cornell's tap water is safe, it meets EPA standards and it’s obviously better for the environment.”

Both Levine and Muraharisetti have noticed some improvement at The University where metal water bottles and paper cartons are distributed at events instead of plastic water bottles or cups.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Elsa Huelsbergen can be reached at eh586@cornell.edu.

Psychology in the Spotlight: PSYCH 4500 Brings the Mind to Life at the Sciencenter

By Susan Wu Sun Contributor

Students of PSYCH 4500 are turning psychology and cognitive science into fun, interactive exhibits for young children at the Sciencenter, a hands-on science museum in downtown Ithaca.

The course, created by Prof. Michael Goldstein and Prof. Khena Swallow in 2016, introduces students to science communication in the context of psychological sciences — not through public talks or articles, but through museum exhibits designed for children.

Although psychology and cognitive science may not be featured in science museums often, there is a strong public interest in understanding how we think, act and develop. Funded by the Einhorn Center for Community Engagement,

PSYCH 4500 seeks to address this gap.

The course begins with students reading academic literature about science communication and the role of museums in society. Students then form small teams to design exhibits for display at the Sciencenter.

One team creates a “shape factory” to teach the concept of geons: basic shapes that serve as building blocks of objects in the world. At the exhibit, children use these shapes to build ducks, and the factory produces three-dimensional rubber ducks based on their creations.

Prof. Goldstein explained that interactivity is key when designing exhibits for children.

“This is called informal learning, as opposed to formal learning that you might do in a classroom,” he said. “We’re

just trying to spark curiosity.”

Each exhibit undergoes three rounds of prototyping, with students revising their designs after each round. Exhibits have speciﬁc learning goals for different age groups, and during prototyping, students observe how children interact with the exhibits and whether the learning goals are met.

In an exhibit designed to visualize emotions, children ﬁrst choose colors and sounds that match how they feel. Then, they make emoji-like faces to represent their feelings. In their second prototype, the team added an “emotion box” where children can toss in the faces they make. The playful feature was popular among young visitors.

“One thing I really took away from this course is how important it is to talk about psychology in a way that’s fun,” said Melissa Zavala ’26, one of the team members.

Students have also learned from different guest speakers such as museum evaluators, exhibit developers and science communication experts. They will even participate in improv activities with a Performing and Media Arts professor to better engage with children.

“There’s a lot of diverse skills you’ll learn in this course,” Prof. Swallow said. The course is open to both graduate and undergraduate students and has no prerequisites. Students come from a variety of majors, including psychology, human development, economics and design + environmental analysis.

“There aren’t many classes at Cornell where you can be so creative and collaborate with all different kinds of peo-

ple to make something hands-on,” said Claire Wu ’27.

Prof. Goldstein and Prof. Swallow presented about the course at the Association for Science and Technology Centers in 2023.

“The room was packed,” Prof. Goldstein said. “Everyone gets excited when they hear about what we’re doing because they want to know how to do this, but they’ve never seen it.”

Prof. Goldstein explained that psychology as a scientiﬁc discipline is relatively young, and public perception of it often lags behind other sciences. Additionally, psychological processes are internal and less tangible, making them challenging to present in a museum setting.

Going forward, Prof. Goldstein and Prof. Swallow hope to professionally develop students’ designs. They have kept detailed user guides from every exhibit the course has ever done. Even years later, the exhibits can be rebuilt with instructions on how to build and facilitate them for learning goals.

Amid major federal cuts to the National Science Foundation’s STEMlearning programs, the professors are exploring support from small private foundations. With sufﬁcient funding, the course could evolve into the nation’s ﬁrst traveling exhibition on psychological and brain science designed for children.

“I have toured museums all over the country and in Europe,” Prof. Goldstein said. “There’s nothing like this in the world.”

FEATURE | BakedWithLoveByIvy

By Ruby Goodman

Ruby Goodman is a ﬁrst-year in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be reached at rrg86@cornell.edu.

“Continue to work towards what you’re passionate about and the rest will fall into place” is the advice Ivy Woolenberg ’29 would give to any young person chasing their dreams. Woolenberg is a prime example of this quote because she started her company from a young age and built it to what it is today.

Her first job in the kitchen was taking on the intimidating challenge of French macarons — one of the trickiest tasks a baker can be faced with. She made this first recipe with her grandmother, who is a pastry chef and after hours of work, Woolenberg “fell in love with baking.” Her early exposure to this world of messy flour, experimentations and patience led to entrepreneurial ventures like selling the tasteful baked goods, coming up with new recipes, participating with brand partnership and developing a content-focused business. Woolenberg describes the culinary world as a perfect fit for her, due to her family’s familiarity with culinary material and the fact that she has always been a creative person.

COVID-19 was the kick start to Woolenberg’s career as a content creator — who soon grew to have over 145,000 followers and a veriﬁcation badge. Woolenberg started her instagram account at the age of 11 to

showcase the mini cupcakes and cookies she was baking to sell to her friends at school. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, many young children were faced with the challenge of boredom and struggled to ﬁnd an outlet for their personal creativity, but Woolenberg “was able to take that time and capitalize on it,” really honing in on her love for baking. Due to many bakeries being closed, Woolenberg expanded her business by creating custom birthday cakes, large cupcakes orders and even hosting kids’ baking classes on Zoom. Woolenberg described that she liked the time quarantine gave her to make what she wanted when she wanted, and when it was time to go back to school, she shifted to a mostly content based business. Being one of the ﬁrst creators to hop on instagram reels, Woolenberg’s business grew immensely.

After the pandemic and the rise of Woolenberg’s social media pages, a casting agent on Instagram reached out to offer her a spot on the ﬁrst ever Disney and Tastemade’s baking show called “Disney’s Magic Bake-Off” — a show for children to compete in baking disney inspired cakes. Woolenberg took the challenge and applied for the part, along

with her best friend, and soon after they were competing as a team in the high-pressure competition and professional production setting environment.

“It was cool to be in a real production set because I’m so used to doing everything at home,” Woolenberg said. She recognizes that this idea soon became her biggest challenge with having to adapt to a new kitchen and working under a time constraint. She directly relates this adjustment of a foreign kitchen to what she is going through here at Cornell. Like moving to a new environment, baking in unfamiliar kitchens presents challenges and discomfort. Coming to Cornell and being a freshman living in the dorms, she explained ﬁnding a place to ﬁlm content was not the easiest task.

Woolenberg’s ambition to continue the expansion of her company through creativity and her platform was not something she was going to give up on while at college. She decided to look in the positive direction — as she always does — by reminding herself to “embrace having a challenge especially when it’s something you’re really passionate about” and “being able to share [her] passion here with a whole new community of people” while simultaneously all growing their skills. She notices that this makes the challenge worth it.

Woolenberg’s skills range over a wide variety, but the one that makes her stand out online the most is her creativity to come up with new recipes. Woolenberg gets inspiration for her recipes by using family traditions, eating at restaurants and watching other food content creators. An example of this is her famous “brookies” (brownie cookies). She uses her family’s chocolate chip cookie recipe as a base and combines it with a brownie recipe to create a new innovation — one of the more popular recipes on her feed.

Woolenberg explained that she loves taking something that has been around for so long and making it into something new. She does this with her seasonal baked goods by coming up with new ﬂavor combinations but keeping a base recipe. She exclaims that “once you have a foundation for baking it’s really easy to experiment and that’s the fun part.”

Woolenberg came to Cornell in pursuit of business and entrepreneurship in the hospitality industry. The Nolan School of Hotel Administration is the “perfect food business program” for Woolenberg to grow due to her interest in combining culinary arts with business. Woolenberg expresses how hospitality is a broad ﬁeld which allows her to learn about various career paths, while still learning how to grow her own business and platform. She emphasizes how the school provides a supportive community through professors, classmates and peers all with unique interests which “pushes [her] to keep innovating” and growing. Throughout Woolenberg’s four years here, she hopes to keep growing her business, explore other parts of hospitality and be inspired by the vibrant community she surrounds herself in.

Be sure to follow Ivy and stay up to date on her journey!

Instagram: @bakedwithlovebyivy

Tik Tok: @bakedwithlovebyivy

Simeon’s American Bistro: A Must-Try in Ithaca

By Martha Dolan

Martha Dolan is a sophomore in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She can be reahed at mmd289@cornell.edu.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend’s parents visited Ithaca for the weekend and they graciously treated us to dinner at Simeon’s American Bistro. For the evening, my friends and I traded our typical dining hall buffets and late-night Taco Bell runs for ﬁne dining — a rare and welcome change. It was my ﬁrst time trying out this well known restaurant, and I was eager to see if it lived up to its glowing reputation.

