By ANGELA BUNAY Sun Managing Editor
See FIRST-DAY on page 3
New and returning Cornellians back
“It’s hard in the spring because everything’s dead in the winter, so all of our agri cultural partners don’t have anything fresh coming in during that time,” said Dylan Rodgers ’23, the collaboration and education coordinator at Anabel’s Grocery. “So, it’s harder to run those events, but we want to get that back going in these next few weeks.”
“It’s gonna take a lot of effort to change those racial inequities on campus,” Rodgers said. “At Anabel’s, we’re trying to do it through food, but it’s gonna it’s really going to take everyone here, all hands on deck.”
To continue reading this article, please visit cornellsun.com.
Carlin Reyen can be reached at creyen@cornellsun.com. Angela Bunay can be reached at abunay@cornellsun.com.
Editor
“Cornell has made some real ly good efforts with a food pantry and the Swipe Out Hunger program, and other ways to subsidize meal plans, but there’s still a lot of room to grow.”InSpring 2022, Anabel’s began accepting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Electronic Benefit Transfers funds for eligible students.
Anabel’s Returns for Fall
To continue reading this article, please visit cornellsun.com.
in Ithaca for Fall semester
First-day frenzy | On Aug. 22, students bustle through Central Campus en route to their first classes of the day. As students return to Cornell’s campus for the Fall 2022 semester, campus officials and healthcare providers have to adapt to yet another national disease outbreak. This year, the monkeypox virus has been the newest challenge in a series of recent semesters affected by contagion.
By JIWON ESTEE YI AND JIWOOK JUNG Sun News Editor and Sun Assistant News
Anabel’s Grocery, the stu dent-run grocery store housed in Anabel Taylor Hall, first opened in 2016 with the mis sion to provide fresh, afford able and nutritious food and produce to the Cornell com munity. This year the non profit will return on Sept. 14 with new programming in collaboration with campus organizations and agricultural partners.Sinceits inception, Anabel’s has held community dinners, cook-alongs and pickling events for students and pro fessors. This year, the Anabel’s coordinators plan to continue holding these events.
MING DEMERS / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
As of August 19, there were three confirmed cases of Monkeypox in Tompkins County. The same day, Dr. Jada Hamilton, Medical Director at Cornell Health, sent out an email that revealed new mon keypox information resources and urged students to contact Cornell Health if they developed the virus’ symptoms.Dr.Heidi Torres, Assistant Hospital Epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, noted that since the rise in cases in the summer, healthcare professionals in New York City have seen a peak in monkeypox cases followed by a slight drop and plateau in cases, which Torres attributed to increased awareness and behavior change.
Food Insecurity | Anabel’s Grocery plans to reopen on Sept. 14 for the Fall.
CAMERON POLLACK / SUN FILE PHOTO
New members of the Class of 2026 are now on campus and have participated in a mask-optional Orientation Week, also known as “O-Week.” Returning students moved into their new dorms and apartments from North Campus to Collegetown. Now, with changing COVID19 masking policies, the first week of classes are underway for a somewhat “normal” semester. This Fall, three new North Campus residen tial halls opened following the North Campus Expansion project. Barbara McClintock Hall, Hu Shih Hall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hall, welcomed the newest members of the Class of 2026. The brand new facilities on North Campus with the completion of North Campus Residential Expansion program such as the new tennis courts and turf pitch.
“The baseline is that there still is this food insecurity on campus,” Rodgers said.
Rebecca Valli, Director of Media Relations for Cornell University, told National Public Radio that Cornell University is creating testing, treatment, and isolation plans for individuals affected by the disease in addition to the university publishing an online resource with information on monkeypox. “We are also considering the potential academic impacts and accommodations which may arise,” Valli said.
Vol. 139, No 1 TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2022 n ITHACA, NEW YORK 12 Pages Free The Corne¬ Daily Sun INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880 HIGHThunderstorms : 73º LOW: 63º Cornell in Congress Meet all of the Cornellians taking part in this year’s Congressional elections. | Page 3 News Fateful Finale Isabella DiLizia ’25 reviews the “monumental” finale of Better Call Saul | Page 6 Arts Weather Head-to-Head Late lacrosse legend Richie Moran’s alma matter faced off against Cornell Men’s Lacrosse. | Page 12 Sports First Week of Fall 2022 Underway
“Overall, I am greatly happy that I am living in Hu Shih Hall,” said Jason Mun ’26. “I am able to control the air conditioning in my room. The shower and the kitchens are very nice as well.”Mun moved in after his participation on Outdoor Odyssey, Cornell’s 50-year-tradition pre-orientation trip, and expressed that his move-in process was smooth thanks to the help from the residential advisors and staff of the University.“[Ihad] great experiences with all my RA’s and other adult members of Cornell,” Mun said. They have all been very helpful with my movein and gave me great advice. Most importantly, they have been very kind and make it smooth, quick and easy for all of us. Overall, I had a great time moving into Cornell.” According to Residential Advisor Yemisi Mustapha ’25, all undergraduate residential advisors arrived on Aug. 7 to get prepared and equipped to properly welcome incoming Cornellians.
Monkeypox in Tompkins County, Ithaca
By CARLIN REYEN Sun Staff Writer
With a potential basic needs center in the works, the Anabel’s coordinators hope to work with the center in their food security efforts.
