4-18-2023 entire issue hi res

The Corne¬ Daily Sun

By SOFIA RUBINSON Sun Managing Editor

President Martha Pollack provided details on the recently announced 2023-2024 academic year theme, “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell,” in a Monday email sent to the Cornell community.

“Free expression is the bedrock of democracy, just as academic freedom is the bedrock of higher education,” Pollack wrote. “These twin freedoms are at the heart of our core values, and have always been fundamental to Cornell’s excellence and its identity.”

Solidified in 2019, Cornell has a core value of “free and open inquiry and expression,” defined as pursuing knowledge even of ideas some may consider wrong or offensive and engaging in reasoned opposition to messages to which one objects.

Over the past few weeks, the University has garnered national attention following the Student Assembly’s resolution to institute mandatory “trigger warnings” in courses discussing sensitive issues. On April 3, Pollack rejected this resolution in defense of the freedom of expression.

“Today, as we witness assaults on free expression and academic freedom from both ends of the political spectrum, it is vitally important that we, as a community of scholars, engage deeply with these values and the issues that can emerge in upholding them,” Pollack wrote in her Monday email.

The theme will involve exploring the significance, history and challenges of free expression and academic freedom through a series of events and experiences designed to build knowledge and foster discussion. The initiative hopes to develop skills such

as active listening, leading controversial discussions, leading effective advocacy and managing responses to controversial interactions.

In November, conservative media pundit Ann Coulter ’84 was met with student disruptions and protests that prompted an early exit from her scheduled speaking event. This sparked controversy and national attention to the state of free expression at Cornell. Following this event, there have been no

Pollack Explains 2023-24 Teme Cornell Campaign Promotes Recycling, Composting Strategies

By ALLYSON KATZ Sun Contributor

Cornell’s annual Beyond Waste Campaign, which spanned from Feb. 14 to March 31 this year, is an initiative run by the Campus Sustainability Office that aims to create awareness, action and community around waste use and management.

reduce waste to zero on college campuses by diverting at least 90 percent of waste from becoming trash through upcycling, recycling, composting, donations and resale.

other major public incidents of perceived threats to free expression until the Student Assembly’s content warning resolution.

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

Webinar Explores Turkish Politics

Çagaptay and Hintz discuss the importance of Turkish elections

By ASLI CIHANGIR Sun Contributor

Cornell’s Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies program organized a web conference titled “Turkish Elections: A Pivotal Change?” on Friday, April 14, in which Soner Çagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at

The Washington Institute and a columnist for The Hurriyet Daily News, and Lisel Hintz, an assistant professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, discussed the election and its potential impacts for Turkey.

The upcoming Turkish elections — in which citizens will vote for both the president and the parlia-

ment — carry an immense importance due to the potential overturn of current President Recep Tayyip Erdo an’s 20-year rule.

Turkey has faced several national challenges over the years — including an eroded right to freedom of expression through imprisoned journalists, democratic backsliding, human rights violations including hundreds of femicides, two massive earthquakes that caused thousands of deaths and destroyed several cities, a major economic crisis leading to spiraling inflation and extreme political polarization.

The webinar discussed these national challenges within Turkey’s current political state, the role of democracy within the elections, the strategies that the opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroglu’s coalition should follow for a greater chance at victory, the potential fallout if Erdo an loses and the groups that will have a large impact on the results.

See ELECTIONS page 3

The campaign included participation in the national Campus Race to Zero Waste competition and featured events from faculty, student clubs like Residential Compost Management and Cornell alumni. The events included speakers like the Hatfield lecture with Marriott CEO Tony Capuano, gallery exhibitions on sustainable fashion and training on sustainable leadership and how to certify an event as sustainable.

Campus Race to Zero Waste began in 2001 as Recylemania, a competition between Ohio University and Miami University that utilized the schools’ intense sports rivalry to incentivize students to see who could recycle the most. Cornell joined in 2010, and in the following 13 years the competition has expanded beyond recycling to include other categories such as food organics, waste minimization, targeted materials and diversion and electronics recycling.

