Red Plays to 1-1 Draw

By wpengine | October 15, 2003

The men’s soccer team extended its unbeaten streak to four games, as it tied Harvard 1-1 on Saturday. This was the second straight year that the Red (4-3-1, 1-0-1) and the Crimson (4-3-3, 0-1-1) played to a draw.

“It was a good Ivy League soccer game. It was an emotional, hard-fought battle. Both teams I thought played pretty well. It ended in a draw so nothing was really settled,” said Cornell head coach Bryan Scales.

While Harvard held the shot advantage in the first half with 10 to Cornell’s eight, it was the Red that drew first blood. With less than a minute to go in the half, sophomore Pape Seye got the ball in the middle about 35 yards out from the Harvard goal and drove right. As he shot the ball, a defender came in to make the stop, and the ball deflected off of the Crimson player and over the goalie’s head. It was Seye’s second goal of the season.

The Red would not hold the lead for long. Just under eight minutes into the second, Harvard notched the equalizer, as Crimson rookie sensation Matt Hoff headed in a rebound past junior goalie David Mahoney for his team-leading fifth goal of the season. Hoff was later named Ivy League Rookie of the Week, as he also scored the Crimson’s only goal in a 1-0 against Central Connecticut earlier in the week.

“We played pretty aggressively the whole game, and after they scored their goal, we decided to get back to business, and try to find a way to get our goal,” remarked Scales.

Mahoney, who had not allowed a goal in the three previous games, was impressive between the pipes, making seven of his 11 saves in the second half to keep the Red in the game.

“It’s the best that we’ve seen him here this year. He was outstanding, he was the reason we were able to get a result out of the game,” said Scales.

With neither team able to net another goal, the game headed for overtime. This marked the first extra session game for the Red this season.

“[The overtime] was pretty feisty. Both teams had good chances to score. Mahoney came up big with a couple of good saves, and their keeper made some good saves, and we had some good chances in front of the goal that we didn’t finish off,” said Scales.

In the 105th minute, freshman Ryan Imamura made a huge stop 10 yards from the goal to prevent an excellent Harvard scoring chance. The Red went a man up with a minute left to play in the second overtime after a Harvard player received a red card for running into Mahoney, but were unable to find the back of the net.

“I think this was a good battle for our guys, I thought they did pretty well,” said Scales. “These Ivy League games are always very difficult, and right now we’re undefeated in the league, and we have some big games in front of us.”

The Red looks to remain unbeaten in league play as it travels to New Haven, Conn. to face Yale on Saturday for a 7 p.m. nightcap.