The nonprofit’s primary goal is to combat food inse curity on campus. Since 2019, the organization has pushed for the inclusion of survey questions relating to food inse curity.In 2019, the Cornell Undergraduate Experience Survey, which asks students about their campus involve ments and general perceptions of their undergraduate expe rience, concluded that about 30 percent of undergraduate students reported a lack of food security. In 2021, the survey asked questions about how often stu dents eat less than they feel they need due to different cir cumstances. Lack of money, transportation and time to prepare food were all barriers. The survey also showed trends in racial inequalities with these barriers affecting BIPOC stu dents at close to twice the rate of white Recently,students.theBasic Needs Initiative at Cornell conducted a survey that highlighted the continued prevalence of food insecurity on campus, partic ularly among first-generation, low-income students.
2 The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 ALL DEPARTMENTS (607) 273-3606 Editor in Chief Vee Cipperman ’23 TheDailyCorne¬Sun INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880 Postal Information: The Cornell Daily Sun (USPS 132680 ISSN 1095-8169) is published by the Cornell Daily Sun, a New York corporation, 139 W. State St., Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. The Sun is published Tuesday and Thursday during the academic year, and every weekday online. Three special issues — one for seniors in May, one for reunion alumni in 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. Business: For questions regarding advertising, classifeds, subscriptions or delivery problems, please call from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Friday. News: To report breaking news or story ideas, please call after 5 p.m., SundayTursday. SEND A FAX (607) 273-0746 THE SUN ONLINE www.cornellsun.com E MAIL sunmailbox@cornellsun.com Business Manager Serena Huang ’24 139 W. State Street, Ithaca, N.Y.VISIT THE OFFICE
FIRST-DAY Continued from page 1
Elissa Slotkin ’98 - Michigan’s Eighth District
Similarly, for Gigi Ike ’23, her last first-day felt like a return to pre-pandemic nor malcy.“[During my first year], I took Psychology 1101: Introduction to Psychology in Bailey Hall. This semester, my first class of the day was oceanography,” Ike said. “I haven’t been to Bailey since freshman year, so it made me feel like a freshman in a way. It felt like a fresh start.”
Several Cornellians Running in Upcoming Congressional Elections
News The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 3
An undergraduate B.A. in sociology, Slotkin then served as a Central Intelligence Agency intel ligence officer, and later at the National Security Council during the Bush administration. her Republican rival and then incumbent, Mike Bishop, with 50.6 percent of the vote. Now, she’s running to keep her seat against Republican challenger Tom Barrett. Tara Sweeney ’98 - Alaska at Large Tara Sweeney, a republican, is currently running to replace the late Representative Don Young in both a special and regular election in a crowded election featuring Sarah Palin, among others.
To continue reading this article, please visit cornellsun.com. Roman LaHaye can be reached at rlahaye@cornellsun.com.
Students Excited for Classes to Pick Up Jiwon Estee Yi can be reached at Jiwookjyi@cornellsun.com.Jungcanbereached at jjung@cornellsun.com.
By
ROMAN LAHAYE Sun News Editor
Beth Van Duyne ’95 - Texas’ 24th District A B.A. in Urban and Regional Studies, Van Duyne is running for a second term now against dem ocratic challenger Jan McDowell. Previously serving as the mayor of Irving, Texas, Van Duyne was appointed by former president Trump to a regional administrator position for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2017.
“We did a lot of prep trying to welcome freshmen aside from just basic train ing,” Mustapha said. “‘In our training, we made sure to emphasize how to guide the residents’ transition into Cornell and make myself a very present resource for our residents. As RA’s, we try to create a community and creating a culture of care so that the first-year residents know that they are not alone on campus because Cornell can be iso lating at Laurentimes.”Mckechni ’26 voiced that unique merchan dises and small gifts provided by the residential staff mem bers and the Cornell com munity made the first-year students feel welcomed. “I’d say the move-in was very smooth. We got a lot of fun merch and stick ers,” McKechni said. “I was told that my residential hall Donlon Hall was the only residential hall that provided stickers, so we felt pretty cool.”First-year and transfer stu dents also experienced their first O-Week, which was mask-optional for the first time since January 2021. “We were able to host much larger events where more stu dents could be involved at one time, and overall made each event much more engaging and fun,” said Orientation Steering Committee Co-Chair Janna Zilkha ’23 in a state ment to The Sun. “It was so nice to see the excitement on the new students’ faces while they were enjoying the events that the OSC had planned for them.”This year’s O-Week Events included the First-Year Festival Barton Hall, which celebrat ed the first day of O-Week with bounce houses and other inflatables, paint nights and Zilkha’s favorite event: A S’mores and Movie Night on the Arts Quad in collabora tion with Campus Activities and Cornell Cinema. “The turnout was great er than I could have ever imagined,” Zilkha said. “We were giving away hundreds of bucket hats and water bottles, and they were gone within the firstO-Weekhour!” events were not the only places where masks wereFollowingoptional.the University’s new COVID-19 protocols, masks were “strongly encour aged, but not required, in classrooms” for the first day of Inclasses.accordance with the new policy, some professors chose to wear masks, but none man dated them. “I think I feel pretty good about it. I understand the importance of masks as a safe ty precaution, but I also think it’s a period of moving on from the COVID-19 pan demic,” said Salma Hazimeh ’24 of the policy. “Every semester that I come back, I feel like things get more and more normal, especially in terms of COVID-19 restric tions. Since this semester is starting off normally, I have high hopes for this semester and the rest of the year.”