The competition’s goal is to

In 2020, the national campaign was renamed the Campus Waste to Zero Waste. Over the eight-week period, Cornell — among other schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Macalester and University of Ottawa — reported its waste and competed in each category.

Cornell has historically performed well in the competition. In 2022, the University came first in electronics waste recycling, third for food waste diversion and 25th for landfill diversion. This year, Mark Hall — materials coordinator for Cornell’s recycling and waste repurposing center, R5 — said in an email to the Sun that Cornell came in 28th out of 89 in landfill diversion, 35th out of 101 for the Per Capita Classic and 12th out of 82 for food organics.

According to Sarah Carson, the Campus Sustainability Office director, the University's priorities in the Beyond Waste campaign differ from those of the national competition.

“Cornell puts more emphasis on waste reduction [versus waste diversion] than the national campaign,” Carson wrote in a statement to The Sun.

Election education | Cornell's Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies program hosted a webinar that discussed the Turkish elections.

The cherry blossoms at Cornell are starting to bloom across campus as spring approaches and temperatures rise.

Blossoms Bloom

Timely theme | Pollack explained the theme of the 2023-24 academic year in a Monday email to students.

ANTHONY CORRALES / SUN CONTRIBUTOR

Sofa Rubinson can be reached at srubinson@cornellsun.com.

See BEYOND WASTE page 3

Daybook

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

A LISTING OF FREE CAMPUS EVENTS

Inclusive Excellence Summit

9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m., Virtual Event

Econometrics Workshop: Joel Horowitz

11:15 a.m. - 12:45 p.m., 498 Uris Hall

Lunch, Lecture and Screening of Gail Myers’s “Rhythms of the Land”

11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., 401 Physical Sciences Building

Verdant Views: Global Climate Stories

1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m., Virtual Event

Topics in Public and Ecosystem Health: Elisa Chelle

4 p.m. - 5 p.m., The John D. Murray Lecture Hall, Shurman Hall

Inside Journalism With Andrew Morse ’96

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m., 120 Physical Sciences Building

Violets of the Finger Lakes

7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m., Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center

Film: Denise Ho: Becoming the Song

7 p.m. - 9 p.m., Cornell Cinema

Asian Amercan Studies Program and Asian and Asian American Center BeComing Lunch Series With Madeline Lei

Noon - 1 p.m., 429 Rockefeller Hall

Conversation With Cornell Alum, Isabel Ramos ’96, and Founder of Teatrotaller

1 p.m. - 2 p.m., Virtual Event

Joint Development and Behavioral Economics Workshop: Francis Annan

1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m., 102 Mann Library

Education Abroad Drop-In Advising

3 p.m. - 4 p.m., B50 Caldwell Hall

Philosophy Discussion Club: Desmond Hogan, Princeton

3 p.m. - 5 p.m., 236 Goldwin Smith Hall

Human-ing Out Loud: Ontologies of Disorder in A Musically Exemplified Trans-Caribbean-Thought

4:30 p.m. - 6 p.m., G08 Uris Hall

Book Talk With Jodi Kim: Settler Garrison: Debt Imperialism, Militarism and Transpacific Imaginaries

5 p.m., 258 Goldwin Smith Hall

Independent Since 1880

June and one for incoming freshmen in July — make for a total of 61 issues this academic year. Subscriptions are: $60.00 for fall term, $60.00 for spring term and $120.00 for both terms if paid in advance. Standard postage paid at Ithaca, New York. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Cornell Daily Sun, 139 W. State St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850.

By ISKANDER KHAN Sun Contributor

Yamatai — Cornell’s only Taiko drumming group — performed for a full house at Bailey Hall for their annual showcase, PULSE, on Saturday night.

Taiko refers to the art of Japanese drumming. While Yamatai performs at different venues throughout the year, PULSE is meant to be a compilation of their most riveting pieces in a wholly-immersive experience.

Attendees recalled hearing about PULSE in a variety of ways, including through Yamatai’s extensive marketing campaign.