Conveniently located in the Downtown Ithaca Commons, Simeon’s has become a popular dining destination, drawing in Cornell students and families, as well as the wider Ithaca community. Whether the occasion be a date night, a celebratory dinner or simply a night out to enjoy good food, Simeon’s offers an inviting atmosphere and memorable experience. However, due to its popularity, it is highly recommended that you make a reservation ahead of time to secure a table.

We arrived at Simeon’s for dinner, and upon entering, I immediately felt welcomed by the warm atmosphere. The ambiance was cozy yet elegant which provided an elevated experience. The colorful walls and tasteful lighting combined to curate a sophisticated environment for dining.

We started off with some items from their appetizer menu. For our group of ﬁve, we ordered the marinated olives and warm kettle chips fondue. Both were simple and small dishes, which was just enough to hold us over to the main course. In particular, I enjoyed the crispiness of the chips paired with the warm cheese sauce, which created an enjoyable balance of texture and ﬂavor.

Before our entrées arrived, some of our group ordered a cup of their New England clam chowder. There was an overall consensus that it was just the touch of warmth we needed on a chilly October day.

For entrées, we ordered two Caesar salads (one with jumbo shrimp and one with salmon), lobster mac and cheese, roasted salmon and the ahi tuna burger. It took us quite a while to decide what to order, as the menu offers a large variety of options. There is a wide selection of choices including seafood, steak, salad and sandwiches, which proved to be both tempting and a bit overwhelming as we tried to make our decision.

My friend and I shared the mac and cheese and salmon dishes, and we were both very impressed. As a salmon lover myself, I can say that the salmon was perfectly cooked, practically melting in my mouth. It was paired with herbed pearl

couscous and assorted vegetables on the side, all enhanced by a brown butter beurre blanc (a French butter-based sauce, often used to complement ﬁsh). The elements of this meal resulted in a dish that was satisfying and indulgent without feeling too heavy. The mac and cheese also had a lovely texture and ﬂavor, with the lobster adding a luxurious touch — a combination I have not tried before but thoroughly enjoyed.

I did not try the Caesar salad, but it looked delicious. My friend (who claims to be a Caesar salad connoisseur) raved about it, noting that the jumbo shrimp served on top were filling and flavorful. I also tried a few of the house-cut frites, which came on the side of the ahi tuna burger. They were perfectly salted, and overall a solid french fry. Reflecting back on it now, we think they might even be the best french fries in the city of Ithaca.

Overall, the taste and quality of the food at Simeon’s exceeded my expectations. Each dish displayed thoughtful ﬂavor combinations and creative execution, all of which made for a satisfying and memorable meal.

We were curious to see the dessert menu, and upon asking our server, we were told that it was a visual menu. I had never heard of this before and wasn’t sure what to expect. Our server came back moments later carrying a tiered stand holding an array of various desserts in small ramekins. She described the desserts and explained that we could choose which we wanted and she would hand it to us straight from the dessert stand. I thought this was an interesting way to present desserts, to say the least, and quite honestly, I think we felt rushed into making our selection — as I mentioned earlier, we were a very indecisive group. We ultimately decided to decline and opted for ice cream from Cayuga Lake Creamery instead, located in the Dewitt Mall. This was a perfect sweet treat to end our meal, and we all felt happy and full at the end of the evening.

While Simeon’s is on the pricier side, it is a perfect spot for special occasions or as a well-earned treat when your parents are in town. It’s classy and feels like a small dose of sophistication amidst the rhythm of everyday college life. It is a quintessential dining destination that all Cornell students should try during their time in Ithaca. It is clear why Simeon’s has become such a beloved part of the restaurant scene in Ithaca.

RUBY GOODMAN / LIFESTYLE CONTRIBUTOR

MARTHA DOLAN / LIFESTYLE STAFF WRITER

Faculty Senate Resolution on Cheyftz Fails to Pass

By MATTHEW CHEN Sun Contributor

Nov. 10 — A Faculty Senate resolution condemning the University’s disciplinary process against Eric Cheyﬁtz, a former professor in literatures in English, failed to pass a vote on Oct. 31.

Cheyfitz faced a discrimination investigation after he allegedly asked an Israeli graduate student Oren Renard to leave his spring course on Gaza, “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance,” last semester, claiming he was “disruptive.” Renard filed a discrimination complaint with Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights.

The Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Status of the Faculty ruled unanimously in favor of Cheyfitz, contradicting an earlier decision by Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights, which found him in violation of federal anti-discrimination law. However, the Faculty Senate’s decision was later overturned and reinvestigated by Provost Kavita Bala. The investigation ended when Cheyfitz retired on Oct. 7.

The resolution, which had around 200 co-sponsors, addressed what the Faculty Senate saw as a failure by the administration to follow the appropriate procedures in Cheyﬁtz’s case and called on the senate to censure Cornell’s central administration, a procedure used to express formal disapproval or condemnation. The resolution also asked the University to “renew its commitment to protecting academic freedom, even in the face of political pressure.”

40 members voted in favor of passing the resolution while 54 members voted against the resolution. 21 members abstained from voting.

The vote followed a Faculty Senate meeting on Oct. 22, where top administrators, including Bala, as well as several professors, criticized the proposed resolution. The meeting ended contentiously after a professor alluded to Renard’s alleged past in Israel’s military surveillance agency before he was shouted down by faculty in the audience.

Prof. Sandra Babcock, law, and Prof. Risa Lieberwitz, industrial and labor relations, were co-sponsors of the resolution, and presented it at the Faculty Senate meeting on Oct. 22.

Babcock pointed to the number of voters who abstained as an indication of confusion surrounding Cheyfitz’s proceedings, which she saw as a key reason why the resolution failed to pass. She specifically cited Bala’s use of quotes from a confidential record that has not been disclosed to faculty senators, leaving what she saw as a “partial and biased account of what had happened in Professor Cheyfitz’s case, with inadequate means to rebut it.”

“I think that was, frankly, the reason why the resolution failed to pass,” Babcock said. “There was simply no way for us, the resolution’s sponsors, to contest the University’s version of events because we didn’t have access to the same records.”

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Common Council Approves Cuts to Fix $2.1 Million City Budget Defcit

By GABRIEL MUÑOZ Sun City Editor

Nov. 6 — Ithaca Common Council approved a measure that amends the 2026 city budget, cutting several funding lines to ﬁll a multi-million-dollar funding deﬁcit at the Wednesday council meeting.

In a unanimous vote, the alderpersons approved the plan to amend the budget originally proposed by City Manager Deb Mohlenhoff at the Oct. 21 council meeting.

The original shortage, which amounted to $2.1 million, occurred after an accounting error when the revenue data was not transferred to the budget dataset due to a “synchronization error” with the software — according to Mohlenhoff. This shortage constrained the city’s expenditures for the next year by $2.1 million.

During the public comment section of the Wednesday meeting, Mohlenhoff faced criticism from the public over the accounting error and the ﬁnancial struggles of the city.

“Terminate Miss Mohlenhoff. I can give you 2.1 million reasons why you should do that,” said James Smith, an Ithaca paramedic for Bangs Ambulance.

The original budget allocated $112.89 million to the city to cover operating expenses, services, and ﬁnance projects —an increase of $6.1 million from the 2025 budget. Mohlenhoff previously told The Sun that the increases were due to labor contracts that Ithaca signed with several worker unions, which required wage increases for workers. These unions provide public services to the city.

“The city cannot carry out its work or meet the needs of the public without our employees,” Mohlenhoff said.

An amendment to the budget that reduced city expenses by $2.4 million, based on recommendations from Mohlenhoff, was approved in a unanimous vote.

Mohlenhoff recommended cutting down on itemized funding from different city agencies. Some of the largest recommended cuts include $145,000 from the Department of Public Works, $15,000 from city advertisement, $10,000 from Ithaca Fire Department and $20,000 from the Ithaca Police Department.

Mayor Robert Cantelmo also proposed an amendment to eliminate the capital projects general fund, which was slated to go to three new IPD cars, a tracker for the Ithaca Youth Bureau and new security cameras for public safety. Cantelmo said that these short-term investments were not beneﬁcial for city ﬁnances. The motion passed unanimously.

