The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/athletes/)
Two basketball players from Brown University filed a class action lawsuit against the Ivy League on March 7, arguing that Cornell University and other Ivy League institutions violate antitrust laws in their refusal to offer athletic scholarships.
As first-year students across campus have spent the first half of their first semester forming friendships, first-year student athletes are also building relationships with their teammates, often by eating together. Winter Wallace ’26, a member of the men’s ice hockey team, explained that the team finished practice at 5:30 p.m. two days per week and at 6 p.m. two days per week, but smoothies, stretching, saunas and ice baths after practice mean that he arrives at North Campus dining halls around 8 p.m.
Because many team practices run as late as 8 p.m., Cornell Dining provides dining options and spaces for these team meals to occur, even after practice is over. Evan Nesmith ’26, a member of the football team, said that although there are options on campus that ensure teams can eat, he still wishes for longer dining hall hours. Most dining halls close between 7-9 p.m., sending student athletes to late night eateries like Bear Necessities instead.
Caleb Straayer ’26, a member of the men’s track team, agreed with Nesmith, but acknowledged that there are challenges with keeping the dining hall open later. He is optimistic about a potential solution. “It’d be great if they could be open ‘til later although I am aware, of course, of the staffing issues, so somehow finding a way around that problem would definitely be beneficial for student athletes,” Straayer said.
Rushing should be an athlete’s decision. Don’t think that an athlete could handle the time commitment? Fine. But these student-athletes are adults who have already done the impressive feat of being accepted into Cornell. Most of them are lifelong athletes who know how to budget their time well.
About a month ago, I was curious about what supplements Cornell students take when they workout. I investigated, finding that the average Cornellian may use pre-workout supplements now and then, but generally does not have a strict diet or supplemental regiment when working out. This time, I wanted to dive a bit deeper into this topic. An intramural soccer champion may be a hell of an athlete, but there is a stark difference between the average intramural Cornell athlete and a Cornell D1 student athlete. I wanted to find out what goes on behind the scenes of D1 athletes.
“It’s super nice to finally feel like Cornell is doing something for us and going out of their way to help the student athletes and enhance our experience,” Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Tori Togashi ’18 said. “They were really on top of it and wanted to get it done as soon as possible.”
More than four decades have elapsed since the enactment of Title IX — the landmark legislation that banned sex discrimination in federally funded activities and toppled robust barriers for female athletes. Plenty of women have leapt over gender-based hurdles in the subsequent years — the number of girls playing high school sports has increased every consecutive year for the last quarter century, a record number of viewers tuned in for the U.S. women’s finals at the 2015 World Cup and celebrity-status professionals such as Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey have shattered popular expectations of the female body’s limits. Vestiges of 20th century challenges for female athletes — lowered opportunities and expectations, funding deficiencies, racism and homophobia — endure, though purportedly to a lessened degree than in the past. While the topography of restrictions for women entering athletics has certainly evolved since 1972, four decades of “progress” have not obliterated the materiality of discrimination against female athletes. Rather, obstacles tend to take a different character than they did forty years ago.