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The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/2001/02/23/fencers-travel-to-psu/)

February 23, 2001

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Fencers Travel to PSU

By ryan | February 23, 2001

The Big Red fencers travel to Pennsylvania to battle Penn State, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Temple. All teams are expected to be tough battles for Cornell.

Penn State, which will have home advantage, will be a roadblock for the Big Red. The host program is a perennial powerhouse with some of the top talent in the nation.

“Penn State is our biggest competition,” affirmed senior Ellyn Rajfer. “We are ready to do our best. We had last weekend off, which was a good break for us. “

The Big Red last played Feb. 10 and 11, with mixed results. Despite losing to Harvard and Princeton, the team rebounded and demolished Fairleigh Dickinson and James Madison. The squad improved to an 11-4 overall mark.

This five team competition will occur on Feb. 24 at Penn State.

Archived article by Sun Staff

Student Candidates To Be Named Today

By ryan February 26, 2001

Let the campaigning begin. At 5 p.m. today, Cornellians will know who the candidates are in the Student Assembly (S.A.) spring elections. The official announcement of the S.A. candidates will occur directly before a meeting with the candidates at 5 p.m. in the International Lounge of Willard Straight Hall (WSH). The candidates will be briefed on election rules, and it is the “first time people will have an idea of who the competition is,” said David Mahon ’01, director of elections and a student-elected trustee. The meeting marks the “opening of the gates” for campaigning, which starts as soon as the meeting ends, according to Mahon. The elections for student-elected trustee coincide with the elections for S.A. positions. The announcement of the trustee candidates will occur at 4:30 p.m. today in the International Lounge, according to Prof. William E. Fry, a faculty trustee and chair of the Trustee Nominating Committee. “We’ll go over the specifics of campaigning,” Fry said. The candidates are competing for the seat of Mahon, whose two-year term will expire in May. The trustee candidates will also attend an educational session at 5 p.m. Friday, “to inform them more about what is involved in being a trustee,” according to Fry. Elections are on March 6 and 7. Candidates for both the S.A. elections and trustee elections will have less time to publicize their views and platforms this year. “Last year we had more time to campaign,” Mahon said. According to S.A. President Uzo Asonye ’02, the campaign period was shortened by five school days. Reasons for the change include cost, environmental impacts, and stress on the candidates and the campus. With fewer days to campaign, candidates won’t use as much paper for fliers, Asonye said. “The student body doesn’t want to be bombarded with elections materials,” Mahon said. “It [also] takes a toll on the candidates,” he added. Asonye noted that students skipped classes and became stressed during previous elections. He acknowleded that “there’s less of a period to get to know each individual candidate,” but said the S.A. will make up for that by holding more forums in dorms and in front of student groups, where the student body can question the candidates. Another change this spring is electronic voting. Computers at polling sites will replace paper ballots. “We did electronic voting this year in the fall for the first time,” Asonye said. A private company, Votehere.net, offers the electronic service and delivers the results the next morning. “It makes the tabulation process a lot quicker and smoother,” Asonye explained. The old paper ballots on Scantron sheets took a week to process, because there is only one Scantron machine at Cornell, according to Asonye. “It’s heartbreaking for candidates because they’re so nervous,” he said about the week-long wait for election results. The new system is secure and everyone has a unique personal identification number, Asonye added. In the fall elections for new student representatives, however, a five-minute glitch in the network connection lost four votes — but that did not have an impact on the election outcome, Asonye noted. Still, the Assembly talked to the company about the problem. “We’re making sure that outcome would never happen again,” Asonye said. The electronic voting last fall might have contributed to a considerable boost in the number of voters. Asonye hopes to increase voter turnout to 50 percent in the campus-wide election next week. Other election-related events this week include the Student-elected Trustee Candidates Forum, sponsored by The Sun at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in WSH, and the Candidates’ Forum on Wednesday, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the WSH Memorial Room. At the Candidates’ Forum, the S.A. hopefuls will congregate to present their viewpoints on a variety of issues and answer questions regarding the constituencies they aim to serve, according to Mahon. Another forum on March 5 will focus on the Student Activity Fee. The representatives elected this spring will be in charge of allocating funds to different student organizations next fall. The Student Activities Forum, a committee of the S.A., decided to sponsor the forum as an “opportunity for both candidates and community members to come together and learn … both what the organizations do and to learn how the candidates feel regarding the activity fee,” said Claire Ackerman ’01, chair of the Student Activities Forum. Archived article by Heather Schroeder
Former Sweatshop Worker Connects With C.U. Activists