Alderpersons were not optimistic about the budget, and many presented their own reservations about the budgeting process.

“I wish there were different choices that were given for us to consider,” said Alderperson David Shapiro (D-Third Ward). “I will plan to vote for this but I do this very begrudgingly.”

After the cuts were passed, the city ended with a small surplus in the budget, giving the city additional funding to approve a series of budget amendments. However, many still failed to gather enough support from the council.

Alderperson Clyde Lederman ’26 (D-Fifth Ward) addressed a funding shortage for the Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit in an attempt to challenge Cornell’s reluctance to take on the bus operator’s debt. TCAT faces a $1.5 million budget deﬁcit and, if not addressed, bus routes or schedules could be cut or reduced. Under TCAT’s existing system, the three existing underwriters responsible for assuming TCAT’s debt would need to contribute $500,000 each to cover the gap. The underwriters are the city, Tompkins County and Cornell.

Under Lederman’s conditional retention amendment, the city sets aside $500,000 for the TCAT, but will only pay the lowest amount committed by the other underwriters.

According to TCAT General Manager Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones, who spoke at the meeting, the University has only agreed to pay TCAT $31,000 of the $500,000 asked to address the funding shortage for operating costs.

The alderpersons criticized Cornell’s low contribution compared to the initial ask from TCAT. Cantelmo referred to the University’s offer as an “abysmally low, embarrassing, unhelpful, austerity-minded, insulting [and] parasitic offer.”

The amendment passed in a 10-to-one vote, with Alderperson Margaret Fabrizio (D-Fifth Ward) voting against the measure citing concerns about increasing the economic burden of the city.

“I think that the ask amounts to putting a bandaid on a very large wound,” Fabrizio said. “I am very worried about being asked next year for more millions of dollars.”

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Student Assembly Rejects GJAC Funding Cut, Votes to Hold Referendum on Cornell’s Disciplinary Process

student, but their appeal was ultimately rejected after a brief executive session.

Nov. 7 — The Student Assembly voted to hold a referendum to poll students about Cornell’s disciplinary process, including upper-level administration’s involvement with judicial processes and the University’s 2021 decision to replace a campus-wide code of conduct with the Student Code of Conduct. The referendum was introduced by several community members at Thursday’s meeting, and nearly 100 community members voted strongly in favor in an initial community poll conducted during the meeting.

The Assembly also rejected the ﬁnance committee’s recommended funding cut to the Gender Justice Advocacy Coalition and approved its recommendation for Cornell Minds Matter’s funding.

Funding Recommendations

The Assembly voted to reject the ﬁnance committee’s recommendation to reduce GJAC’s funding by 39 percent. A new recommendation for funding will now be drafted and discussed with GJAC, with Nov. 16 as a tentative date, according to Assembly Vice President of Finance Hayden Watkins ’28.

The decision to reject the recommended 39 percent cut came after students packed the Oct. 30 Assembly meeting and criticized proposed funding cuts for over an hour of public comment.

Also at the meeting, the ﬁnance committee’s recommendation to increase CMM’s funding by 100 percent — from 50 cents to $1.00 per student — was approved. CMM appealed this recommendation, requesting a 240 percent increase in funding, equivalent to $1.70 per

The ﬁnance committee’s recommendations for all other organizations on the agenda were pushed to next Thursday’s meeting after several voting members had to leave at 7 p.m., leaving the Assembly with too few members to continue the meeting.

Referendum on Cornell’s Disciplinary Process

The Assembly introduced a referendum regarding concerns with Cornell’s disciplinary process. The call for a referendum comes after a formal review of the Student Code of Conduct was initiated in August by Vice President of Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi, sparking dissent on campus surrounding the judicial processes of the University and the revision process itself.

Referendums consist of two questions polled to the student body via email. The Assembly can introduce referendums to “determine community opinion regarding matters of student concern” twice a year if at least three percent of the registered undergraduate student body calls for it, according to the Assembly’s charter. If a majority of participants vote in favor of the submitter(s), then the Student Assembly will communicate the results to the Ofﬁce of the President, who has 30 days to respond accordingly.

The charter tells students to anticipate collecting at least 450 signatures. The referendum’s submittees obtained around 540 student signatures.

The referendum has two questions, the first of which reads, “Prior to 2021, conduct was overseen by the Judicial Administrator, an office independent of Cornell University’s central administration. It is now overseen by the Office

of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS). Should Cornell’s judicial system be independent of the University’s administration?”

The second question reads, “As a result of the 1969 Willard Straight Hall Takeover, the conduct of students, faculty, and staff was collectively governed under the Campus Code of Conduct. In 2021, the Student Code of Conduct replaced the Campus Code. Should Cornell University return to a community-wide Campus Code of Conduct?”

Since the announcement of the Code of Conduct revision process, campus groups, students and shared governance bodies have been discussing concerns and questions regarding Cornell’s disciplinary process. The review process of the Student Code of Conduct itself faced criticism on numerous points, including that members of the Codes and Procedures Revision Committee were appointed, not elected, and the lack of shared governance involvement in the process.

The University Assembly, which was previously in charge of reviewing the Code, questioned the lack of U.A. representation on this committee and alleged a “lack of transparency” at their Aug. 26 meeting.

On Oct. 9, the Assembly passed Resolution 10: “Addressing the Administration’s Undemocratic Review of the Student Code of Conduct and Afﬁrming Cornell’s System of Shared Governance” in a 21-1-2 vote. Resolution 10 “condemns the exclusion of the elected Assemblies in [the University’s] revision of the Student Code of Conduct,” and calls for the Code to be revised by members of the elected Assemblies.

Lombardi responded to concerns during the

Oct. 9 meeting and assured the crowd that he “always support[s] student interests on campus.” Now, the referendum will serve to better illuminate the opinion of the Cornell community at large regarding these changes.

The last time the Assembly introduced a referendum was in Spring 2024. The referendum polled student opinion on divestment from weapons manufacturers involved in the IsraelGaza conﬂict, and whether Cornell should call for a ceaseﬁre. The majority of student voters chose “yes” to the questions by a 2:1 ratio, while only 46.77 percent of the Cornell undergraduate student body voted.

Ultimately, former President Martha Pollack rejected the spring 2024 referendum, stating that it was not the place for a university to “make a statement about this complex political issue,” especially with a diversity of opinion among the student community.

In a vote by community members present during the meeting, the opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the referendum, which consists of two questions. Non-Assembly members in attendance voted 91-4 in favor of the ﬁrst question and 93-2 in favor of the second during the meeting.

Assembly members then voted 28-0-1 in favor of the referendum. The community vote was tallied as two votes in favor of the referendum on the Assembly vote.

Following this, Assembly President Zora deRham ’27 announced that the referendum will soon be formally presented to the public.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Gabriel Muñoz can be reached

By KATE TURK Sun Assistant News Editor

‘Every Single Child Included’: Ballet & Books Helps Kids Leap Through Literacy With Confidence

By KITTY ZHANG Sun Contributor

Nov. 2 — For most kids, reading and dancing might seem like two completely different worlds — one quiet and focused, the other full of rhythm and movement. But at Ballet & Books, the two come together to create something new: a space where stories move, words take shape and confidence grows.

Founded in 2017 by Talia Bailes ’20, a lifelong dancer and global and public health sciences major at Cornell, Ballet & Books began in Ithaca with a simple idea — combining reading and ballet to support early childhood literacy and self-expression.

“We want to make sure that every child, regardless of background, gets the chance to dance, to perform and to wear the tutu and leotard.”

Leyla Rivera ’27

Eight years later, the program has expanded into a national nonprofit with 13 chapters, but also remains a Cornell student organization, allowing for students to join and volunteer. To many families, the program is much more than a weekend activity. It is a space where children can express emotions, build confidence and form

meaningful bonds with mentors who support them both in the studio and in life.

“We want to make sure that every child, regardless of background, gets the chance to dance, to perform and to wear the tutu and leotard,” said Leyla Rivera ’27, co-director of the Ithaca chapter. “But more importantly, they learn how to turn what they’re feeling and thinking into a story and put their emotions out into the world through dance.”

Each session lasts about an hour and a half, and the children, grouped as Seeds, ages three to five, and Sprouts, six to nine, rotate between 45 minutes of literacy and dance, led by their college volunteer mentors. The reading sessions follow a national curriculum developed by educators, while the dance portion is guided by whatever captures the kids’ curiosity, their favorite music that week or the “word of the week” from the reading session.