With election day approaching on Nov. 8, here is a brief guide to the Cornellians running for con gressional office this year. Dan Meuser ’88Pennsylvania’s Ninth District First elected in 2018, Dan Meuser ’88 is running for a third term representing the 9th congres sional district of Pennsylvania. Meuser is a former president of Pride Mobility Products, a com pany producing motorized wheel chairs and other mobility aids. He is now facing off against Democrat Amanda Waldman. Katherine Clark, JD ’89Massachusetts’ Fifth District An alumna of Cornell Law School, Clark has been in office since 2013, winning a special elec tion to replace Sen. Ed Markey to represent the fifth congressional district of Massachusetts. Clark is on the Appropriations committee and serves as the assis tant speaker of the House for the 117th Congress. Jaime McCleod-Skinner, M.Eng. ’95 - Oregon’s Fifth District In a surprising upset, McCleodSkinner defeated 7-time incum bent and fellow Cornellian Kurt Schrader ’73 in May for the dem ocratic primary of Oregon’s 5th CongressionalMcCleod-Skinnerdistrict. is expected to win the heavily-democratic dis trict, and would be the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent the district.
4 The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 Clean. Sanitized. Ready to Serv e YOU! WE LCOME BACK ST UDENTS & FACULTY ! PIZZA • CALZONES • WINGS PA PADIAS • SIDES • DESSERTS • PEPSI ✷ Ithaca ’s FAVORITE Pizza! ✷ Ask about our Party Packs, C atering Packs and Salad Tr ays! ORDER ONLINE @ papajohns.com/Door Dash/Uber Eats / Grub Hub/Eat Street/Ithaca To Go 60 7-2 73- PA PA 435 Fr anklin Street • Ithaca 72 72 Papa John’s is a Cornell PREFERRED VENDOR STUFFED CRUST PIZZA • CALZONES • WINGS
The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 5
First premiering 14 years ago, the Breaking Bad universe is one of evolution and change. In both Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s original show and its prequel, Better Call Saul, the characters in each nascent season have left audiences enamored, rooting for their triumph, their redemp tion, their vindication. However, those in the writing room pull no punches — you’ll watch, hor rified, as the hapless high school chemistry teacher, good-hearted junkie, charming attorney and more plunge deeper into an inextricable criminal underworld until the story crescendos to a seamlessly-executed tragedy. The sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, which premiered on April 18 and culminated in a monumental finale on Aug. 15, demonstrates the consistency of this heartrending realism pervad ing the sister series. Despite many Breaking Bad fans being hooked by the exhila rating and morbid drug lord and cartel showdowns, both shows center on complex and com pelling characterization. After the success of the original series that yielded 16 Emmys and 76 other awards, many were dubi ous about a prequel revolving around the sleazy comic-relief lawyer, Saul. Would it be a vacu ous cash-grab? An inferior repli ca? Breaking Bad fans awaited gun-slinging cartel action and Saul Goodman’s ethics-bending shenanigans as the first season arrived. What they instead were given was a brilliant and nuanced lawyer drama about Saul’s hum ble origins as an eccentric public defender named Jimmy McGill, hustling to earn the approval of his superiors and the affections of his sweetheart Kim Wexler.
JULIA NAGEL / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR COURTESY OF AMC Better Call Saul: Te End of an Era
A Tribute to Lo-Fi
Particularly within its first few seasons, Better Call Saul is consid erably different than its predeces sor and yet so faithful to it. It is a deliberate, evocative exploration of Saul Goodman’s backstory and relationships that has a satisfying payoff. One such instance of a fulfilling arc occurs with second ary protagonist Nacho Varga, the son of a Mexican immigrant who grapples with his involvement in the cartel and the disappoint ment of his father who deplores his son’s criminal ventures. Without revealing any spoilers, Nacho’s independence, disdain for the cartel and moral forti tude come to a logical yet fitting conclusion, demonstrating the respect and caution the writers display towards their characters. Moreover, the execution of such payoffs is even more impressive when considering that Better Call Saul infuses scenes with gripping tension that prompts specula tion about who will live or die, despite the audience being aware that many characters survive into the Breaking Bad timeline.
6 | The Corne¬ Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 A & C & ARTS & CULTURE
ADITI ASSISTANTHUKERIKARARTSEDITOR
Isabella DiLizia is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at ird22@cornell.edu. Aditi Hukerikar is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She currently serves as an Assistant Arts and Culture Editor on the 140th Editorial Board. She can be reached at ahukerikar@cornellsun.com.
As the new school year approaches, it’s once again time for me to settle back into my study routine, which means re-acquainting myself with someone I haven’t seen all summer: the Lo-fi Girl. Although she was taken down for a few days over an alleged copyright claim, she has returned to once again accompany the popular lo-fi YouTube stream she appears in just in time for the beginning of the Lo-fi,semester.orlow fidelity music, is char acterized by its contrast to high-fidelity music. In other words, most lo-fi music has clearly not been through a high-qual ity production process, and tends to have background noise or other noticeable “flaws” throughout. The genre’s pop ularity has grown throughout the last few years, with listeners turning toward different streams or playlists for some relaxing beats. I tend to prefer studying with some kind of background noise playing, but finding something that wasn’t too dis tracting (like music with lyrics tends to be for me) but also engaging enough to fill the silence was a constant strug gle of mine. So after discovering lo-fi music, it quickly became an integral part of my study routine. I’d even try out a few different lo-fi playlists on Spotify while I was walking to class. But after all this time, I never thought to question why lo-fi music is actually so appealing. What qualities have made it so soothing, so popular that at the time of writing this article, the Lo-Fi girl YouTube chan nel has 11.3 million sub scribers?Listening to lo-fi can also help you better focus, as its repetitive beats cre ate a sense of predictabil ity, especially when the music is played on a loop. This is what helps lo-fi avoid becoming too dull or overly distracting — rather it maintains an ideal balance. The “flaws” that characterize the genre can also heighten the listener’s sense of focus. This effect can be described as “cocooning,” which essentially means that the sound helps create a cocoon of focus around you. Similarly, since music can influence the listener’s mood, lo-fi’s slower tempo can foster feelings of relaxation, while a lack of lyrics reduces distractions. In other words, lo-fi may be able to help with feelings of stress that tend to emerge when preparing for a prelim, or at least put you in a more positive mood. As such, it seems lo-fi’s appeal is not without reason, and it might even enhance your next study session. Its unique elements can help create an envi ronment that boosts both your focus and mood. And with its growing popularity comes an increasing number of tracks to discover and listen to. So in the coming weeks as we all settle back into the chaos of the school year, maybe some soothing lo-fi beats will be just what you need for a productive study day.
