Greens Party Plans Convention in Ithaca

By wpengine | March 12, 2002

The New York State Green Party will hold its state convention in Ithaca on May 25 at the Autumn Leaves Bookstore on Ithaca Commons, party officials announced last month.

“Ithaca is a real strong base of support for the Green Party,” said Chris Hardin grad, secretary of the Tompkins County Green Party and a member of the state committee that chose Ithaca for the convention.

“Apart from New York City, we have one of the strongest [Green contingencies] in the state. [In Ithaca], Ralph Nader beat George Bush in the last election,” said David Breeden, a local Green Party volunteer.

In fact, the last presidential election was one of the Tompkins County Green Party’s major accomplishments. According to local activist Paul Glover, in the city of Ithaca, 20 percent of the vote went to Nader.

“This county gave a greater percentage of its vote to Nader than any other county in the state. There are strong Green values in Ithaca,” Glover said.

Breeden agreed with Glover and cited Ithacan culture as the impetus behind the county’s support.

“This is a generally progressive community, and the Green Party supports progressive ideals,” he said.

Hardin added that there were some other reasons for the state committee’s decision.

“We try to move the meetings around the state so that there is wider representation. Also, a lot of people said that Ithaca’s pretty and that they wanted to visit,” Hardin said.

Glover also explained that Ithaca’s central location in the state is ideal for the convention.

“There had been some feeling in the Green Party that convention should be somewhere not so far east. Ithaca is not near anything, but it is centrally far from everywhere,” Breeden said.

According to Hardin, the main goal for the convention itself is for the state committee to pick a gubernatorial candidate for the fall primary.

“Afterwards we’re going to have a campaign kick-off and fundraiser,” he said.

Hardin expects that approximately 100 state committee members will attend the convention.

“There will be a lot more people at the fundraiser,” he said.

Hardin, Breeden, and Glover all hope that the convention will drive more local people to become active in the party.

“If you just hold meetings, people get bored. It helps that it’s something we can get people involved in,” Hardin said.

Breeden added that the convention may help the members of Ithaca’s Green Party return to their former glory.

“The 2000 presidential election was a huge push. We’re hoping the state convention is going to be the same sort of push,” he said.

As for the Ithaca Green Party’s future plans, Glover said, “of course we’d like to take over City Hall.”

Archived article by Freda Ready

Recent Warm Weather Has Many Impacts

By wpengine March 13, 2002

The incredibly warm late fall and winter period of the current school year has had an impact on more than just the comfort of Ithaca residents. It has affected various aspects of utility rates, consumer buying and a series of other industries that thrive on winter snowfall, according to University officials. Perhaps the most apparent impact Marc Wysocki, lecturer in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences stated, “can be felt in the cheaper electric bills consumers have to pay this year because of less net accumulation of heating degree days.” Degree days is a meteorological index that gives power companies an idea of how much power is consumed in order to heat a house during the winter months. “My electric bill is much lower this year than it has been during previous Februarys and Januarys and again going by heating and cooling degree days; they have been very low in terms of heating degree days,” Wysocki said. Heating Degree Days (HDD) are the primary criteria utility companies use to estimate electric bills. “They are an estimation of the power consumption needed to maintain the indoor temperature of a house at 65 degrees Fahrenheit,” Wysocki said. “With cutbacks in personnel, power companies are no longer able to check electric meters monthly. Instead, they are generally read four times a year, so they have to kind of estimate power consumption using heating degree days.” However, each customer’s electric bill is then calibrated based on past electric history. “What [power companies] do is just simply go by your past history that you’ve had for all your Februarys since you have been living in the house and they kind of go by what your bills have been like and then they look at your heating degree days and based on them they estimate what your power consumption has been when they come and read the meter then they make some final adjustments on the next bill,” Wysocki said. Heating degree days during the month of January totaled 1048, 268 days below normal, according to Keith Eggleston, climatologist at the Northeast Climate Center. “Below normal heating degree day accumulations began in October when 80 heating degree days less than normal were accumulated,” Eggleston said. “Since then the magnitude of deviation from normal has increased dramatically with November accumulating 186 less heating degree days than normal and December accumulating 244 less heating degree days than normal.” With a normal net accumulation of about 3477 heating degree days from October until February, the below average accumulation of heating degree days this year has resulted in lower heating bills throughout the Northeast. Though the bills have benefited the consumer dramatically, utility companies have not benefited from the consumer’s savings, according to Wysocki. Due to a forecast for a colder than normal winter, released at the end of September, utility companies purchased more fuel than normally bought. This extraneous fuel, because of the warmer winter, has not been utilized. “Utility companies are taxed for the fuel they do not use, that is why they do not benefit from having a surplus of fuel during the winter time. This lack of fuel consumption during the winter adversely affects the utility companies, which despite consumer savings, also adversely affects the economy,” Wysocki said. Other aspects of the economy have also been adversely affected by the mild-late autumn weather and warm winter weather. “The sales of snow shovels have suffered great losses during the warm year,” Wysocki said. “If it isn’t warm during the fall, consumers wait to buy jackets, snow shovels, etc. This year, the fall was warmer than normal snow did not fall until late in December, so consumers waited to buy winter supplies and clothing. This kind of consumer response can have a detrimental effect on the retail industry.” Management at the local Ithaca Kmart, on South Meadow Street, responded with similar concerns about the lack of snow fall and cold weather by describing this year’s sales as, “sporadic at times during the brief snowfalls but otherwise quite lacking.” Other aspects of typical winter industry have also been impacted by the warm winter. “Most ski resorts here in New York State have not suffered terribly because night time temperatures have been consistently below freezing. This has allowed the resorts to maintain their slopes open with artificial snow those resorts further south, such as in Pennsylvania are the ones who are really suffering but climatologically speaking, those are too far south anyway,” he said. A second impact accompanying the mild winter weather has been an increased fear of the consequences of a severe drought. “Drought has also accompanied the mild winter,” Wysocki said. “This has been one of the few unusual winter droughts and though little if any impact has been felt during the winter; when summer rolls around people will feel the deficit of water.” Eggleston stated that “though Ithaca itself is not amidst a severe drought, the rest of the Northeast — especially New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the New York City area is.” In New York City reservoirs have dropped to 48 percent of capacity. According to Wysocki, because of the winter drought, cities throughout the northeast have saved tremendously on salt and winter maintenance by saving on the pay for extra hours. “The general impact of the warm weather on the economy is not yet certain until spring comes,” Wysocki said. The net impact is the result of a large sum of factors: consumer savings, utility company profits and losses, retail losses and city savings on salt and winter maintenance crews. Nevertheless, the long term effects are likely to be felt by the aggravating drought, water rationing, agricultural repercussions and perhaps the higher cooling bills of summer, if the warm trend continues, according to Wysocki. Archived article by David Andrade
NGLA Awards Cornell Greeks