“It’s my mom’s birthday, and I told her she could do whatever she wanted,” said Lilly Svitavsky, a student at the State University of New York at Oswego who traveled to Cornell for the performance. “And this is what she picked.”

Yamatai Musical Director Yuri Sugihara ’23 explained the process behind the organization’s publicity strategy.

“Publicity for PULSE is probably one of the most notorious things [about us],” Sugihara said. “[The publicity team] designs the posters and the quarter cards. They assign chalking times to everyone. It’s a lot of work.”

Aljosa Trmcic, an extension associate at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dairy Foods Extension, heard about PULSE through advertisements and posters and decided to finally attend after missing it in years prior.

“I’m here really to be amazed,” Trmcic said. “I don’t know what to expect from this. But I feel like it’s going to be really nice.”

Zach Lee ’24 recalled being approached by a Yamatai member advertising PULSE outside of Morrison Dining.

“One of the members actually ran up to me and said, ‘Hey, you should come check out the show,’” Lee said. “I figured that I was going to come check out the show, because I love live music.”

A recent transfer from Tompkins Cortland Community College, Lee said he was looking forward to the concert as one of his first Cornell events.

Yamatai uses the profit raised from the ticket sales for future PULSE concerts and to travel for shows. This semester, the troupe has traveled for performances at Syracuse University and for the opening of a new Uniqlo store in Jersey City, New Jersey.

“Those funds directly go into performing at other places and holding PULSE again the next year,” Sugihara said.

Ushers offered earplugs to attendees as they filtered into Bailey Hall, as the volume of the music tends to be loud. The two-hour-long concert began at 7 p.m., opening with a Buddhist-inspired piece titled ‘Echo’ and a dozen drummers.

Yamatai Impresses at PULSE Scholars, Students Discuss Upcoming Turkish Elections

The ensemble was also joined on stage by members of Yamatai’s parent group, BONTEN, a professional drumming troupe based in Japan. BONTEN’s leader Masataka Kobayashi, referred to honorifically as Kobayashi-sensei, helped start Yamatai at Cornell in the fall of 2006.

“[Kobayashi] helped us get our first drums [and he] basically found the group,” Sugihara said. “And now we’re going 17 years strong. … We’re really grateful to him.”

Sugihara added that Kobayashi has not attended PULSE since before the COVID-19 pandemic, so the group was especially excited to see him at Saturday’s show.

“In the past, [Kobayashi] used to come pretty frequently to every PULSE,” Sugihara said. “But ever since the pandemic, he hasn’t come to perform with us for about five years now. So, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen him.”

Of the 13 pieces performed, some were composed by Kobayashi, while others were composed by Yamatai members themselves. The musicians utilized a range of Japanese instruments, including the fue, kane and chappa, as well as gongs, a keyboard and a vast assortment of drums.

Sugihara said that most Yamatai members come to the University with no experience in Taiko drumming, instead learning the art under the guidance of their fellow students.

During the two-hour performance, Yamatai’s emcees Elisha Wang ’24 and Max Ma ’25 entertained audiences between pieces, with members also performing skits, pantomimes and a tap dance routine.

“I think the transitions in PULSE are also really important… they make the whole concert just so enjoyable to watch,” Sugihara said. “They allow the members to fully use their creative freedom.”

After the show, attendees expressed enjoyment and awe at the performance.

“From the very beginning, it was such a powerful show. You could feel every beat and it was so moving and impactful. It was really something special,” said Chris Cambry ’26. “It was so dynamic — the movement. It wasn’t just watching people play drums. It was an experience.”

ELECTIONS

Continued from page 1

The webinar opened with Hintz’s analysis of Turkish politics and the political atmosphere in the country.

“The current regime in Turkey is, by academic standards, a competitive authoritarian regime,” Hintz said.

Hintz asked several questions to help the audience think about how the election could impact the authoritarian government’s potential future.

“Does Turkey continue down its path towards even fuller, more fully consolidated authoritarianism?” Hintz said. “Or do we see a turn to some sort of coalition politics and perhaps a step back from the highly consolidated executive presidency that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has put in place with his ruling Justice and Development Party?”