Furthermore, while it does require knowledge of Breaking Bad to fully grasp essential plo tlines, Better Call Saul does not revolve around Walter White and Jesse Pinkman at all; it has its own identity and merit distinct from the beloved and highly acclaimed original. It is not only on par with Breaking Bad, but superior to it, methodically lay ing the foundation for storylines and character transformations with granular detail that necessi tates patience and attentiveness. It poses a number of complex moral quandaries to the audience that blur black-and-white moral ity into shades of gray: Can peo ple truly change? Can one ever atone for their unconscionable deeds? Is redemption deserved, and what does being redeemed look like? Regardless of one’s interpretations, at the end of the show, those who once clamored to see the nefarious, crowd-pleas ing Saul Goodman will be som berly awaiting the return of his authentic and charismatic iden tity: Jimmy McGill. After seven and a half years of this “crimi nally underrated” show gracing our television screens with vir tuosic cinematography, writing and character development, a vis cerally bittersweet finale affirms that Better Call Saul sticks the landing.So,for those on the fence about watching, I hope my gush ing praise convinces you. The show is a slow-burn love letter to the intricately crafted char acters of the universe and earns a lofty spot on the tier list of the best television shows of all time. In fact, a recent installa tion of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman statues in the icon ic Albuquerque, New Mexico immortalizes the Breaking Bad franchise as a quintessential ele ment of pop-culture. 14 years and 433 cumulative award nom inations later, the Breaking Bad storyline has come to a memora ble close, imbuing the audience with nostalgia for characters we’ll never forget.
ISABELLA DILIZIA ARTS STAFF
JOHN COLIE ARTS EDITOR
This June marks the 50th anniversary of the release of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s album Some Time in New York City , both a testament to the city to which they had recently moved and a state ment on various political issues and causes they championed as they continued their musi cal and artistic collaboration with a vast accompanying group, the Plastic Ono Band. The double album contains these songs on its first two sides; meanwhile, the final two sides feature recordings of two concerts that the Plastic Ono Band played before the album’s sessions had started, includ ing an appearance at London’s Lyceum Ballroom on Dec. 15, 1969 in support of UNICEF. For that performance, Lennon and Ono managed to assemble a large group of rock luminar ies, including Lennon’s Beatle bandmate George Harrison, guitarist Eric Clapton, bass ist Klaus Voorman, drummer Alan White, keyboardist Billy Preston and (later on during the concert) Who drummer Keith Moon to play what Lennon would later refer to as “the most fantastic music I’ve everTheheard.”set only includes two songs, both released as a Plastic Ono Band single two months before the concert: “Cold Turkey,” excerpted in full at around eight minutes, and “Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for a Hand in the Snow),” which lasts approx imately 16 minutes. These 16 minutes already exude the ener gy and improvisation of a pro tracted jam, but they have been edited down from their original form: the full version of “Don’t Worry Kyoko” actually lasted over 40 minutes. Even with most of the rendition missing, though, this truncated version still spirals into a discordant yet oddly hyp notic combination of vocals, gui tars and horns barreling towards nothing short of utter catharsis. Yet even with all of these ele ments, what stands out more and more as one listens to the song again is the drumming of Alan White, who passed away on May 26 at the age of 72. Only 20 years old in December 1969, the Lyceum Ballroom con cert marked White’s second per formance with the Plastic Ono Band. Before that, he and the rest of the group had performed three months before at the Toronto Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival Festival and played the same songs they would play at the Lyceum, albeit with shorter runtimes; intrigu ingly, his participation almost did not occur when, sure that a call from John Lennon asking him to perform with a new group must be a prank, he immediately hung up. He finally acquiesced once Lennon called again, going to Canada and contributing to the first live solo performance by a member of The Beatles. Named for Ono’s young daughter, “Don’t Worry Kyoko” combines a heavy rock sound and experimentalism that many audiences reacted to with incre dulity and ridicule, especially at the Lyceum. Through the rau cous chaos of endlessly repeating blues-tinged guitar riffs devolv ing into wailing, distorted notes and Ono’s vocalizations and screams weaving around a robust saxophone part, White’s drum ming continues doggedly along, joining in the unpredictable soundscape but not surrendering itself to it in the same way some of the other parts do, anchoring the instrumentation while nev ertheless providing variations to underscore the rest of the musi cians more overtly descending into glorious hysterics. By all accounts, it was great — but it also kept going for over half an hour. At that point, though, White and fellow drum mer Jim Gordon thought of an elegantly simple solution: “We began to speed up to bring it to an end,” he would later recall. “But we just got faster and faster and nobody wanted to stop. It was so fast that our muscles were aching. I was just about think ing, ‘For Christ’s sake, stop it,’ when it just sort of finished.” In those final moments, any and all restraint within the performance vanishes, until the rest of the group finally fails to keep up with White before all collectively deciding to end then and there. With that, he made his mark indelibly on a performance that remains one of the least known pivotal moments in Beatles and rockFromhistory.there, White’s career continued to unfold meteori cally; his time with the Plastic Ono Band led to appearances on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Imagine, and soon after that, he was asked to join the band Yes, where he remained until his death and played on songs such as “Owner of a Lonely Heart.”
