INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 141, No. 6
8 Pages — Free
THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2024 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Arts
Science
Weather
Career Comeback
Meh Muad'Dib
iGEM Goes for Gold
Mostly cloudy
Ben Arinze overcomes an unidentified illness and purses an MBA at the Johnson Graduate School of Management.
Lena Thakor '25 criticizes Dune: Part Two's narrative choices and lauds its visuals.
The student project team Cornell iGEM works toward its 11th gold medal in the last 14 years.
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HIGH: 42º LOW: 23º
Former Weill Dean Allegedly Falsified Medical Research By MARISA CEFOLA Sun News Editor
CLAIRE LI / SUN SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER
Housing hassle | First-year students raised concerns over limited housing availability during the sophomore housing selection process and questioned the University's choice to prioritize upperclassmen in the housing process.
Students Confront Housing Woes
Rising sophomores disappointed with housing process By SOFIA PRINCIPE Sun Staff Writer
With a timeslot of 9:20 p.m. on Wednesday, March 13, the last day of the General Room Selection process, Andrei Codreanu ’27 entered the housing portal to find no rooms available. He was placed on a waitlist and currently awaits a housing assignment. He presumes that his ultimate placement will not be with the students he blocked with, which refers to a roommate cohort with a maximum of six students whose assigned ‘block leader’ is responsible for distributing beds to each student in their block during the online selection process. “It made me feel disappointed, as I was looking forward to housing with the rest of my block,” Codreanu said. “I think the admin-
istration should at least let people know ahead of time that they don’t have enough housing, as I’m sure they knew this would happen.” After rising juniors and seniors selected on-campus housing in September instead of in the spring for the first time, room availability was sparse for first-year students like Codreanu who participated in the General Room Selection process from Monday, March 11 to Wednesday, March 13. First-year students told The Sun about undesired housing outcomes, including being separated from friends, living far away from Central Campus and being waitlisted. Anja Minty ’27 hoped to live in a new dorm near Central Campus. However, with her 8:20 p.m. 20-minute housing time slot on March 13, she reluctantly chose a double room in Schuyler House,
while the three other students in her block chose 109 McGraw Place. The rest of her friends will live in Ganedago Hall, a 40-minute walk from Schuyler House. Minty said she anticipated limited room availability but did not imagine living on South Campus, which is primarily located in the Collegetown area. “I thought there was going to be a lot more of an aspect of choice in all of this,” Minty said. She was especially disappointed in her housing arrangements for next year because Schuyler House, which is Cornell’s southernmost dorm located near Ithaca Commons, is far from not only her classes and friends, but also general campus life. “As a student, everything you want is on campus,” Minty said.
Peer reviewers identifying discrepancies in his data have accused Dr. Augustine M.K. Choi, a former Weill Cornell Medicine dean and current professor, of manipulating the results of research experiments on animals. Now, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling for the federal government to ban him from performing future experiments on animals. Since 2002, nine studies authored by Choi have been retracted, and one study was withdrawn from published research journals. PETA provided The Sun with a list of each retracted article. Each journal retracted Choi’s work after finding duplicate images representing data from Choi’s previous experiments, spliced images or copied images from other publications. At least four other articles have been corrected due to inconsistent data, according to PETA. Most of Choi’s allegedly manipulated research tested if exposure to carbon monoxide could reduce the impacts of sepsis — a life-threatening reaction to an infection — on lung functions. Choi used mice for these experiments, but PETA
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is concerned that allegedly false mouse data may lead to trials on human participants that are not adequately justified, according to Katherine Roe, chief scientist in PETA’s Laboratory Investigations Department. Medical professionals have also debated whether mice’s responses translate to those of humans in sepsis studies specifically, due to humans’ vastly different immune systems. “That is probably why all of our attempts to find a treatment from humans based on mouse data have failed,” Roe said. “So [allegedly], [Choi’s] animals were put through cecal ligation, exposure to cigarette smoke, exposure to infectious diseases and death … for what?” PETA believes Choi’s experiments on mice are not only ineffective but painful and traumatizing to the rodents involved, so the animal rights nonprofit is working toward preventing Choi from conducting further experiments. PETA aims to ensure that potentially false data is not used as a foundation for human trials. To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun. com. Marisa Cefola can be reached at mcefola@cornellsun.com.
Pulitzer-Winning Poet Laureate Visits Cornell By ANNINA BRADLEY Sun Staff Writer
Last Thursday, U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey delivered a poetry reading in Goldwin Smith Hall, kick-starting the English Department’s Zalaznick Reading Series. Trethewey, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for her publication Native Guard, has authored five collections of poetry. On Thursday, she shared poems spanning her career including “Southern Gothic,” “Enlightenment” and a commission piece for the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre titled “Ground Truth.” At the event, she began by reading “Miscegenation,” which delves into her identity as the daughter of an interracial couple in Mississippi in the 1960s, where
society was strictly segregated by race. Across her work, Trethewey delves into questions of memory and pushes back against mainstream narratives. “Growing up in the Deep South,” she said, “I became aware at an early age of those intersections and contingents between public history and collective memory and personal, family and community history.” Between reading poems, Trethewey shared details about her own family’s history, situated in the greater political history of race relations in the United States. In her poem “Incident,” Trethewey questions whether the attack on the Mount Olive Baptist Church — which she and her family lived across from in the late 60s — was directed at the church itself or at its interracial community. “At the time, the church was doing a
voter registration drive to get disenfranchised black citizens registered to vote,” Trethewey said. “Because of that we never knew if the act of terrorism was directed at the church or at us, the interracial family inside the house.” Trethewey’s poem “Drapery Factory, Gulfport, Mississippi, 1956,” is similarly inspired by her familial history. “Back in the 50s, my grandmother worked in a drapery factory,” Trethewey said. “And, after Emmett Till’s death, which many historians think of as the beginning to the modern Civil Rights movement, my grandmother and some of the women in the factory where she worked decided to stage their own kind of protest.”
Cornell on March 14 as part of the Zalaznick Reading Series, which will next feature novelist Colm Tóibín on April 11.
To continue reading this article, please visit www.cornellsun.com.
Annina Bradley can be reached at abradley@cornellsun.com.
JOHN AMIS / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pulitzer poetry | Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey visited