Hintz noted that Turkey’s recent crisis — the two devastating earthquakes that occurred in February — revealed Turkey’s corrupted disaster response mechanisms in the current authoritarian political state.

“The earthquakes exposed not only the problems of an authoritarian, consolidated regime in which disaster response teams are not getting the messaging that they need to get out — you’ve had so much power consolidated in such a small amount of hands, or in one person’s hands, that it was very difficult to respond to the earthquakes in an appropriate manner — but also, the crony capitalism that was baked into construction, which meant that so many buildings collapsed

that shouldn’t have,” Hintz said. “[Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, the Justice and Development Party] engaged in some of the amnesty laws that they approved that allowed structures to be constructed that were not up to code.”

In addition to the aftermath of the earthquakes, one of the most critical issues in Turkey’s current political climate is the ongoing economic crisis. Multiple Turkish students, some of whom plan to vote in the elections, highlighted the crisis to The Sun.

“I think one of the biggest problems in Turkey right now is the lack of foreign investment into the country, which causes a lot of economic problems — the biggest one being inflation, which causes the dollar exchange rate to go up,” said Doga Dinçbas ’26, who is registered to vote in the elections.

Taylan Özgür Ercan ’25, president of the Turkish Student Association, added that the growth of the Turkish economy is a mirage, largely due to the rising population.

“There is an increase in [gross domestic product], but it is mostly because of the population increase,” Ercan said.

Çagaptay concurred with both of the students’ points, saying that although the economy is no longer in recession, it is now experiencing hyperinflation that younger generations have never seen in their lives.

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

Sustainability Campaign Challenges Cornell to Reduce Waste

BEYOND WASTE

Continued from page 1

Cornell’s campaign goals focus on emphasizing proper waste management among the community — including waste reduction, proper sorting and encouraging campus engagement through sustainability events.

“From electronic waste to fast fashion, we need to think beyond worn-out, one-size-fitsall solutions to the waste that results from our society’s linear use of materials,” Cornell’s Beyond Waste website states. “Together, we need to fundamentally reimagine the ways we produce, distribute and consume goods in order to move beyond a ‘waste disposal’ mindset — where goods are simply disposed of at the end of their life — and into a ‘beyond waste’ mindset.”

Waste reduction efforts can be seen in Cornell’s sustainable purchasing efforts to buy re-used, efficiently made or partially recycled items. R5 runs the System for Trade & Auction of Cornell Surplus program that stores furniture in good condition that it receives from campus facilities — such as when buildings are demolished — and auctions it off or reallocates it to any department for free. There have also been efforts to track food waste by Student Sustainability Coordinators in order to reduce overcon-

sumption by students in dining facilities.

As waste reduction efforts like Beyond Waste have grown, Hall said that Farm Services and R5 have worked alongside the Sustainability Office for the past few years in order to improve the rates of landfill diversion on campus.

At the Tour of Cornell’s Compost Facility, an event part of the Beyond Waste campaign led by Farm Services Supervisor Bill Huizinga, students toured Cornell’s composting facility — which is not usually open to the public — and gained insight into how Cornell’s Food Waste Program is able to achieve its impressive Campus Race to Zero Waste rankings.

According to Huizinga, Compost bins are collected in 32-gallon metal cans from dining halls and eateries and transported to an open pile composting facility off-campus. There, the 800 tons of food scraps are combined with animal bedding and plant debris to create piles of compost that, once decomposed, are sold to local community members, donated to charitable organizations or used by Cornell agriculture and landscape operations.

When the composting program tried to implement open bins — composting bins available to all community members at Cornell — Huizinga found pervasive contamination from non-compostable items — cigarette butts, compostable cutlery that was

unable to break down and other trash that students had mistakenly believed to belong there.

The prevalence of ‘compostable’ utensils and garbage delayed the decomposition process, sometimes preventing piles from composting entirely, Huizinga said. It also meant that the composting facility had to reject more bins than before, as the small-staffed team didn’t have the time to sort through all of the contamination.