ALAN
COURTESY OF WHITE ON TWITTER Don’t Worry Kyoko (In Memory of Alan
Tuesday, August 23, 2022 | The Corne¬ Daily Sun | 7A & C
John Colie is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He currently serves as the Arts and Culture Editor on the 140th Editorial Board. He can be reached at jcolie@cornellsun.com.
While never becoming as wellknown as some of the musicians he played with, his drumming graced some of the most famous songs of the 20th century; that persistence and humility shape his legacy, which, if anything else, contains a strange yet unforgetta ble concert at the intersection of experimentation and improvisa tion in rock. His contributions to the popular soundscape of rock and beyond remain for all of us to remember and enjoy, timeless and unlikely to be matched.
White) ARTS & CULTURE
Patrick J. Mehler
As we prepare for the start of the semes ter, my sophomore brother is going to take BIOEE 1540: Introductory Oceanography taught by Professor Bruce Monger, earth and atmospheric science. I took the course my sophomore year as well. Ask any Cornellian who has taken the course and hundreds if not thousands of them, including myself, will tell you how amazing the content, professor and impact of the course is. Over a thousand students each semester take oceanography for a rea son, and the course remains as spectacular now as it did when it started years ago. Similarly, hundreds of students take ASTRO 1101: From New Worlds to Black Holes every semester; Bill Nye ‘73 even comes back every year to check in on the class. Similar to oceanography, this intro ductory astronomy course inspires students to do more than look up at the stars but understand what lies amongst them as well. The saying that humans have explored more of space than the oceans remains fasci nating, as anyone who has taken intro ocean ography can tell you that we have explored very little of our seas. Yes, we know how deep certain parts are and what the ground shapes up to due to sonar, but fewer humans have traversed the deepest parts of the Mariana Trench than humans who have been to space. So why have we spent so little time exploring the deep blues compared to the deep beyond? The short answer is money. While get ting to space certainly remains difficult, the funding that NASA receives outpaces NOAA by billions of dollars every year. In addition, the ocean’s immense pressure and complete darkness make capturing photos that excite the public much more difficult to encourage Congress to spend more money. Pictures from the new Webb telescope cer tainly inspire further exploration of the cosmos. We should be finding ways to see the secrets right across the shore and glimpse into the beauties and horrors of the ocean. We have searched for life in space but the uniqueness and mind-bending life in the oceans ought to be equally as exciting to learn of. Creatures like the glass octopus and phantom jellyfish are only the beginning of a collective of terrifying sea dwellers. The quest for extraterrestrial life might appear to be the best path toward funky organisms, but century-old beings live in our oceans, waiting to be discovered. I believe space’s images to be captivating; I believe the oceans’ creatures to be fascinating. I want to see more of space and more of the seas. The federal government pours trillions of dollars into bureaucratic agencies that over see everything from Medicare to infrastruc ture to transportation and more. While not necessarily life-saving or drastically econom ically productive agencies, NOAA receives $5.4 billion in funding; NASA receives $22,3 billion. I can only imagine what increases in both of their budgets could produce not just for the United States but the whole world. What advocacy power do we as Cornell students hold in convincing the federal government to increase both space and sea exploration? Realistically, not very much. But learning about how amazing the oceans are is not as easily accessible as seeing the spectacular images of space that we have from the Hubble and now the Webb. The most recognizable phrase from Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan was how in the picture of Earth taken from Voyager 1, we are “a pale blue dot” among the vastness of the universe. Who knows what dots we could find in the ocean depths and what dots we will continue to find in space as we explore beyond our lands. But until then, all Americans can enjoy the images released by the Webb Telescope each week and all Cornellians can learn about our enchant ing universe in BIOEE 1540 and ASTRO 1101.
– V.C.
Working on today’s sun production editor Katrien de Waard ’24 managing editor Angela Bunay ’23 Associate editor Emma Leynse ’23 opinion editor Katherine Yao ’23 news editors Estee Yi Pareesay’24Afzal ’23 arts editor John Colie ’23 sports editor Ruth Abraham ’24 photo editor Julia Nagel ’24 The Corne¬ Daily Sun Independent Since 1880 Opinion VEE CIPPERMAN ’23 Malvern, Pa. Editor in Chief 140th Editorial Board SERENA HUANG ’24 East Brunswick, N.J. Business Manager EMMA LEYNSE ’23 Leonia, N.J. Associate Editor DEVAN FLORES ’24 St. Augustine, Fl. Web Editor KATHERINE YAO ’24 Dublin, Ohio Opinion Editor ROMAN LAHAYE ’23 San Antonio, Texas News Editor SOFIA RUBINSON ’24 Islip, N.Y. News Editor JOHN COLIE ’23 West Paterson, N.J. Arts & Culture Editor JULIA NAGEL ’24 Wilmette, Ill. Photography Editor MEHER BHATIA ’24 Edison, N.J. Science Editor KATRIEN DE WAARD ’24 Naperville, Ill. Production Editor ANDIE KIM ’24 Seoul, South Korea Multimedia Editor AIMEE EICHER ’24 Manhattan, N.Y. Assistant News Editor SARAH YOUNG ’24 Warren, N.J. Assistant News Editor NIHAR HEGDE ’24 San Jose, Calif. Assistant Arts & Culture Editor CLAIRE LI ’24 Palo Alto, Calif. Assistant Photography Editor GABRIELLA PACITTO ’24 Bronxville, N.Y. Assistant Sports Editor GRAYSON RUHL ’24 Manhattan, N.Y. Assistant Sports Editor DANIEL BERNSTEIN ’23 New Rochelle, N.Y. Senior Editor MADELINE ROSENBERG ’23 Chappaqua, N.Y. Senior Editor ANGELA BUNAY ’24 Staten Island, N.Y. Managing Editor TRACY ZENG ’24 New York City, N.Y. Advertising Manager SURITA BASU ’23 