By wpengine March 13, 2002

Leaders of the Greek system from all over the Northeastern region came together two weekends ago for the annual Northeast Greek Leadership Association (NGLA) conference in Philadelphia, PA, held at the Adam’s Mark Hotel. The executive members of the three governing boards of Cornell’s Greek system, the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC), Panhellenic Association (PanHel) and the Multicultural Greek Letter Council (MGLC) went on the four-day retreat accompanied by two assistant deans of fraternity & sorority affairs, Adria Nobles and Nicole Letawsky. Although Cornell University held its annual A.D. White Leadership Conference at the beginning of the spring semester, its conference was different. The A.D. White conference focuses more on preparing the newly-elected officers of each chapter on campus for their terms, whereas the NGLA’s purpose was “to prepare the councils and provide a good opportunity for our student [board members] to get to know each other off campus and network with other schools” Nobles said. “Getting to know and working with the members from PanHel and MGLC was pretty much the highlight of the retreat. I’m new to my position and it’s the first time I’ve gotten to work with them,” said Ty Whilden ’04, a member of the Sigma Pi fraternity and IFC vice president of communications. Greek system leaders of over 30 Northeastern colleges and universities were in attendance. “At the conference, we participated in a number of ‘break out sessions’ where we interacted with hundreds of other Greek leaders from campuses from Washington DC to Maine,” said Jason Conn ’03, IFC president and member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Each year, the conference has a keynote and this year the focus was on the diversity workshop, “Journey to a Hate Free Millennium.” The conference’s workshops also concentrated on a number of different issues which “included negatives like alcohol abuse, discrimination and hazing but also focused on positive programming like community service, chapter development and system-wide programming,” Conn said. “We hope to bring some of the programs we heard about back to Cornell, including a Dance Marathon and Greek Week.” “Many of the lectures brought up great new ideas and helped us think outside the box,” said Maurice Ducoing ’03, IFC vice president of recruitment and member of the Zeta Psi fraternity. Besides getting the opportunity to work with other members of the Greek governing board, Cornell’s Greek leaders got to look at their own Greek system against the example of other university campuses. “The conference gave our councils in particular a chance to see how what we do compares to other universities,” said Lauren Bleich ’03, member of the Chi Omega sorority and PanHel vice president of communications. With over 50 Greek organizations on campus, Cornell’s “Greek system is much stronger and a lot larger then the Greek systems on other campuses. We have more university support than many of our counterparts,” Whilden said. “As one of the largest systems in the Northeast, students asked us a great deal of questions about how our system functions. Students at Cornell often do not realize how lucky we are to have such a strong system and Greek presence on campus,” Conn said. Some of the major accomplishments of the conference came in the form of NGLA awards for Cornell’s Panhellenic Association. It “was awarded seven of the nine awards given out during the conference to recognize truly outstanding accomplishments,” said PanHel President Lindsay Williams ’03, member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Among the awards PanHel received were Public Relations Programming Excellence, Recruitment Programming and Philanthropy and Community Service Programming awards. “In our division we received these awards over such outstanding schools such as University of Pennsylvania, University of Maryland and Syracuse University,” Williams said. “The Greek system [strives] to achieve and does indeed achieve its goals of promoting excellence in leadership, academics, responsibility, philanthropy and the like.” “IFC did not apply for the Fraternity Awards this year but we plan on submitting an awards packet next year,” Conn said. “The only award the men came back with was a personal honor I received. I won the ‘Greek Leader of Distinction Award’ from the NGLA, [which] is the highest individual award given to fraternity men at the conference,” Conn said. This award, according to the NGLA website, seeks to recognize outstanding members of the Northeastern Greek community who exemplify the ideals of sorority and/or fraternity membership in their daily lives. Archived article by Veronika Belenkaya