This mass contamination was especially troublesome for Huizinga, as the facility relies on its compost sales to fund all programming.

“We have to cover our costs,” Huizinga said. “We don’t get any extra money from the [University] or anything.”

Farm Services currently only accepts food, napkins and compostable bags and mainly collects compost from dining hall facilities that have been trained on disposal — though Huizinga said some contamination still makes its way into the compost.

Similar issues of contamination plague the recycling bins of the R5 Operations. At an electronic waste collection event for the Beyond Waste campaign, Hall said the main barrier to collecting recyclable materials was contamination.

“[Contamination] is the problem,” Hall said. “If they’re picking up a recycling load

and come across a bag that has, let’s say, landfill in it, they have to disqualify the whole load. So the problem is not only [people’s lack of recycling knowledge] … It’s also implementation. Unless you’re standing there, right by the container, every time somebody throws something away, [there will be issues].”

While he was speaking, Hall pulled a series of wires from a bin of construction waste and said that demolition workers had not been trained to separate electronics, wood and metal into their respective dumpsters.

“If we see an open dumpster, we are just gonna throw the stuff in,” Hall said. “It’s one of those things [that requires] education, and we’re going through the process of trying to educate these guys that don’t do [this right].”

Hall explained that to address the problems of contamination, the Campus Sustainability Office, Farm Services and R5 have been working to track where most rejections are coming from so they can educate the populations of those areas on how to properly dispose of their waste.

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

“You could feel every beat and it was so moving and impactful. It was really something special.”

Chris

Cambry ’26

Iskander Khan can be reached at ik275@cornell.edu.

Aslı Cihangir can be reached at ac2492@cornell.edu.

Allyson Katz can be reached at ak2264@cornell.edu.

On Trigger Warnings and Watching Movies

MAX FATTAL SUN STAFF WRITER

Trigger Warning: This article contains references to Sexual Violence.

Just last week, Cornell University made the national news for the second time this academic school year after President Martha Pollack rejected a student assembly proposal to mandate trigger warnings in classes, citing academic freedom. Unsurprisingly, the decision was hailed as a victory by all the various actors at Cornell, including the conservative Cornell Review, and various professors. Yet, as a person who’s experienced life and academia both with and without trigger warnings, I can’t help but feel frustrated by this erroneous heralding of academic freedom. Disingenuous, reactionary fear mongering aside, trigger warnings seem to me a perfectly common-sense, and non-controversial, addition to contemporary life. If I’ve found the time to include them in something as informal as watching a movie, I can’t help but feel that professors (who hold in their hands the academic success of countless students) could be asked to incorporate them into their classes. For those who don’t seem to understand their ease or importance, I’ve decided to write a bit about my experience with them, and why I can’t help but feel concerned at their rejection here at Cornell.

I’m a cinephile. I watch a whole lot of movies with a whole lot of intense content, I show them to a diversity of people and I’m a huge fan of trigger warnings. Just because

I watch anything and everything doesn’t mean I’d expect everyone to be comfortable watching a graphic decapitation or violent rape scene on their Thursday night. At the very least, just as it’s nice to know whether a movie is 90 minutes or three hours long, it can be important to know if a film contains a shot that’s going to physically hurt to watch. Adding the fact that those moments, upsetting to the normal viewer, may mirror the subject of someone’s therapy, seeking an alternative or skipping a scene doesn’t seem that crazy. It’s obviously non-ideal; it would be nice if I could show every movie I like to any of my friends with no reservations, but I want that because I want my friends to enjoy the movie. Films are incredibly powerful, and they can do a lot of things, but they can’t be expected to undo trauma. Asking someone to watch a film that taps into that trauma, in the hope that the difficult material will recontextualize the way they see their experience, risks just as much that it’ll set them back in grappling with said experience. Maybe it’s a choice that’s reasonable for some people. But it’s not mine to make, nor is it a professor’s to hang over their students as a prerequisite to academic success.

