W. Crew Shoots for First NCAA Trip

By wpengine | March 12, 2002

Next week, while many Cornellians will travel to faroff exotic locales to find out exactly what it is that makes sorority girls go wild on spring break, the Cornell women’s crew team will be soaking in the sun at what they call la Playa de Cayuga. For all of you non-Spanish speakers, that means Cayuga Beach. For all of you non-rowers, that means Cayuga Lake.

There will be no pink, frosted drinks with little umbrellas in them, just bottles of water and Gatorade. The women of the crew will get to spend their time on a boat on the water, but not to relax. Instead, they will be propelling it across the lake at top speeds, preparing for the season to come.

Spring break week is selection week for the crew teams, where the various boats are sorted out according to ability. This year, there seems to be plenty of ability. Between the strong core of devoted seniors, and an up-and-coming group of sophomores who did not lose a race last year as novices, head coach Melanie Onufrieff believes she has the raw material to get to the NCAA championships this year.

“I think I have a team that can do it,” said Onufrieff.

This is not a light comment, as the women’s crew team has not made it to the NCAAs in the seven years that the competition has been in existence. Nevertheless, team members are confident.

“I’m personally banking on us going,” said senior Cheryl Englehardt. Englehardt believes that the team’s cohesiveness and positive energy will put the team over the top this year.

Even in a sport that stresses teamwork above all things, there are always standout performers. Junior Nicole Sylvester became the first ever at Cornell to break the seven minute milestone for two kilometers on the ergometer, as far as Onufrieff knows.

“She’s always been pretty strong,” the coach remarked.

During the fall season, Onufrieff concentrated less on immediate results and more on developing the program, a move that could pay off this spring.

In the fall, the four placed second at the Stonehurst Capital Invitational in Rochester, only behind Syracuse. At the Head of the Charles in Boston, the eight finished 22nd, a decent result for a group that remained intact from last season. The four did even better, finishing sixth overall and second among U.S. schools.

The novices also turned some heads in the fall, placing boats eighth, 13th, and 21st in a 36-crew open field at the Head of the Fish, held in Saratoga Springs. At the Belly of the Carnegie in Princeton, the novices placed boats fifth and 10th.

Onufrieff particularly noted that the freshmen impressed her with their intensity and work ethic, and that she was looking forward to seeing them continue to progress this spring.

While it may seem as if working out on recently thawed Cayuga Lake for several hours a day may not be as much fun as, say, lying on the beach in Florida, the Cornell women’s crew team is excited for the upcoming selection process and the coming spring season.

With a solid group of seniors, as well as quickly developing underclassmen, they have the opportunity to do what no other Cornell squad has done.

There’s no need to pity the fact that they’ll be missing out on good old college fun this spring break, they’re just preparing for their potential trip to the NCAAs later on in the year.

Archived article by Robert Alarcon

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