Photo courtesy of The New York Times.

April 5, 2016

Petition Urging Bernie Sanders To Visit Cornell Gains Support

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A petition urging Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) speak at Schoellkopf Field before New York’s April 19 primary — created by Ithaca resident Alexander Stick— has received over  3,000 signatures in under a week.

“New York is pivotal for the Bernie Sanders campaign … let’s get enough signatures to fill the 25,597 seats in Schoellkopf Field at Cornell University,” the petition reads.   

Stick said in his petition that upstate New York is  home to “one of the highest concentrations of [Sanders] supporters in the country.”

Kayla Elyse Brooks, a research technician in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a member of the Facebook group ‘Cornellians for Bernie Sanders 2016,’ said that she would welcome a Sanders rally at Cornell.

“I think it would be great for a lot of the students who have adopted their parents’ views to see Bernie in front of them speaking to our generation about our future,” Brooks said.

Andrea Stone ’16, creator of the Cornellians for Bernie Sanders 2016 Facebook page, also strongly supported having the  presidential candidate speak on campus.

“I think Bernie Sanders is the candidate with the most competent resume and background experience needed to effectively lead our country into an era of technological and educational advancement,” she said.

Stone also said that she wants Sanders to visit and speak in part because there are “a great number of good-hearted, earnest and hardworking students who want to help but haven’t been exposed to unbiased media sources outside of the classroom.”

Gus Dusenberry, an Ithaca resident, said that he would very much like to see Sanders speak in the area, but said that he “respects that [Sanders] has very limited time to reach the greatest possible number of undecided voters.”

He also said that the Sanders campaign is prioritizing campaigning in big cities rather than small communities like Ithaca.

“This would be much better accomplished by rallies in larger cities, with their associated news coverage,” Dusenberry said. “Having him do well in New York is more important than us having a short trip to see him.”

He added that if Sanders were to speak somewhere in Ithaca, it would be “great,” but also said he and others would “happily” go see him somewhere else.

Sanders has spoken during his 2016 campaign at many colleges, such as Morehouse College, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the University of Florida, according to the candidate’s website.