Lexington, Mass. Assistant Managing Editor NAOMI KOH ’23 Mamaroneck, N.Y. Assistant Web Editor ELI PALLRAND ’24 Los Angeles, Calif. News Editor ESTEE YI ’24 Manhattan, N.Y. News Editor KAYLA RIGGS ’24 San Jose, Calif. City Editor GRACE KIM ’24 San Diego, Calif. Dining Editor AARON SNYDER ’23 Manhattan, N.Y. Sports Editor TENZIN KUNSANG ’25 Chicago, Ill. Science Editor PAREESAY AFZAL ’24 Rawalpindi, Pakistan Assistant News Editor JIWOOK JUNG ’25 Seoul, South Korea Assistant News Editor ADITI HUKERIKAR ’23 Canton, Mich. Assistant Arts & Culture Editor DANIELA WISE ROJAS ’25 San Ramon, Calif. Assistant Dining Editor JASON WU ’24 Albany, N.Y. Assistant Photography Editor KEVIN CHENG ’24 Newtown, Mass. Newsletter Editor RUTH ABRAHAM ’24 Syosset, N.Y. Assistant Sports Editor JYOTHSNA BOLLEDDULA ’24 Lexington, Mass. Senior Editor HANNAH ROSENBERG ’23 Chappaqua, N.Y. Senior Editor 8 The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022
Thank you for reading our paper; we couldn’t make it without your support. Try new things this semester, stretch your wings and let yourself grow —– but remember that The Sun will appear every day, and you always have a home within our pages.
Te Mehl-Man Delivers
More Space for Space And Seeing the Seas
From the Editor Growing Season
Patrick J. Mehler ‘23 (he/him) is a rising senior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He can be reached at pmehler@cornellsun.com. Te Mehl-Man Delivers runs intermittently this summer.
WELCOME TO A FRESH YEAR at Cornell, and at The Sun. As the summer draws to a close, students flood back into Ithaca to take new classes, meet new friends and make new college memories. We enter a season of falling leaves and shifting weather, and we invite the opportunities for change and growth that come with every fall at Cornell. YetBut some things stay the same each year — like The Sun’s daily mission to inform, educate and enlighten the communities we serve. We now resume our primary work as editors, writers and designers. We will provide per tinent news and keen insights to our broader Cornell and Ithaca readership. We’ll proudly deliver two issues per week to Cornell’s campus, and we’ll share daily online content to continue current conversations. We’ll uphold our 142-year-old mission to advance student journalism and honor the many perspectives present on Cornell’s campus. As we embark on this bustling semester, we look forward to documenting writing Cornell’s ever-evolving history. We continue to record our lives and times as students while we learn, play and change alongside our peers. As members of the country’s oldest indepen dent, continuously running student publication, we appreciate our unique capability to share truths and make community voices heard. We do it all for you, our valued readers and peers.
Niko Nguyen ’22 is a recent graduate of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Tis is the final installment of his column Fault Line. Comments can be sent to
How did a humble college town in upstate New York become one of the least affordable zip codes in the United States?
“Basically, if you’re not rich, if you can’t afford top-notch housing in Collegetown, you’re screwed,” explained my friend. An infamous Sun story in 2018 revealed that one student opted to spend nights in Uris Library after experiencing untenable living conditions through the Ithaca winter.
Tese conditions leave student tenants frustrated and unsatisfied. “It often feels incredibly exploitative,” said Alexandra Lilly ’24. “Te [housing] options we do have are often poorly managed and falling apart.” How exactly did we get here, paying sky-high rents in exchange for substandard housing? How did a humble college town in upstate New York become one of the least affordable zip codes in the United States?
Tese inconveniences pale in comparison to other horror stories of off-campus living.
Housing demand only grew more press ing as the school’s student enrollment increased in the years that followed. In response, new developments slowly popu lated the streets south of Cascadilla Gorge. Rooming houses cropped up along Heustis Street (now, College Avenue) and Eddy Street, laying out the groundwork for what would eventually become Collegetown. It was along these roads where the seedlings of a town-and-gown relationship were planted: Student demand was beginning to shape the local Ithaca landscape. To continue reading this article, please visit cornellsun.com.
KATELYNN LEE / SUN CONTIBUTOR HANNAH ROSENBERG / SENIOR EDITOR The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 22, 2022 9Opinion
opinion@cornellsun.com.
Cornell’s Broken Housing Market: An Essay
Last school year, a friend of mine paid close to a four-digit monthly rent. Over their lease term, she and her roommates rode out a series of slippery misfortunes — from bath room mold that triggered allergic reactions to worrying about housing displacement after discovering that their landlord had ille gally signed too many tenants onto the lease.
To piece together some answers, I turned to a number of local historical and academic sources. What I unearthed was a loose narra tive of a small town warping under the weight of student demand. It is the story of tensions and unravelings — how town-and-gown forc es shape a neighborhood, how concentrated supply and widespread demand erode a mar ket and how our physical and social land scapes inform and affirm one another. Collegetown was never baked into the original blueprint of the Cornell vision. Instead, it developed organically as a neigh borhood shaped by student necessity. Te school’s first president, A.D. White, famously advocated against on-campus housing, fear ing the “carelessness, uproar and destruction” that student dorms would invite to the new university. So, when Cornell officially opened its doors in 1868, there were limited housing options for the 412 first Cornellians. A quar ter of these students roomed in Cascadilla Hall, the school’s sole residence building; in a letter, A.D. White described Cascadilla Hall as “an ill-ventilated, ill-smelling, uncomfort able, ill-looking alms house.”
