INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun 16 Pages – Free
Vol. 141, No. 4
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2024 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Opinion
Sports
Weather
Seeking Shelter
Presidential Column
A New Era
Sunny
Tompkins County plans to build a new emergency cold-weather shelter in a former bank branch. | Page 5
Interim President Michael Kotlikoff launches his first column by talking about the need for reasoned debate. | Page 6
Cornell football kicks off the 2024 season this Saturday, the first game of head coach Dan Swanstrom’s tenure. | Page 16
HIGH: 80º LOW: 52º
Cornell Students Eligible to Claim Settlement By MARISA CEFOLA Sun News Editor
Monday email to potential compensation claimants. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit — filed in January of 2022 — claim elite universities colluded on financial aid decisions using an antitrust exemption within the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994. The “568 exception” allows need-blind schools to collaborate on financial aid with other need-blind schools. As a result, plaintiffs alleged that Brown University, the California Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, Georgetown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Rice University, Vanderbilt University and Yale University participated in a price-fixing cartel that artificially boosted the net price of attendance for students receiving need-based financial aid. Students and alumni can submit a claim online until Dec. 17.
Sept. 17 — Cornell students and alumni who received need-based financial aid from the University between the fall of 2003 and Feb. 28, 2024, now have the opportunity to submit a claim to receive part of a $284 million settlement from a class action lawsuit. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois approved settlements for ten of seventeen universities named in Henry, et al. v. Brown University, et al., and a claims form became available on Friday, Sept. 13. Cornell is one of seven universities that has not settled and remains a defendant in the case. Still, students considered to be in the “settlement class” at any of the universities can file a claim. Cornell students who attended the university between the fall of 2003 and Feb. 28, 2024, are included in this class. “Assuming that about half of the estimated 200,000 Class members submit timely claims, the average claimant will receive about $2,000 from these Settlements,” wrote Marisa Cefola can be reached at Financial Aid Antitrust Settlement in a mcefola@cornellsun.com.
S.A. Budget Decreases by 45 Starbucks Ordered Percent for the Upcoming Year to Reopen in Ithaca By KATE SANDERS
By AVERY WANG Sun Senior Writer
Sept. 13 — The Student Assembly voted on Thursday to approve a 37,850 dollar operating budget for the 2024-2025 academic year, marking a 45 percent decrease from the 68,605 dollars allocated for the last academic year. According to S.A. Vice President of Finance Niles Hite ’26, one reason for this drastic decrease was to prevent committees’ excess spending on food and other expenses for Assembly-related meetings. The S.A. budget is allocated across 17 expense categories, including “Internal Operations,” “Diversity” and “Academic.” According to Hite, thousands of dollars were spent on food for Assembly meetings during the 20232024 academic year. “I am not sure the exact amount, but [the amount spent on food was] definitely way more than what it should have been,” Hite wrote in an email to The Sun. “For me, I wanted to make sure that the money was going towards initiatives within the Assembly for the students that elected us rather than taking care of ourselves which is why I made it a lot lower than what it was last year.” The budget of the Student Assembly is allocated from the Student Activity Fee. Through the
SAF, students indirectly contribute to the assembly’s funding. “No money should be taken out for any pleasures for the Student Assembly,” Hite said. “We are here for the students to do stuff for campus — we should be doing that with the money that we are giving them.” The Assembly began offering catered meals at meetings last year, but the absence of a defined budget led to significant overspending on
food, according to Hite. “When people were meeting for certain committees for several hours, they would spend a lot of money on erroneous catering that they did not need to do, like very specialized food for each individual person, which would cost a lot of money, especially if they’re meeting every single week,” Hite said. See BUDGET page 13
Sun News Editor
Sept. 14 — National Labor Relations Board Administrative Law Judge Geoffrey Carter ordered Starbucks to reopen “within a reasonable period of time” two Ithaca locations that closed after employees formed a union, stating that its move to “chill unionism” violated the National Labor Relations Act. Carter ruled on Friday that the May 2023 permanent closures of the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street Starbucks locations and failure to bargain with the union were unlawful, as the board found the stores were closed for “antiunion reasons” and in an effort to quell unionizations elsewhere. The NLRB similarly ordered on July 6, 2023, that the third Ithaca Starbucks location on College Avenue — which closed on June 10, 2022 — must reopen “immediately.” The store remains closed. Discussions surrounding the Ithaca Commons and Meadow Street store closures occurred only a few months after the stores unionized. On April 8, 2022, all three Ithaca stores voted to unionize. In the summer of 2022, Starbucks regional leadership began weighing the closure
of the Meadow Street and Ithaca Commons locations, citing high turnover and low profitability metrics, according to the NLRB ruling. Carter found that profitability metrics were affected by union activity — including “economic losses” during employee strikes. He also found that employee turnover data included employees unlawfully fired for being union supporters and turnover connected to stricter enforcement of workplace policies that coincided with the start of the unionization effort. The company can present evidence that was unavailable at the time of the unfair labor practice trial — which ended on April 25 — that could demonstrate reopening the two locations to be “unduly burdensome.” In a statement to The Sun, Michelle Eisen, the Starbucks Workers United national organizing committee co-chair and bargaining delegate, wrote that SBWU is “pleased to see the NLRB continue to stand up for the law and support Starbucks workers’ union rights” and is “moving forward and focused on the future.” Eisen works as a barista at the first unionized Starbucks in Buffalo. See STARBUCKS page 10