Like most, I’ve had my fair share of struggles with mental health, even if it isn’t an active and persisting issue for me right now (knock on wood). I can at once acknowledge that I’m going to engage with any material, regardless of trigger warnings, and recognize that there were points in my life when engaging with something triggering rendered me

unable to function in an academic setting. Knowing people for whom this situation remains true, I think that asking them to take a mental health hit which may very well carry over to their other classes just so that a professor can feel that their lesson is being fully transmitted to each and every student — spoiler alert: It never is and never has been — seems like an unreasonable value proposition. Few people are broadly against engaging with difficult material, but interpreting vulnerability with intense content as an academic failure is simply unfair and betrays a mindset that perpetuates mental health issues on campus at large. If the administration were serious about wanting students to engage with difficult content, they’d put in an effort to make people comfortable with the prospect by incorporating trigger warnings, allowing students to confront triggers on their own terms, and more broadly facing a campus mental health issue so severe that the first association any non-Cornellian has with our school is suicide bridges.

For those who say that this presents too broad an issue to tackle, that professors might not know what could trigger students, I point them to the ways film fans have dealt with the issue. Doesthedogdie.com is a database of user submitted answers to an exhaustive list of questions for thousands of movies, books and TV shows. I can go on the site with a question and feel confident that it’s going to be answered, and even if I see a warning that might be silly to me, I hardly feel gutted knowing that the information may prove useful to someone else. A

professor who knows their curriculum well should be able to fill out a doesthedogdie. com-style form in half an hour, maybe a bit more if they want to provide specific details. In fact, professors of literature or film can literally use doesthedogdie.com as a tool for any assigned materials.

All told, trigger warnings aren’t that hard. They aren’t a fatal blow to academic freedom, unless we define academic freedom as an abstract right to force students to confront viscerally unpleasant information with little emotional response or, perhaps more accurately, as the perpetuation of an institution built and upheld by a privileged ruling class and exclusionary to any who may have suffered at their hands. The Cornell code has plenty of bylaws informing when professors can assign work or hold classes or what accommodations they have to make, none of which are argued to infringe academic freedom, and all of which exist because professors, good and bad, aren’t always trusted or expected to focus on their students’ well being. Trigger warnings are a simple, common sense solution to the good problem of having a student body filled with individuals who have had a diversity of experiences, each trying their best to emerge from Cornell better off with regards to both education and mental health.

To finish reading this article, please visit cornellsun.com.

Max Fattal is a sophomore in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. They can be reached at mfattal@cornellsun.com.

Jack Kubinec You Dont Know Jack

Frats Are A Problem — But Don't Abolish Tem.

Ihave to imagine that one of Martha Pollack’s most headache-inducing activities (aside from crushing Ryan Lombardi in bridge) is figuring out what to do about fraternities.

I’m glad I’m not Martha Pollack because I’ve long been of two minds on fraternity abolition. Sexual assault is an enduring problem in the fraternity party world. Even at safer parties, I think the way women are commoditized by brothers deciding who can enter frat parties is disappointing at a school long committed to gender equality. I’m still angered by Phi Kappa Psi’s response to Antonio Tsialas’ death my freshman year — closing ranks, lawyering up and denying Tsialas’ family the dignity of knowing the details surrounding his death (not to mention that, as far as I can tell, everyone involved in the dirty rush event still received their Cornell diploma). Sometimes the system seems irredeemable.

But advocates for Greek life abolition rarely talk about what comes next, tacitly assuming social life will remain the same while abusive behavior between students magically disappears. I’m convinced of neither point — I think our problems with men run deeper than fraternities, and despite its numerous flaws, I think Greek life creates a social fabric that we would be more fractured and isolated without. But to make this all more concrete, what happens to colleges in the years following fraternity abolition?

Williams College has disallowed fraternities since the 1960s. Today, three large houses sit on Hoxsey Street, just a few steps from the sleepy Massachusetts campus. Leases for the big houses go quickly, and the only social groups cohesive enough to land them are sports teams. These pseudo-frat houses throw open-door parties on Friday nights, and Williams students will shuffle over to whichever house is “throwing on Hoxsey.”