Niko Nguyen Fault Line
Collegetown was never baked into the original blueprint of the Cornell vision. Instead, it neighborhoodorganicallydevelopedasashapedbystudentnecessity.
Living on North Campus feels like the beginnings of a reality where higher educa tion might actually deliver on its promise as a Great Equalizer. And then, we become sophomores. Tat feeling of unity fractures once the end of freshman year arrives. Sophomore year scatters us all along the peripheries of campus: the grand residence halls of West Campus, the less impressive dorms south of Cascadilla Gorge, Greek housing and co-ops peppered beyond North and West. Te new North Campus Residential Expansion project will disrupt this trend slightly by the 2022-2023 school year, with all sophomores soon being required to live on campus. But still, by the time most Cornell undergradu ates become juniors and seniors, we scrawl our names down on a Collegetown lease and enter the unmoored wild of Ithaca’s rental market. As I had learned on my first day of classes, signing a lease in Ithaca is no simple matter. In the fall of my sophomore year, I signed my first lease in October — 10 months before I actually moved into my junior-year apartment. By then, I was already late to the housing rush. Each September, we hear sto ries of students who sleep on sidewalks over night, waiting for rental offices to open up the next morning: “It’s like Black Friday,” one student told Te Sun in 2019. Even the local government has taken notice of this Collegetown anomaly. In 2013, the City of Ithaca started requiring landlords to give tenants at least 60 days’ notice before conducting new lease agree ments — effectively trying to stall the annu al housing rush. And still, the following year witnessed over 150 students camping out on Dryden Road to snag leases. Scrambling to book apartment tours, negotiating with friends over unaffordable rent prices and hastily signing leases are the hallmarks of an upperclassman’s early weeks of class. But the lease-signing crunch, as pesky as it can get, is still only one piece of the Collegetown housing trainwreck. My first Collegetown apartment search turned up consistent price tags of over $1,000 per month. I remember the dis belief on my two roommates’ faces when they realized that these rent prices listed the monthly charge per person — not per unit. Here in Ithaca, a relatively minor city in upstate isolation, the housing market does not match its landscape. In 2014, Te New York Times listed Ithaca as the 11th U.S. city with the least affordable rent. New York City had clinched 10th place by a nar row margin. In 2016, the Economy Policy Institute ranked Ithaca as the 8th most expensive city in the United States to raise a family. Tat same year, the average Ithacan spent 39 percent of their income on rental payments; a maximum of 30 percent is the rule-of-thumb standard used to measure housing affordability. And, adding insult to injury, off-campus student rentals aren’t just expensive — they also underwhelm when it comes to quality.
Te first Collegetown apartment I lived in, on North Quarry Street, housed a bevy of frustrations: a maze of a floorplan, count less spiders, broken laundry machines, a perpetually-clogged bathtub and a sink that showered the kitchen floor in water.
Long before I came face-to-face with the plagues of Collegetown — its cutthroat market competition, sky-high rental rates, substandard living conditions, unyield ing housing inequality — I had already begun to hear whispers of its housing fiasco. I was still just a fresh face on campus, barely minutes into my first day at Cornell, when the Collegetown crisis crept onto my radar. An Ithaca summer was in full swing. Some mixture of August humidity and firstday jitters had glazed a layer of sweat over my skin, and I remember feeling both sticky and bored in the early moments of a lecture. My attention only snapped into focus when, already minutes deep into class, the auditori um doors swung open. A girl with jet-black hair whizzed down the aisle and through the rows, then plopped down a few seats away from me. She had hardly collected her breath before exhaling:“Oh my god. I just signed my lease for next year.” Moments into my first class and still light years away from a life in Collegetown, I was already taking mental note of a lesson that would prove valuable to me in the years to come: When August and September arrive, so too does open season for apartment hunting. Te school year hardly begins before students start racing to sign leases — sometimes over a year before their leases actually start. It was just my first glimpse at a housing market gone sideways. At that point in college, my head was still stuck in the bubble of North Campus, where all first-years are required to dorm. It wasn’t until after my freshman year — after I moved away from the mecca of first-years, after I ended my daily walks across Turston Bridge and the spiderwebs that lined it — that I fully understood the magic of the first-year community. To dorm on North Campus was to experience a rare shred of Cornell’s equalizing power. An unexpected sense of unity saturates North Campus. Unexpected, of course, because Cornell — similar to most pri vate universities in the United States — is infamous for its overrepresentation of the ultra-wealthy. My dorm assignment in Jameson dropped me onto the same floor as the son of a former NBA team CEO and the daughter of a celebrity restaurateur. I learned quickly that wealth and elitism lie at the bedrock of this school’s student population, and that the Cornell experience is one of imbalance. Alongside students who might’ve seen an Ivy League education as part of their birthright, there are other Cornellians living opposite college realities — students at Cornell on need-based schol arship, first-generation students, students who pick up a campus job (or two, or three) to gather some pocket change. Yet, this imbalance is also what makes the first-year experience so unique: Te North Campus dorm requirement corrals all of us, indiscriminately, into a closed community. Unexpected roommate match-ups are packed into doubles and forced triples. Living spaces and common rooms become mosaics of geo graphic, social and economic backgrounds. When I was a freshman, North Campus ushered all of us under the same Balch arches every morning. We all agonized over the same lagging stoplight on Turston Avenue. We all trudged up the four flights of RPCC for hungover Sunday brunches. Te first-year experience at Cornell is bound by a sense of shared community.