“Let’s say the word of the week is rain,” explained Libby Elman ’26, vice president of marketing and a ballet teaching assistant for the Ithaca chapter. “We’ll read stories about rain and then do movements that show what rain feels like. Next week, we’ll ask, ‘Who remembers the move for rain?’ And it’s amazing to see how they remember both the word and its meaning through movement.”

While the reading activities build vocabulary and comprehension, the

dance allows children to embody what they learn by translating abstract ideas into physical expression.

“It’s the ability to process meaning, to remember words and what they mean, and then put those words into making new meaning,” Elman said. “It really is like a psychological development.”

One especially meaningful part of Ballet & Books happens when children use movement to express emotions that might otherwise go unspoken.

“If they’re really frustrated one day, maybe during freestyle dance, they’re jumping around a lot or moving more harshly. If they’re happy, they’ll be twirling and smiling, moving with more lightness and fluidity,” Elman said. “This is also a kind of literary expression, the ability to turn what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking into a story, and communicating it and putting their feelings out into the world.”

Beyond literacy and movement, what makes the program special are the relationships that form between children and their mentors. Each child is paired with a college volunteer for the duration of their time in the program, often building a connection that lasts for years, sometimes even after the mentors graduate.

“For a lot of our kids, their parents are really busy,” Rivera said. “So having someone who’s there just for them, someone who listens, believes in them

and cares, gives them a real sense of security.”

At the end of each semester, the children take the stage for a small showcase for family, friends and the community. The program also removes financial barriers: all leotards, shoes and costumes are provided at no cost, ensuring that every child can experience the joy of performing.

“The little kids are so excited to see their parents bring them flowers after the show,” Rivera said. “You can tell how proud everyone is. It’s such a special moment.”

“The little kids are so excited to see their parents bring them flowers after the show. You can tell how proud everyone is. It’s such a special moment.”

Leyla Rivera ’27

Nationally, approximately 40 percent of students cannot read at a basic level, and only 15.3 percent of K–12 public school students have access to dance programs.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Kitty Zhang can be reached at az429@ cornell.edu.

Volleyball Spotlight: Looking Back on Five Athletes’ Four Years

By BUZMAEL JOANUS and MERIEM FARAH Sun Staff Writer

Nov. 8 — To last four years at Cornell is an accomplishment. To last four years as a student-athlete at Cornell is a feat that deserves special recognition. This year, five athletes on the volleyball team will reach this highly revered milestone. Each of their stories can be found below.

Eliza Konvicka

From early morning practices to post-practice trail walks with teammates, Konvicka has found her favorite memories not in single matches or moments, but in the everyday bonds built through the game.

“Probably trail after practice or a pregame locker room chat,” she said with a smile. “We are all so close, so really anytime that we spend together.”

Reflecting on her time with the program, Konvicka describes the volleyball team in two words: “improvement and hard work”.

“My freshman year we only won six games, then seven, and now we’re having a really great year,” she said. “Everyone has worked so hard to get here. We’ve really earned it.”

Her advice to the next generation of volleyball players shows the pride and perspective of a true leader: “Don’t take winning for granted.” Having joined a rebuilding team and helped transform it into a contender, Konvicka knows success is built on consistency and commitment.

“Even when you’re winning, you have to keep up the same habits and work ethic that got you there,” she added.

As she prepares to close this chapter, Konvicka looks ahead with gratitude and

excitement. Though her time as a Cornell athlete is ending, volleyball will remain a lifelong passion.

“Being done with Cornell volleyball doesn’t mean being done with volleyball,” Konvicka said. “I’ll always be competing or playing pickup.”

After graduation, Konvicka received a return offer from Visa to work as a software engineer in Austin, Texas.

Joy Liu

From hosting Uno Nights in her tiny college house to late-night Dancing with the Stars watch parties with teammates, Joy Liu, one of the Red’s setters, has filled her Cornell years with laughter, loyalty and love for the game. It’s those small, joyful moments that define her Cornell experience.

“I think what I really, really enjoy is not even the big outings,” Liu said. “It’s the small moments.. Those are the memories I’ll miss the most.”

Liu, who studies in the Nolan School of Hotel Administration, describes her Cornell experience as one built around people.

“My biggest fear freshman year was not finding any friends,” she admitted. “I used to sit in my dorm and think, ‘I’m doing college wrong.’ But I found my people. The friendships I’ve made here are why I actually look forward to coming back after breaks.”

As a senior, Liu has taken on the role she once wished for, a reassuring presence for younger players. That closeness the seniors have fostered with the team’s underclassmen, she believes, is the heart of Cornell’s recent success.

“My freshman year, there was barely any talk of us even making the Ivy tour-

nament,” she said. “Now, we can put ourselves in a really good position for the Ivy tournament.”

Throughout her time with the Big Red, two people have especially shaped Liu’s journey: her sister and her position coach.

“My sister has always been my role model,” Liu said. “I really looked it up to her and her work ethic.

As she looks ahead to life after Cornell, Liu hopes to combine her two passions — hospitality and sports.

“My dream job is to work for a major sports organization like the MLB or NBA,” she said. “My life has always revolved around sports, and I’d love to just mesh those two parts of my life.”

For Liu, Senior Night is both a celebration and a reflection of how far she and her teammates have come.

“It’s crazy to see how much the program has changed,” she said. “This night is about celebrating that and I’m so excited just for everyone to be surrounded by our loved ones.”

Doga Özalp

In her junior year of high school, Doga Özalp was on the verge of quitting volleyball for good. A combination of toxic coaches and her desire to pursue higher education culminated in a nearly threemonth-long benching from her club team in Turkey.

Despite being nearly done with the game, she decided to quietly enter recruitment talks with a small pool of universities, including Cornell, and the rest was history.

“I was kind of falling out of love with the sport, but coming here was almost like a second chance from God,” Özalp reflected. She felt as though the message was simply that she needed to pursue this

opportunity and end on a high, “and I feel like I did that.”

Looking back on her favorite memories with the team, beating Yale at home during her junior year was an easy answer for Özalp.

“Beating the big dogs was so out of reach for my first two seasons here,” Ölzap said. “Last year was the turning point [where we said] we can actually beat those teams at the top, so that was really surreal, and I felt like everyone just came together and fought with everything that we had.”

The Red had faced a 0-2 match deficit against the top-seed Yale Bulldogs on the fateful night of Nov. 16, 2024. After an impassioned speech by head coach Trudy Vande Berg and the leaders on the team (including Özalp), Cornell pulled off a miraculous comeback and ultimately stole the match, winning the fifth set 15-11.

Expanding on this story, Özalp remarked that her biggest accomplishment across her four years was actually not surpassing 2,000 assists (which vaulted her into the top eight all time in Cornell volleyball history), but her personal growth.

“I didn’t really get much playing time my freshman year,” Özalp said. “Stepping up as a sophomore, and just getting all the playing time, it was such a huge change, and I took on the role of being the main setter.”

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Buzmael Joanus and Meriem Farah can be reached at bjoanus@cornellsun.com and mf862@cornell.edu.

A Life in Sports and Words: Meet Historian, Novelist and Visiting Professor Kevin Baker

By ZEINAB FARAJ Sun Features Editor

Nov. 7 — From a young age, Kevin Baker, visiting professor in American studies, had an innate interest in sports, history and writing — he described his bedroom ﬂoor as scattered with baseball cards, paperback history books that his mother would bring home from the grocery store and an ever-growing pile of novels and historical nonﬁction.

“I’m a writer and I have been a writer pretty much my whole life,” Baker said. “I have always had a nerdy interest in statistics from my baseball card collection and of course a deep appreciation of history.”

Baker has transformed those childhood pastimes into a career as a historian, novelist and now visiting professor at Cornell. His writing explores how sports and politics reﬂect the identity of the United States.

From Newsrooms to Writing Novels

Baker was born in New Jersey and raised in Massachusetts. He was obsessed with history and sports when he was ﬁve years old and recalls memorizing baseball and historical statistics. At just 13 years old, he got his start to his writing career as a sports reporter for the Gloucester Daily Times, where he earned $10 per article and learned how to write “cohesive” stories using different writing techniques.

“The experience of being in a newsroom was fun and interesting,” Baker said. “My mother had to teach me to type on a Smith Corona portable typewriter in order for me to keep the job so that was my ﬁrst real writing gig.”