By ryan February 26, 2001

Carmencita “Chie” Abad’s fourth stop on her week-long New York speaking tour was at Cornell’s Anabel Taylor Hall where she detailed her experience as a sweatshop garment worker. Abad spent six years in Saipan working for the Sako Corporation, which had manufacturing contracts with Gap, Ann Taylor and the University of California among others. “In Saipan, they always use the label ‘Made in the USA,'” Abad said. Saipan is one of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific, and is a U.S. Commonwealth. In her half-hour speech, Abad traced her journey from sweatshop laborer to spokesperson for Global Exchange, a non-governmental human rights organization. After filing an unanswered complaint with the Saipan Department of Labor about the factories legal infractions, Abad decided to try to organize her fellow workers into a union. When asked what motivated her to organize the union, Abad explained, “I was the assistant supervisor, so people always came to me to air their grievances.” The vote to unionize first failed by five, then by three votes. Abad attributed the loss to workers’ fears that their contracts would not be renewed if they voted to organize a union. “After the failure of the union vote, my contract was not renewed for another year,” she said. Believing that the reason for her termination, after five years with the company, was her attempt to create a union, Abad filed a suit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Abad won the lawsuit and, “I got my job back,” she said. However, by then she had already become a Global Exchange spokesperson. “I spoke in front of [Gap Co.’s president] about the horrible labor condition in which I worked,” she said. “We are targeting Gap because Gap is a large garment producer in Saipan,” Abad said. “Five shareholders stood up [after she spoke] and said, ‘we need to have a follow-up meeting on this,'” Abad said. As a result of the meeting and her other efforts to shed light on the conditions at the Saipan factory, Abad said that she felt things had changed. Workers began to work shorter hours and receive time and a half pay for overtime work. She also said that they received health insurance. “I realized my personal strength to overcome injustice,” she said. Abad said she will continue acting as spokesperson for the workers from her factory in another lawsuit which is now pending. “If you make it seem like the problem’s over, no one’s going to keep looking,” she said. “We really need to continue to embarrass them.” She praised the University for joining the Worker’s Rights Consortium (WRC). “I’m so happy to find out that Cornell has signed on with the WRC,” she said. The WRC, formed in October 1999 by United Students Against Sweatshops, was created as a monitoring organization of garment factories around the world. Corporations who contract out to factories like the one Abad worked in are prohibited from the monitoring process. “Cornell has been at the forefront of this movement,” said David Unger ’02, president of Cornell Students Against Sweatshops. Abad offered advice to the students in the room who wanted to protest sweatshop labor. “As a student … there’s a lot you can do,” she said, noting that college-age Americans are major consumers of apparel and other products. “Bombard the Gap customer service line,” she said, and then gave out the phone number. After her speech, audience members asked questions about both Abad’s particular experience and the anti-sweatshop movement in general. Students asked about her longest shift — 48 hours without sleep and without leaving the factory — and about the hidden camera she wore for ABC News in 1998, while she still worked for Sako. “The camera was in my underwear,” Abad said. The lens, which was about .5mm diameter, poked through one of the button holes in her shirt. ABC broadcast the footage nationally, as well as in Saipan. “I’m proud of my role in fighting working conditions in Saipan,” she said.Archived article by Maggie Frank