News

Professors Stress Urgency of Paris Climate Conference

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“What COP21 does is to set the stage for what we can do in the grassroots level, and without grassroots leveling we won’t get to where we want to,” said Prof. Robert Howarth, one of the participants in COP21. “When the nations of the world, 195 of them, agreed to what they did in Paris because of the grassroots pressure… we need to keep doing it.”

employee

Cornell Graduate Publishes Study on Employee Wellness

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Rebecca Robbins ’09, M.S. ’14, Ph.D. ’15, detailed the “10 percent solution” — an attempt to promote employee wellness — in a recent study. Robbins’ paper, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, aims “to understand manager reactions to … workplace wellness ideas, [as] very few workplace wellness programs systematically and thoughtfully engage managers in their efforts,” she said. The “10 percent solution” argues that linking ten percent of annual managerial salary increases to wellness actions will result in meaningful changes from managers in the workplace, according to a University press release. In the study, researchers asked managers to rate companies that involve and do not involve managers in employee wellness-promoting activities, according to Robbins.

News

Security Expert Advocates Flexible Arms Control

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Nancy W. Gallagher, interim director of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, stressed the need for more flexible, informal and interconnected international arms control policies at a talk Thursday. Gallagher began the lecture by introducing her book, which highlights the challenges that countries enforcing arms control face in the current political environment. “I started the [book] during the 2008 presidential election, as a reaction against the Bush administration’s claim that arms control was an automotive relative of the Cold War,” she said. Gallagher said that although weapon usage by non-state entities — like ISIL and al-Qaeda — is becoming increasingly important, the international community has not acted rapidly to address this dangerous global situation. “Arms control is too slow,” Gallagher said.

Faculty Senate

Faculty Say Bylaws Forbid Admins to ‘Circumvent’ Senate

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Prof. Richard Bensel, government, said that the creation of the business college was in violation of Article XIII of the University’s bylaws, which state that, “The function of the University Faculty shall be to consider questions of educational policy which concern more than one college, school or separate academic unit, or are general in nature.”

greek life

Psi Upsilon Suspended Following Alleged Sexual Assault

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Psi Upsilon fraternity — the site of a sexual assault that reportedly occurred Sunday morning — has been placed on interim suspension, the office of fraternities, sororities and independent living announced Monday in a statement. Aside from operation of its residence, the fraternity has been suspended effective Monday from all chapter operations and activities. The University previously suspended Psi Upsilon’s social and new member education activities in January 2015 after an alleged incident involving alcohol and illicit substances. Previously, Psi Upsilon faced a year of judicial probation and a month of social probation after the chapter was found in violation of the University’s Anti-Hazing Policy in the spring of 2011. In the summer of 2008, Psi Upsilon’s alumni board deactivated the chapter over concerns regarding fraternity members’ safety.

collegetown

Fire Officials Evacuate Collegetown Apartment Following Fire Alarm

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Tompkins County fire officials evacuated the residents of 208 Dryden this morning following a 3:15 a.m. fire alarm, according to the Ithaca Fire Department. After the evacuation, firefighters determined that the Hai Hong Restaurant — a store on 208 Dryden’s ground level — was the cause of the smoke. The fire was caused by “a pot [that] boiled over on the stove that pumped caustic smoke into the eatery and filled the apartments above,” according to the fire department. “Crews shut down the stove and ventilated the restaurant, while others went floor by floor in the apartments to clear the smoke and check for carbon monoxide,” the fire department added. Fire officials credited the functional alarm system for their quick response and reported that no one was injured during the incident.