When deciding where to pursue his college education, Baker explained that he had always wanted to study in New York City because of the “historical signiﬁcance” and “culture” that the city had to offer. He started at Columbia in 1976 where he was a political science major and continued to be a sports reporter for the Columbia Spectator.

“Now while I didn’t get much out of that exercise I enjoyed being in the city and being immersed in the culture and sports was an experience that is paying off to this day.”

Kevin Baker

“While studying at Columbia, I set this goal for myself to write at least ﬁve pages a day,” Baker said. “Now while I didn’t get much out of that exercise I enjoyed being in the city and being immersed in the culture and sports was an experience that is paying off to this day.”

After college, Baker pursued an array of writing jobs including freelancing for newspapers and

writing letters for the New York City mayoral ofﬁce. In the background, Baker was exploring his true passion, novel writing.

“I told myself that if I had not sold any fiction by the time I was 30, I would give it up and go to law school,” Baker said. “And 30 came, and I didn’t go to law school, but I finally published my first novel when I was 33.”

His debut novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, was published in 1993 and is loosely based on the life of Ty Cobb, a Major League Baseball player who spent 24 seasons as a center ﬁelder. In the novel, the main character, John Barr, is a baseball star for the New York Mets as it explores the darker side of fame and competition in America’s pastime.

“The ﬁrst novel I wrote was special to me but there was deﬁnitely a learning experience,” Baker said. “You learn more and more what good writing is, which makes it harder as you go on.”

“The ﬁrst novel I wrote was special to me but there was deﬁnitely a learning experience. You learn more and more what good writing is, which makes it harder as you go on.”

Kevin Baker

Teaching and Writing Sports, Politics and History

Baker also wrote a trilogy of novels known as the City of Fire series, which includes Dreamland, Paradise Alley, and Strivers Row. Dreamland is set in Coney Island and New York City in 1910, exploring the lives and struggles of Jewish immigrants. Paradise Alley delves into the American Civil War and the Irish immigrant experience in New York, while Strivers Row takes place in Harlem during the 1930s and 1940s, capturing the spirit of the Great Migration and the Black American experience.

“So that trilogy of books is about three groups that were not really wanted in America, say, in the most silent and subservient positions, yet who, in the end, ended up giving us so much of our culture,” Baker said. “I could have written [about] the Chinese, Norwegian or Arabs, really any group of people but the message overall is that New York City is made up of so many different groups that contribute to the way the city is today in ways we didn’t and probably still don’t appreciate.”

On top of the ﬁctional novels, Baker also writes historical nonﬁction books. Most recently, he published The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, a sweeping account of the city’s teams and the role baseball has played in its identity in March 2024. It was reviewed by The New York Times who hope for “a second volume … every bit as good as this one.” Baker told The Sun he plans to release the next volume in spring 2027.

His historical novel The Big Crowd tells the story of Bill O’Dwyer — the real-life New York district attorney who sent a mob boss to the electric

chair before becoming the city’s mayor with the endorsement of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. O’Dwyer’s rise and fall, and his eventual appointment as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, mirror Baker’s fascination with the complex intersection of politics, power, and morality in American life.

Baker was also selected to deliver the 2025 Seymour Lecture in Sports History, “More and More is Less and Less: How Our Games Got Away from Us, and What We Can Do to Get Them Back” at 5 p.m. on Nov. 19 in Goldwin Smith Hall, Room 132.

Now, Baker is teaching a 30 person course at Cornell, HIST 1585: Sports and Politics in American History. He told The Sun that this is his ﬁrst time teaching a class.

“It has been really interesting so far,” Baker said. “So it’s an education for me, too, which I hope is the case in anything you do. This is my ﬁrst time teaching a class as a professor, so far I have enjoyed interacting with the students and I try my best to engage them.”

The class, Baker says, dives into issues like gambling, college athletics and the economics of professional sports. Additionally, students study historical events and examine how sports have been politicalized.

“I’m just really trying to get the students to understand where sports came from, how they evolve, eventually, we get into what they are today and what they could be in the future,” Baker said.

In 2017, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a $30,000 to $45,000 grant given to “individuals in pursuit of scholarship in any ﬁeld of knowledge and creation in any art form, under the freest possible conditions,” according to the Guggenheim Fellowship website.

Baker told The Sun he is using the grant to write a book about the United States between the world wars — an era he dubbed “the lost America.” Baker stated that there are many parallels between this period and the “great idyllic America” that President Donald Trump campaigned on.

“This time period and what was idolized [at the time] is at the heart of Trump fascism,” Baker said. “There are many parallels between then and what Trump is pushing for now.”

Baker described his collaborations with other authors and groups including his work with Ken Burns on The U.S. and the Holocaust documentary, which became an acclaimed PBS series. The documentary explores the actions of the United States during the Holocaust.

“It was an honor working with Burns, Lynn [Novick] and Sarah [Botstein],” Baker said. “Part of any writing is to entertain. “I try and would like to do that in all my work. I’ve really been very fortunate to get to work with terriﬁc people.”

To continue reading this article, please visit www. cornellsun.com.

Zeinab Faraj can be reached at zfaraj@cornellsun.com.

KATE LAGATTA ARTS & CULTURE CONTRIBUTOR

I have never loved a singular piece of media more than the Charlie Brown television specials. The old DVDs stack neatly downstairs in my home, stained with glitter glue and cookie crumbs. I know for certain my brother and I have seen each special at least a dozen times. Our favorite stretch of them was the big three coinciding with the end of the year: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas

Although Halloween is over, nothing competes with the magic of The Great Pumpkin. We used to watch the special well into November every year, eyes wide, trying to suppress our fear over the spooky sequences. For a ﬁlm following multiple side quests wrapped around Linus’ belief in a Great Pumpkin (a Halloween Santa Claus), the highlight of the hijinks for us was always Snoopy’s World War I side plot. Watching the beloved beagle ﬁght a mythical version of the real Red Baron from his doghouse was mind-blowing. For a children’s Halloween special, you wouldn’t expect such an out-there sequence (I mean, what kid knows what WWI is?), but that commitment to creativity and heart is a core of the Charlie Brown series as a whole. With Thanksgiving break approaching,

&

Ode to Charlie Brown

there is no greater time to put on the Thanksgiving special. As a long-time lover of the holiday, this special was my most repeated. Everything, from the Snoopy chair fight to the croons of composer Vince Guaraldi’s “Little Birdie” tune, entertained me enough to let my grandpa roast the turkey. Poor Charlie Brown is suckered into having a Friendsgiving where he has no choice but to prep a meal of snacks. As his friends kept inviting themselves over, it was always hilarious to watch Snoopy and Woodstock play amateur chef. We would finish our watch-time to coincide with the end of the film, traveling to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.

The DVD we owned also included an episode of the TV series, paired with the Thanksgiving special as “The Mayﬂower Voyagers.” Obviously, this retelling of Plymouth Rock and the ﬁrst Thanksgiving is widely inaccurate and problematic; however, as a kid, I was obsessed with how the animation perfectly captured my home state of Massachusetts.

Then there’s the magnum opus of all Charlie Brown media. The Christmas special, which was the ﬁrst animation in the series, is deeply ingrained in the fabric of my family’s Christmas celebration, along with the holiday in general. My mom used to dazzle us with stories of their Charlie Brown trees (picked speciﬁcally for their raggedy shape like in the special) before we

kids were born. We would watch it every Christmas Eve, bellies full of ham and sugar cookies, eagerly awaiting Santa. Guaraldi delivers hit after hit in the score; the jazzy “Linus and Lucy” is a staple of Christmas radio stations and music. More downbeat songs like “Christmas Time Is Here” are perfect for a calm, reﬂective, silent night.

Every Charlie Brown special is run on creativity. The animation alone has both home and nostalgia seeped into the characters, the settings and the movement. Although they were made in the ’60s and ’70s, the artistry in each frame (including the beautiful watercolor backgrounds) looks better than aged CGI and current AI slop. The music is fantastic, with Guaraldi pumping out hit after hit. A criticism lobbed at the franchise has been its lack of a concrete plot, something I refuse to see as a bad thing. Each subplot and moment of the special serves a purpose, whether it be comedy or heart. Watching Lucy tuck her brother Linus into bed in The Great Pumpkin as a ﬁve-year-old instilled in me the need to always care for my brother. The series has taught children how to lead with their hearts and care for their friends. One of the hallmarks of the series will always be the caroling of each character in the Christmas special, all singing together in childlike harmony on behalf of their friend. Thanksgiving will be the ﬁrst time I’m back at home since August. I’ll see my

brother and drive the ﬂat roads of the suburbs while we talk about his high school. When I sit down to dinner, I’ll eat a plate of homemade turkey, cranberry sauce and rolls that my grandmother has perfected over years of seeping love into her cooking. All my relatives will coo over my ﬁrst semester, asking for a course rundown and a life plan.