Archived article by Jonathan Auerbach

Literary Magazines Thrive on Campus

By wpengine October 16, 2003

Epoch, Cornell’s graduate literary magazine, garners national attention and claims the likes of Thomas Pynchon and Joyce Carol Oates as former writers. Yet despite — or quite possibly because — of this legacy, Cornell’s undergraduate literary scene thrives. Boasting almost half a dozen magazines, each committed to fulfilling a unique niche in Cornell’s literary life, the various editors, scribes and copyists of these publications work long hours to bring Cornell the best of itself. Rainy Day, Cornell’s oldest surviving undergraduate literary magazine, is released biannually at the start of every semester. About 800 copies of the magazine are distributed throughout the Cornell campus. Work, however, begins long before, as the staff of approximately 25 canvasses the campus to encourage contributors, handing out flyers and chalking up the sidewalk. “Getting submissions is the biggest part,” explains current editor Christopher Kang ’04. “If in a week I get twenty to thirty submissions, I’m really happy.” Although these submissions come primarily from the student body, Rainy Day has happily printed stories and poetry from parents, alumni and even a dining facilities janitor. But of the four to five hundred submissions the magazine receives annually, only about twenty works are printed. A partial reason for the selectivity is Rainy Day’s emphasis on longer narratives, which Kang feels are often excluded from other publications. “We represent other sides of the Cornell literary scene, especially longer narratives and poems,” he told The Sun. Choosing to focus only on the written word, Rainy Day has no photography or art aside from the cover. Also focusing on the written word is relative newcomer [plug] poetry magazine. Last year, Arnold Seong ’04 set out with a staff of six to “start a magazine because we didn’t feel the magazines on campus were inclusive enough … we wanted to include all genres of poetry.” The biannual magazine prints 300 copies a semester, each issue filled with poems of varying length and style. With this sharp focus on poetry, [plug] has grown to a staff of sixteen and into a robust program that involves much more than just the printed page. “The magazine will no longer be the most important part of [plug],” Seong explains. “Our main goal is for people to just read and share poetry.” To these ends, [plug] has been passing out poetry on Ho Plaza, hosting readings and poetry slams and sponsoring guest lectures and speakers such as Douglas Mao. The organization also boasts a robust website that will host spoken poetry that can be downloaded and enjoyed. “We try to show people all the different things poetry is,” Seong said. “We try to expand their definition of it.” Forword, funded by the Cornell Women’s Resource Center, also works at expanding definitions. Silvi Alcivar ’04 explains that Forword “gives voice to women and women’s issues. It’s been called the feminist magazine, but it’s really open to the entire Cornell community, directed to address women’s issues.” The magazine started in 1995 as a newsletter entitled Athena, which provided a forum for the Women’s Resource Center. It gradually grew into a full-fledged literary magazine and today prints 400 copies annually. The magazine also hosts a showcase in late April where art, poetry, and live readings are presented. The Ethos yearbook focuses on chronicling the minority experience at Cornell through poetry, art and photography. “The goal of the yearbook was and is to depict the efforts, struggles and various accomplishments of traditionally underrepresented ethnic groups at Cornell,” explained Editor Richetta Coelho ’04. Recently, the yearbook moved into a magazine format, in order to increase readership and student participation. This move has brought Ethos to “be more than just a picture book, but finally something that people were interested in reading once they got their copy and being involved in once they read it,” Coelho added. Established in 1976, the staff of 25 puts out 250 copies, which are sold at the Office of Minority Affairs at the end of the year. Finally, Lackadaisical: A Shortage of Flowers, is another newcomer. Founded in 2001, it has a lighter take in a literary world that Editor Becca Epstein ’04 admits is “inspiring and intimidating,” especially to those outside the English major. “A lot of talented writers and artists on campus … don’t get to express themselves creatively in their field of study. So we try to reach out to students of all majors.” Lackadaisical continues to grow, currently having about 15 members on staff, including many veterans who continue to improve the quality of content and layout. The biannual publication prints about 750 copies, which are distributed freely all over campus. Another major development in Cornell’s literary magazine scene is the reintroduction of Temple of Zeus readings, coordinated by Prof. Lamar Herrin, English, which have been influential in bringing RainyDays, [plug] and Forword together as they help plan and stage the weekly readings. The publications all sponsor readers and help get the word out about the event. “We didn’t really communicate with the other publications before,” admits Kang. “But the readings have really opened up a dialog between the publications.” He added that, because each publication has a specific focus, there’s more cooperation then competition: “There’s something for everyone.” Archived article by Michael Morisy
Cornell Hosts Biology Workshop

By wpengine October 16, 2003

Biology professors from colleges and universities from across New York State made their way to Cornell this past weekend for a four-day workshop designed to bolster undergraduate education in the rapidly developing field of bioinformatics. The workshop, entitled “Bioinformatics in Biology Education: Working with Sequence, Structure and Function,” aimed to provide professors and students with the tools necessary to take advantage of resources and data that are becoming increasingly available through public sources such as the Internet. “We aim to put the most powerful tools available into the hands of students,” said John Jungck, principle investigator for the program and Mead Chair of the Sciences at Beloit College in Wisconsin. Workshop attendees piled into the Cornell Theory Center in Rhodes Hall to hear a dozen lecturers speak on a variety of bioinformatics topics. While the realm of bioinformatics is expanding to include many different fields, this weekend’s workshop focused primarily on phylogeny, which is the genetic relationship between organisms, and population evolution. “I view bioinformatics as the triangulation of biology, evolution and information science. It’s very interdisciplinary from the get go,” Jungck said. Bioinformatics includes a wide range of applications in disparate arenas such as drug design, conservation and forensics, according to Jungck. “Perhaps you want to look at extinction conservation for endangered species or maybe you want to know if your can of tuna contains whale meat. Bioinformatics gives you the tools to do that,” Jungck said. Jungck hopes to get these tools into the hands of students by addressing their professors and answering their questions. “I’m a new assistant professor at Vassar College and I’ll be teaching classes on the human genome, genetics and bioinformatics next semester. I don’t know a lot about phylogeny so I thought this would be a good chance to expand my understanding,” said workshop attendee Kam Dahlquist. Bioinformatics, like any other science, is not simply answers. According to Jungck, a central problem in the field and in biology in general is the understanding of complex systems and networks of genes. “One of the biggest problems is understanding the complex interactions between genes and the web of gene expression. We need to get a better idea about both the fragility and robustness of such highly connected systems,” Jungck said. For example, conditions like cancer and obesity cannot be attributed to the vagaries of a single gene. These conditions originate from a combination of genetic, molecular and environmental dysfunction, thus complicating our understanding, according to Jungck. Jungck hopes that by putting today’s best tools into the hands of tomorrow’s scientists, these complications can be deciphered. The workshop was part of a three-year program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The program, Bioinformatics Education Dissemination: Reaching Out, Connecting and Knitting-together (BEDROCK), is a series of eighteen workshops aimed at undergraduate biology instruction. The workshop at Cornell is the seventh in the series. “Wherever we have a workshop, we always try to take advantage of the local resources and at Cornell that means genomics and supercomputing,” Jungck said.Archived article by Philip Lane