10 The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 Stay Informed CorneThe¬DailySun CornS
Comics and Puzzles The Cornell Daily Sun | Tuesday, August 23, 2022 11 Sundoku Puzzle 9382 Strings Attached by Ali Solomon ’01 I Am Going to Be Small Fill in the empty cells, one number in each, so that each column, row, and region contains the num bers 1-9 threesolutionnumberonce.exactlyEachinthethereforeoccursonlyonceineachofthe“directions,”hencethe“singlenumbers”impliedbythepuzzle’sname.(Rulesfromwikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku) DELUGE Mr. Gnu by Travis Dandro Mr. Gnu by Travis Dandro 26 A PA R TMENT FOR R ENT *****************************RENTNOW,GETTHEBEST www.MatoulasHouses.com Apartments & Houses in Collegetown LINDEN AVE, COLLEGE AVE, CATHERINE ST, EDDY ST, E. SENECA ST & OAK AVE EMAIL: **************************************FIRST-COMES,PHONE:MatoulasHouses@Gmail.com(607)800-9900FIRST-SERVED cenro l l s u n . c o m cornellsu n.com cornellsun.com
“Nothing’s too small to care about, nothing is too small to try to win. That nature brings you to opportunitiestoday.”like Connor Buczek ’15
AARON SNYDER /
Gaining Momentum | Sophomore attacker CJ Kirst fires a shot in the national championship game against Maryland. Kirst scored both of Cornell’s first half goals.
SUN SPORTS EDITOR
Push Not Enough Cornell
By AARON SNYDER
SportsThe Corne¬ Daily Sun 12TUESDAY AUGUST 23, 2022
“That defense, tip our cap to them,” Buczek said. “Holding us to two goals in the first half … was our lowest output of the year, so they certainly did some things that challenged us.” On the other end of the field, four first half goals by Anthony DeMaio, including a natural hat-trick in the first quarter, fueled the Maryland offense to a seven goal half and a 7-2 lead at Marylandhalftime.addedtwo more in the first five minutes of the third quarter to take a 9-2 lead. The Terrapins did not score again. 22 minutes after Cornell’s second goal, junior mid fielder Aiden Blake scored Cornell’s third goal of the game to cut Maryland’s lead to 9-3 with five minutes left in the thirdDownquarter.six goals with fifteen minutes to play, the Red put up a strong comeback effort in the fourth quarter.
Sun Sports Editor
Game MARYLAND VS CORNELL Game: CornellMaryland 9 7 1ST 14 2ND 13 3RD 12 4TH 40 Final 79
A valiant 4th quarter comeback effort was not enough to end Cornell’s 45-year wait for another national champi onship, as Cornell fell 9-7 to Maryland in the title game on Monday, May 30. Cornell fell behind early but found its groove in the fourth quarter when it outscored the Terrapins 4-0. “That was probably one of our best quarters of the year, in that fourth quarter,” said head coach Connor Buczek ‘15. It was all Maryland in the first half. The Terrapins held the Red to a season low two goals in the first 30 minutes. Both Cornell tallies came off the stick of sophomore attackman and Ivy League Rookie of the Year CJ Kirst, who found the back of the net halfway through the first quarter and early in the second quarter. Aside from Kirst’s two goals, the Red could not find answers to the Terrapins defense and Maryland goalten der Logan McNaney, who made 10 saves in the first half. McNaney finished with 17 saves and was named the most outstanding player of the tournament.
Late falls in National Championship
Maryland cleared the ball and kept possession for an entire 80 second shot clock. Cornell got the ball back with 53 seconds and a three goal deficit. The Red took a timeout, and Piatelli scored with 36 seconds left. Piatelli’s goal was his 66th of the season, breaking Mike French’s 46-year-old Cornell record for most goals in a single season. It was too little too late though, and Maryland held on to complete an undefeated season and claim the national championship.Marylandcoach John Tillman ’91 acknowledged in his postgame press conference that the Terrapins were fortunate that the game didn’t last a few minutes longer. The Red will have to reconcile having its best season since 2009 in Buczek’s first year with the disappointment of coming one game short. “[This group] had that mentality, they had that laser focus. Even when we were 10-1, no one was content,” Buczek said. “Nothing’s too small to care about, noth ing is too small to try to win. That nature brings you to opportunities like today.” Buczek said that the program will be able to build off this trip to the title game. “We built the foundation,” Buczek said. “I think we’re back to where we need to be in terms of culture.”
“Nothing was said, we just knew that this is who we are,” said senior defenseman Gavin Adler. “There wasn’t a pump up speech or anything. We just looked each other in the eyes and knew that we were gonna claw back in thisLessthing.”than a minute in, junior attacker Michael Long brought Cornell within five. A goal by sophomore midfielder Hugh Kelleher with eight minutes left in the game brought the Red sideline and the Cornell student section to life and cut Maryland’s lead to Adler9-5.and fifth-year defenseman Dom Doria con verged on Maryland’s Logan Wisnauskas to force a turnover. Junior attacker Spencer Wirtheim capitalized and brought Cornell within three with seven and a half minutes to play. The Cornell onslaught slowed for a few minutes before a shot with two and a half minutes left by fifth-year captain John Piatelli’s went in, but was waved off by the officials because Piatelli stepped in the crease.
The players, who stayed on the field to watch Maryland receive the trophy and celebrate, echoed that sentiment and said that the experience will motivate them. “We know what it takes to get here, and seeing that moment pushes us more,” Kirst said. “We’re super grate ful for the position that we’re in and we’re just super excited to get back to work.”
Aaron Snyder can be reached at asnyder@cornellsun.com