When I get too overwhelmed, I’ll escape into the den and watch the Thanksgiving special with my brother. We’ll sit together, sleepy heads on pillows, and I’ll remember a simpler time of playground games and packed lunches. Dozing off and ﬁlled with turkey, we’ll switch over to the Christmas special. Closing my eyes to the brilliant music, I’ll be reminded of all the love and heart this series taught me.

Charlie Brown may be a blockhead. But he’s the blockhead who’s provided millions with nostalgia and joy — something I know this series will continue to do for generations.

‘ T e Witcher’ Season Four’s Biggest Flaw

JANE LOCKE ARTS & CULTURE WRITER

Harry Potter, Iron Man, Rory Gilmore, Frodo Baggins — when someone mentions these names, our minds do not go to a blurry and undeﬁned image of a character, but to a speciﬁc actor or actress. We think of Daniel Radcliffe, Robert Downey Jr., Alexis Bledel and Elijah Wood. Yes, it might be Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, but the mental image is still the performer. Yet, this shift of thinking of the character independently to thinking of them entwined with the actor/actress doesn’t happen for every role; it only occurs for the most iconic and well-known franchises.

When The Witcher first debuted as a television series based on the hit video game, the show quickly cemented itself within this realm of iconic franchises. In 2020, The Witcher season one was on track to be Netflix’s biggest season one launch, based on viewership. Season after season, lead actor Henry Cavill embodied Geralt of Rivia, the sword-wielding protagonist of the show, until Cavill announced his departure from the show after season three — right in the middle of the story arc. Netflix was left scram-

bling to replace an actor who was Geralt with an unfamiliar face, and the studio ended up choosing Liam Hemsworth. With the release of season four of The Witcher, Netﬂix is realizing how difﬁcult it is to accept a new interpretation of an already beloved role.

The first through third seasons of The Witcher were some of the best fantasy stories on a modern screen. Many people lauded the show as the new Game of Thrones, though as far as storytelling goes, I think The Witcher surpassed that show. A common thread among reviews was that Henry Cavill was the perfect Geralt of Rivia, faithful to the video game and to the book series. Then, he was gone, and Liam Hemsworth was left with very large shoes to fill. After watching the first episode of the new season, it was obvious the route the new actor would take: Try to act as similar to Henry Cavill as possible. Hemsworth adopts the same vocal and behavioral mechanisms that Cavill brought to the character, but with one obvious flaw: He isn’t Henry Cavill.

Replacing a lead role isn’t often done, for obvious reasons. Audiences grow attached to a speciﬁc face and style for

their main characters. When it is done, it leads to disaster. One notable example was the replacement of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Due to the actor’s ongoing trial with Amber Heard, the studio chose to remove him in favor of a new face. Having already been Grindelwald in two of the previous films, Depp’s removal ruined the magic, in a sense. When audiences decide to follow a multi-film saga, they invest. They choose to set aside their expectations and immerse themselves in a story. However, the obvious shift from one actor to another destroys the illusion. Audiences are thrust back into a reality where that character is just an actor, that world is just a set and that story is just a manipulation of your belief. These consequences are the same ones we see with the recasting of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. We chose to delve into a fantastical tale, and we are unwillingly forced from it by coming face to face with reality. Of course, there appear to be ways around the problem of recasting a central figure. For example, Albus Dumbledore’s actor from the Harry Potter franchise was changed after the tragic pass-

ing of original actor Richard Harris. However, the saga continued for another six extremely lucrative movies, and now, when we think of Albus Dumbledore, we often think of actor Michael Gambon. In this instance, the change came early into the story, before audiences were cemented in their expectations. In addition, Michael Gambon added his own ﬂair to the role instead of trying to copy his predecessor. By doing this, he successfully avoided constantly reminding the audience of a previous interpretation, unlike Liam Hemsworth in The Witcher season four.

We’ve all heard the phrase “you have to separate the art from the artist,” often when people defend pieces of ﬁlm, music or literature that were created by an unsavory person. However, the reactions of audiences to changing the actor/actress of a central character in the ﬁlm industry sharply contradicts that statement — people cannot separate characters and the art made through them from the performers that assist in bringing that art to life. The fourth season of The Witcher has seen the worst viewership numbers of the entire show. According to an article by Forbes, view-

ership dropped from 15.2 million views in the opening week of season three to season four’s 7.4 million. Netﬂix attempted to explain the obviously drastic transformation of Geralt from season three to season four by framing the new season as a story told from the perspective of people four hundred years in the future, blurring the line between what is real and what is ﬁction — audiences just didn’t buy it.

Just as Harry Potter, Iron Man, Rory Gilmore and Frodo Baggins have become one with their actors/actresses, so has Geralt of Rivia melded with the image of Henry Cavill. Taking away the life force of the character and shattering audiences’ ability to believe, Netﬂix took a major hit with the casting of Liam Hemsworth. Unfortunately, the damage has been done, and the Witcher as we knew him will never return.

Jane Locke is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at jal562@cornell.edu.

Kate LaGatta is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at kal273@cornell. edu.

COURTESY OF LEE MENDELSON FILM PRODUCTIONS

& CULTURE

Post-Sadboy Blues: On Joji’s Resurrection

By Arina Zadvornaya Arts & Culture Contributor

“If you never hear from me, all the satellites are down,” George Miller, known to the music world as Joji, murmurs through walls of heavy distortion and reverb. The satellites, in fact, have been down for a while; 2022’s Smithereens and its ensuing tour, cut short for health reasons, offered the last glimpse anyone would get of Joji for the next three years.

In the meantime, the world kept spinning, and the landscape surrounding (and heavily inﬂuenced by) Joji has shifted. New monarchs of sadboy music have been crowned and dethroned as the electronic lo-ﬁ pop space grew oversaturated with the likes of Artemas and sombr and the genre itself drifted from teenage bedrooms into TikTok feeds. In this new context, a Joji drop almost felt like a peculiar time capsule straight from youthful solitude — the one you tiptoe around for a second too long, not quite sure how to approach the encounter with the iPod playlist-shaped past.

But nostalgia is a fragile currency and, in a strange relief, Joji’s ﬁrst new release sounds nothing like his older work. Assertive and mature like a gut punch, yet vulnerable in the sense of decay rather than gentleness, “Pixelated Kisses” expresses itself like an opening of a new sonic era, still hallmarked with the signature breathiness of a man perpetually unsure if he is allowed to speak — a quality that resonated so universally with young adults all around the world. The absence of

any deeper compositional ambition on this track, however, is almost remarkable. “Pixelated Kisses” offers little beyond a gritty, catchy, but ultimately repetitive loop of sound and about four new lines of poetry. There’s a quiet greed to it, too; a reminder that music is still a business: the track’s runtime, not even reaching two minutes, makes it the ultimate replay bait, artiﬁcially scoring twice as many streams as a full-length composition would get.

The same philosophy unfurls further on the second release of this era, “If It Only Gets Better” — an almost-ambient snippet of soft instrumentals drifting in space for a minute and eight seconds, blissfully unanchored by a beginning, an ending or the very notion of a chorus. If it packs a bite, it’s the soft and sleepy kind, too discernible to be fully overlooked yet not quite developed enough to warrant a closer inspection. Taken together, the two singles resonate more as album teasers and less as songs, leaving the listener wondering whether the decision-making behind them is rooted in clever design or something more akin to laziness.

But if “Pixelated Kisses” reads like a fresh current and “If It Only Gets Better” lingers in the liminal ﬁller space, neither elevating nor drowning the upcoming record, the third single, “Past Won’t Leave My Bed,” lands squarely in the unsettlingly familiar territory. It’s the only track of this rollout that could pass as a full-length song, and yet, somehow, the least interesting. The energy that once felt introspective now rings recycled: the same stuttering melancholy shrouded in the same mid-tempo haze, but without

the bent-but-unbroken backbone of feeling that made Joji’s earlier work ache. This release cycle, having started with an imperfect but conﬁdent step forward, slipped into a muted decrescendo long before the full album had a chance to face the world. It is, however, unclear what would stand better as the ﬁrst post-hiatus release: a collection of snippets optimized for short-form content or a mixed bag of old emotions pacing the same room, still hoping to sound profound. Across his three new singles, Joji tries to offer bite-sized samples of both — and none of them quite land.