Andrew Nachamkin is a junior at Williams who described to me a social scene where students can struggle to maintain friendships. The majority of friend groups that stay intact tend to come from organizations gathered around a common cause.

“When I think about all the people I know living in groups, a huge percentage of them are either in sports teams together or acapella groups together or affinity groups together,” Nachamkin said.

When thinking about frat abolition, we need to consider what sort of environment would spring up in the aftermath. Post-frat Cornell would see the diminished party scene and fractured social life based around shared characteristics present at Williams. If you can’t sing or swim and don’t feel affinity for affinity groups, where can you go to find deep friendships?

I don’t think our weirdly brutal club scene would fill the gap. God help us

if coffee chats and mandatory G-Body meetings become our primary social engagements.

To be fair, Williams’ enrollment is smaller than in our Agriculture school — what about fraternity abolition at more comparable colleges?

Stanford graduate Ginerva Davis explored west coast Cornell’s shift away from a quirky strain of Greek life to a bureaucratized social scene in a beautifully-written article this summer. Davis chronicles Stanford’s stripping-down of Greek life and dystopian renaming of houses with random numbers and letters.

Cornell seems to be edging in this direction with its massive expansion of mandatory dorm housing and semesterly sanctions on Greek life. This isn’t necessarily bad. Cornell isn’t exercising control

over Greek life for grinch-like reasons; it’s doing so because the University has a duty to protect its students from violence. The worst fraternities should be removed, and members of Greek life who commit crimes should be expelled. But dismantling the fraternity system presents a separate host of problems.

Fraternity abolition in the name of safety backfired at Stanford, writes Davis, who describes the creep of depression and loneliness at the once-lively school. She recalls overhearing a student speculate that it would take people between four and seven days to find him if he died in his room. Plus, students still binge drink, just in smaller and sadder groups.

A fraternity ban, which tends to accompany a sorority ban, would pull the rug out from under some of the most cohesive social groups at Cornell — a school that consistently scores in the “moderately high” category of the UCLA loneliness scale. The suite-style Cornell dorms segment students into isolated groups and, for the most part, fail to create meaningful communities. Forcing students into fractured and sterilized social arrangements — as happened at Stanford — would feed the depression and loneliness alone inside our dorms...

To keep reading, visit Cornellsun.com

Fraternity abolition in the name of safety backfired at Stanford...the creep of depression and loneliness [grew] at the once lively school.

Housing

Michael the Girl Gray

Sudoku Puzzle 100

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

Ex Dog

Men’s Lacrosse

Cornell Defeats Army in Last Minute

Lacrosse wins a thrilling 11-10 game

By GRAYSON RUHL Sun Sports Editor

In a game featuring two of the top 10 defenses in the nation, it was no surprise that No. 6 men’s lacrosse had a gritty battle from start to finish against No. 7 Army. With seven total penalties and 13 caused turnovers, the game came down to the wire.

The difference came in the final minute of play. Tied at 10, senior midfielder Aiden Blake was able to find the back of the net with nine seconds left in regulation. The Black Knights could not respond, and the Red topped Army, 11-10.

Defense was on display from the get-go, as neither team was able to break through for the first five minutes of play. The Red (9-2, 3-1 Ivy) had a man-up opportunity two minutes in, but was not able to convert.

Cornell broke the scoreless tie with just under 10 minutes in the first quarter, as a pass from senior attacker Michael Long set up sophomore midfielder Alex Holmes in the middle of the box for a top shelf goal.

The Red scored again just seven seconds later. Freshman face-off specialist Jack Cascadden won the ensuing battle at the x and gave it up to senior attacker Billy Coyle, who found Long in the hole for an easy goal.

Four minutes later, Cornell extended the lead to three. Senior midfielder JJ Lombardi got a pass inside to Long, who juggled the ball in his pocket before scoring through contact from just outside the crease.

It was a dominant first quarter for senior goalkeeper Chayse Ierlan, recording five saves. His sole blem-

ish came with just under three minutes remaining, when Ryan Sposito, grandson of legendary Cornell head coach Richie Moran, had an open look on the right side and fired it into the top left corner. The Red ended the first quarter leading, 3-1.

The Black Knights offense began to pick up in the second quarter, as the team converted an opening faceoff win into a goal. The Red was able to respond a minute later, when junior attacker CJ Kirst drew a triple team and found junior midfielder Hugh Kelleher open. Kelleher was able to bury a shot from 15 yards out to put the Red back up by two.

Both defenses were on display throughout the first half, and the teams committed 15 total turnovers in the opening 30 minutes. After six minutes of scoreless play, the Black Knights cut the lead to one when a pass across the crease by Paul Johnson set up a quick stick shot from the hole by Gunnar Fellows.

Army (9-2, 6-0 Patriot League) won the ensuing face-off and worked the Cornell defense before finding an open look on the right side. Reese Burek beat Ierlan to tie the game at four. With just over two minutes left in the half, the Red took the lead back. Working behind the net, Long found Blake in the hole for a quick stick goal.

As the clock ticked to under a minute, the Black Knights had possession with an opportunity to hold for the final shot. Nevertheless, Army was able to convert early into the possession, as Paul Johnson beat his defender from behind the net and got the bounce shot to go past Ierlan.

The Black Knights won the fol-

lowing face-off, and while it did not score, the team drew a penalty on Cornell, setting up a man-up opportunity to start the second half. The game was tied at five after the first half.

Cornell was able to kill the opening man-up opportunity by Army, as Ierlan made a save and clear. Ierlan saved the first three shots on goal by the Black Knights, and had four total in the third.

As they did in the first half, both teams continued to battle and grind in the low-scoring affair. After nearly six minutes of scoreless play, Coyle found junior midfielder Ryan Sheehan in the left side of the hole, who finished in the near 90 to give the Red the lead back.

Two minutes later, Cornell went up by two. A blocked Army shot set up Cornell’s transition offense, and sophomore midfielder Christopher Davis got a bounce shot to go from 10 yards out.

The Black Knights scored once more in the third quarter. After an interference penalty on Kirst, Army was able to cash in on the man-up chance, finishing on a one hop shot from 20 yards out. Cornell took a 7-6 lead into the fourth quarter.

A penalty on Army a minute-anda-half into the fourth quarter gave the Red a prime chance to increase its lead. The Red worked the ball around the box before junior attacker Rory Graham scored his first goal of the season, putting Cornell up by two.

The Red won the following face-off, and senior attacker Spencer Wirtheim was able to drive to the hole from the right side and finish top shelf through heavy contact.

Penalties proved to be a problem for Cornell all day, as the team committed an uncharacteristic five penal-

ties. One of them came after the next face-off, giving Army another manup opportunity. The Black Knights took advantage, getting a high bouncing shot to go to draw within two.

With just over nine minutes left in the game, the forecasted weather became a factor. A power issue at Michie Stadium suspended play for 10 minutes.

Coming out of the stoppage, the Black Knights offense came to life. Army rattled off three unanswered goals to take its first lead of the game midway through the fourth.

The Red was able to tie the game up at 10 with three-and-a-half minutes left, as Kirst found Long for his third of the day. In his third game of the season, Long finished with three goals and two assists.

With just over a minute left, the Red got possession and called timeout. Needing one goal to win it, the offense worked the ball around the box.

As the clock approached zeroes, Coyle found Blake, who scored the decisive goal with nine seconds remaining. Army did not have enough time to get a shot off, and Cornell escaped West Point with an 11-10 victory.

Despite losing the face-off and ground ball battle, the Red found a way to win. This is the Red’s fourth ranked win of the season, and helps cement the team as a top seed as postseason play nears.

Cornell has its final road game of the year next weekend, when it travels to Providence, Rhode Island on Saturday, April 22 to take on Brown. The game will start at noon and be televised on ESPN+.

Down to the wire | Senior midfielder Aiden Blake had two goals against Army, including the game-winner with nine seconds left.

JULIA NAGEL / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Grayson Ruhl can be reached at gruhl@cornellsun.com.