While one is allowed a dose of cautious optimism, the recently announced runtime of the upcoming record hints at more of the same. Clocking in at 45 minutes that somehow manage to contain 21 vacuum-packed tracks, the album promises to be compact — perhaps too compact for a post-hiatus long-play with ambitions to fulﬁll. It’s true that music does not operate in a rule-driven space and not every record needs to compete for a Guinness record in duration, but it seems that Joji, while breaking away from the shackles of radio replayability, voluntarily situates himself in a digital purgatory of soundtracks for YouTube shorts. Is becoming background music to an attention economy an inevitability for a 21st-century artist, or does it sometimes take the shape of a personal and voluntarily made choice? For Joji, joining the digital fatigue war on the side of digital fatigue seems to be the answer.

Experiencing the MFA First-Year Reading Series

and the mutterings of the visiting dead. When she ﬁnished, Zildek left lingering the fading sounds of death.

Last Friday evening, in the deepening twilight, I caught a 15-minute bus into Ithaca, looking not for dinner or a drink but for something a bit more elusive to start off the weekend. Disembarking from the bus, I turned away from the heart of the Commons and went around a corner to the independent Buffalo Street Books store. Stepping inside, I turned another small corner and entered the homely room where Buffalo Street Books hosts a variety of events throughout the year. However, this Friday’s event was made particularly special by the night’s featured readers: First-year MFA candidates currently pursuing their degrees at Cornell University.

The candidates in question, Annie Zidek, Hafsa Zulﬁqar, Eastan Powers and Lara Stecewycz, each featured their unique works and style to an audience of around 40 people. The readings were performed not standing at a podium but sitting at a small table and using a mic with cables that ran nudged against a wall. After each reading, the writer received their applause and returned to a seat within the audience. This atmosphere created very intimate readings that allowed the writers to showcase their work along with themselves as people.

The ﬁrst reader of the evening was poet Annie Zidek, an artist with work published and forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Reservoir and elsewhere. Zidek read a series of despairing poems from her current project — writing her family’s archives. The poems documented a mother’s illness through the vivid sounds of medical machines, and Zidek skillfully used the soulless onomatopoeia of technology to express the longing pleas of the healthy for their loved one’s recovery. In one of many sorrowful moments, Zidek described the sound of a hospital bed as a “mrr mrr,” which, particularly when read around, simultaneously invoked the murmured prayers of the living, the whispers of the weakened sick

Following Zidek’s moving performance was fellow poet Hafsa Zulfiqar, who has already been featured in a multitude of publications and is currently a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine. Zulfiqar prefaced her reading by explaining her reputation as a writer of structured verse. This structure, along with dialogue and frequent repetition, lent Zulfiqar’s reading a deeper and more haunted feel than Zidek’s despite also capturing themes of deterioration to illness. The smoothly flowing lines of this haunting exploration enveloped the audience and became especially visceral when Zulfiqar described in tandem the loss of such smooth language to age, sickness and cultural fading. In the space of her poetry, Zulfiqar allowed the voiceless not just to be heard but gave them speech with intricacy and eloquence.

The third reader, Eastan Powers, provided a much needed break from profound but weighty poetry with their quirky creative fiction. Being introduced as an undergraduate Biology major and a writer of brain-scattering fiction established Powers as a very different writer right from the get-go. Powers’ reading was a short piece of fiction that can be compared to the works of Swedish author Fredrick Backman on a psychedelic trip. In their piece, Powers exhibited the incredible awareness for comedic yet thought-provoking everyday events that made Backman a success in novels like A Man Called Ove. Powers actually pushed this idea further by using distinctly modern phrases like “not in this economy,” “get a load of this” and “facts” to further humanize their characters and ground the audience in the extreme, almost-fantastical strangeness of their plot. Though truly bizarre, Powers’ work was a delightfully engaging experience.

The ﬁnal reader of the evening, Lara Stecewycz, wrapped up the event with a return to poetry. Stecewycz is a Ukrainian-American poet who, among many other accomplishments, has trans-

lated poems and essays for Crimean Fig / Qırım inciri, the first anthology of contemporary fiction and poetry by Crimean Tatar writers to be published in English translation. Stecewycz’s reading was a series of poems exploring the responsibility and failures of money, age, motherhood and fatherhood through the innocence of a child. In these poems, lists of seemingly unrelated household images create nests of metaphor like a child might notice the parallels interweaving pieces of the world. But, even as these comparisons invoke innocence, their aptness foreshadows the loss of such innocence to reality. Stecewycz provided a very contemplative conclusion to the readings. Unfortunately, it was impossible to appreciate every facet of these four rising writers’ work within the 15 minutes they each were given to read. But beyond the pieces, what struck me was the MFA candidates themselves: masters-in-training, if you will. These are experienced, published, decorated writers who, by certification, have yet to achieve mastery in their field. Yet, at this event, these writers took the chance to share their partial projects with a live audience precisely to showcase this progressing mastery.

When thinking of art, the image that normally comes to mind is the polished, or at least published, piece for sale or on exhibit. But readings, which present even fully ﬁnished work in fragments, publicly embody an often elusive view of art — that of the incomplete work and the unrealized artist. In doing these readings, Zidek, Zulﬁqar, Powers and Stecewycz establish their place within Cornell English Department’s larger Zalaznick Reading Series and along the continuum of developing artistry. With the Zalaznick Reading Series’ next event on Nov. 13 and only a few more to follow, I highly recommend attending to experience in-person art mastered in its elusive incompleteness.

Wyatt Tamamoto is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at wkt22@cornell.edu.

By Wyatt Tamamoto Arts & Culture Contributor

Arina Zadvornaya is a graduate student in the College of Engineering. She can be reached at az499@cornell.edu.

Football Takes Trustee’s Cup Over Penn

By ALEXIS ROGERS and MATTHEW LEONARD Sun Sports Editor and Sun Assistant Sports Editor

The battle between Cornell football and the University of Pennsylvania carries so much historical weight it has its own prize: the Trustee’s Cup. However, for the past three years, the Red has struggled to gain its footing in the rivalry, with its last win over the Quakers taking place in 2021.

On Saturday, the Red took the field against the Ivy League’s second-ranked team searching for its first road win of the season and to land a punch on a Penn squad that has been dominating the matchup. Coming off the momentum of a three-win homestand, Cornell (4-4, 3,2 Ivy) made a historic showing to steal Penn’s Homecoming and the coveted Cup.

After eking out a narrow lead in the first half, the Red came out of halftime invigorated. Three consecutive touchdowns catapulted Cornell into a 22-point lead, which it held onto to secure a 39-17 advantage over Penn (5-3, 3-2) by final time. In the process, the Red secured its first four-game win streak since 1999 and its 200th Ivy League victory of all time.

Despite being the underdog on enemy turf, Cornell made the first move. After trading unsuccessful drives, the Red broke out thanks to a 25-yard reception by junior tight end Ryder Kurtz. Though Penn stopped the offense short before the red zone, Cornell was able to put itself on the board with a 32-yard attempt by sophomore kicker Caden Lesiewicz, his first collegiate field goal.

Just before the end of the first quarter, the Quakers rallied a response, making it to the 4-yard line before the quarter break. On the first play of the second, Penn quarterback Liam O’Brien rushed for the touchdown, giving the Quakers a 7-3 lead.

Cornell’s offense again struggled to finish, carrying the ball within field goal range to give Lesiewicz the chance to cut the deficit to 7-6, but the Quakers evened out this score on their next possession, with a field goal keeping Penn up by four.

The Red broke the barrier to the endzone with seconds left in the first half, aided by pass completions and a 15-yard penalty that put Cornell in prime position to capitalize. Junior quarterback Garrett Bass-Sulpizio fired off a pass to junior wide receiver Brendan Lee to close the final gap and put the Red up, 13-10, before halftime.

The Red entered the third quarter with a bang: senior defensive lineman James Reinbold logged a sack on O’Brien that forced a fumble on Penn’s first play of the half, which was claimed by a diving recovery from senior linebacker Joey Cheshire. Cornell took possession on the Quaker’s 24-yard line before Penn had gained any traction.

Taking advantage of a stunned Penn defense, Bass-Sulpizio fired off passes to Kurtz and senior wide receiver Doryn Smith before handing the ball off to sophomore running back Jordan Triplett for the touchdown. Though the extra-point attempt by Lesiewicz was blocked, the Red was now up 19-10, scoring less than a minute into the second half.

Cornell snuffed Penn’s attempt to respond, regaining possession on downs and kickstarting its drive with a 19-yard pass to sophomore wide receiver TJ Hamilton. A series of successful plays inched the Red closer, but the team still faced a one-yard gap while on the fourth down at Penn’s 22-yard line.

As seen many times throughout this season when on fourth down, Swanstrom decided to go for it. This risky play, likely influenced by lack of consistency from its kickers, paid off for

the Red. When the ball was snapped to Bass-Sulpizio, he pitched it to senior running back Gannon Carothers, who rushed for the remaining 22 yards to the endzone and secured another touchdown for the Red.

An unsuccessful two-point conversion attempt kept the score at 25-10. Cornell carried its momentum into Penn’s possession, again shutting down the Quakers’ offense to force a punt after three plays.

The Red offense used the energy of a three-touchdown run to march down the field on the back of rushes from Bass-Sulpizio and Triplett. Cornell continued running until it found itself on the 1-yard line, then on second down, Bass-Sulpizio found Carothers in an almost identical play from earlier in the quarter.

Carothers just reached the endzone before dropping the ball in a play that was upheld after official review, putting the game further out of reach for the Quakers. This time around, Swanstrom decided to go for the extra point, which Lesiewicz successfully completed. The score now sat at a dominant 32-10 advantage for the Red.

While the Red seemed to have taken control of the game, the Quakers were not going to let themselves go down without a fight. On the first play of Penn’s drive, running back Donte West broke through the Red defense and ran 75 yards for a much-needed Quaker touchdown. After a successful extra point, the score sat at 32-17.

Heading into the fourth quarter, possession sat in the hands of the Red. After two consecutive penalties set the Red back 20 yards, it seemed nothing was going to come of this drive. This was until Bass-Sulpizio executed a perfect 36-yard pass to Hamilton that put the Red only a few yards behind the endzone.

Bass-Sulpizio took matters into his

own hands, rushing for a one-yard touchdown to increase the Red’s lead. Another successful kick from Lesiewicz officially set the score at 39-17. Now up by three touchdowns with only a few minutes of game remaining, the Red only needed to run down the clock, and that is exactly what it did. Once Cornell regained possession, the Quakers were forced to watch as the game slowly ended, giving the Red its fourth consecutive victory and a Trustees Cup win.

Hamilton was Cornell’s breakout player of the game, logging 123 receiving for his first yards of his collegiate career. Five different athletes scored touchdowns for the Red, with Carothers carrying two.

After being down 0-3 at the beginning of the season, Cornell has come back to hold a winning conference record and a 50 percent overall record. Its 39-point offensive production was its highest score against Penn since scoring 42 in 2013, and its highest against any competitor in the 2025 season.

The Ivy League is now broken open, the Red hold the same conference record as Penn and Dartmouth. This means if things go its way, the Red has a chance to leapfrog its way to the top of the standings. This year, the chance to vie for the Ivy title has higher stakes, with the conference leader having the opportunity to play for the NCAA Division l Football Championship Subdivision Playoffs.

The Red will look to continue its dominant play against Dartmouth, at 1 p.m. on Nov. 15. All the action will be available live on ESPN+.

Alexis Rogers and Matthew Leonard can be reached at arogers@cornellsun.com and mleonard@cornellsun.com.

Men’s Hockey Wins While Away at Harvard

By JANE McNALLY Sun Senior Editor

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A save.

A block.

A goal.

Junior forward Jonathan Castagna pointed at each of his teammates after he scored on a late third-period breakaway. Nearly everyone on the team had touched the puck before he netted a shorthanded goal — his second of the game — to make it 3-1 over a bitter Ivy League rival.

First, freshman goaltender Alexis Cournoyer made a game-saving paddle stop at 2-1. A flurry of sticks and blocks from the Cornell penalty killers allowed the puck to pop out to Castagna.

He finished the rest.

“I don’t want to be the guy that gets credit for that because a lot happened for me to get that breakaway, and to be honest, I did the least out of anybody,” Castagna said. “I think it’s really important to recognize how Alexis [Cournoyer] made that save and, without the block from [freshman forward] Aiden Long there, that doesn’t happen at all.

“That’s a big part of our identity, and it’s a reason why we were

able to win tonight.”

Cornell defeated Harvard, 3-1, to open up Ivy League and ECAC play. After an early Harvard goal, Cournoyer shone, finishing the game with 30 saves on 31 shots, including a 17-save second period. Cornell went a perfect 4/4 on the penalty kill.

“That’s Cornell hockey,” Cournoyer said. “It’s about our culture, our resilience, [our] character. I feel like guys in the locker room are very good at it and have such a great culture.”

For the third straight game, Cornell (2-1-0, 1-0-0 ECAC) began the game shorthanded early, as Long was whistled for interference just 30 seconds in. The best chance of that Crimson power play, though, came off of a Cornell stick — a turnover allowed junior forward Ryan Walsh to emerge one-on-one with Harvard (1-1-1, 0-1-0 ECAC) goaltender Ben Charette, but a left-pad stop barred Walsh from notching the game’s first goal.

That was the first of many breakaways on the penalty kill, a trend Castagna said was flagged midweek on video by assistant coach Chris Brown, and a large part of what made the Red so successful shorthanded.

“I thought our penalty kill took a huge step,” said head coach Casey Jones ’90. “[It] was outstanding all night. That’s as good as it’s been all year.”

Cornell would almost earn a power play chance of its own almost immediately after killing off the Long penalty, but despite some good possession, could not find the back of the net. That would be the first of three unsuccessful power play attempts in the opening period for the Red.

The Red’s lone defensive lapse in the first period ultimately proved costly — Harvard’s freshmen line of Richard Gallant, Heikki Ruohonen and Aidan Lane each earned a point as Lane deked around Cournoyer and broke the stalemate.

That would be the second and final Crimson shot of the opening period — from there it was all Cornell, as the Red outshot Harvard 9-0 after its goal.

“Obviously, we let up that one at the beginning, but if you look at the shots in the first period, I think that’s a pretty telltale sign of how we were coming out of the gates on them,” Castagna said. “It’s important to just stay level-headed.”

The Red kept calm and ultimately found the tying goal it was

in search of 6:36 into the second period — Castagna finished off a beautiful cross-crease feed from junior defenseman Hoyt Stanley, beating Charette and knotting the game at 1-1.

From there, it was all Cournoyer. Harvard inched back in and closed the large margin Cornell had forged in shots on goal, but the Crimson was unable to beat the Red’s firstyear goaltender. After dominating in the shot department in the first, Cornell trailed behind, 17-11, in the second.

“My job is to keep the team in the game,” Cournoyer said. “Just gotta battle, and mentally, it’s about the next shot. And for me, in the second, it was just trying to keep the team in the game. ... The guys played great in front of me.”

Cornell took a second penalty just past the halfway point of the second period, but it was quickly mitigated by a Crimson penalty 51 seconds later. On the ensuing four-on-four, Cournoyer made a pair of eye-popping stops, including a flashy glove save on a grade-A Harvard chance from the slot.

The Cornell contingent in Cambridge bowed down to Cournoyer late in the period as he caught his breath following a flurry

of saves.

“I think that’s been the most impressive thing for us — he’s got a little bit of composure there. There’s just a calmness to him,” Jones said. “He’s showing that now in two road games. … You can sense the bench feels the confidence in him.”

Both teams skated out for the third with one goal apiece.

Not for long, though.

The Red broke the tie just 1:21 into the final frame when freshman forward Gio DiGiulian cleaned up a Charette rebound off of freshman forward Caton Ryan’s initial shot. The tally marked the third one from DiGiulian in as many collegiate games.

Playing with the lead for the first time, Cornell looked to settle in at five-on-five. Neither team took a penalty in the third until 4:49 left, when junior forward Jake Kraft was sent off for hooking. But once again, the Red’s penalty killers — aided by Cournoyer — stood the test.

To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.

Jane McNally can be reached at jmcnally@cornellsun.com.