Men's Basketball Set for New England Swing

By wpengine | December 5, 2003

As the rest of the East hill settles in for study week, the men’s basketball team begins a grueling five-game road trip. The first test comes tonight at 7 p.m. against the University of Vermont. The Red (2-2, 0-0 Ivy) will look to even the all-time series with the Catamounts (0-4, 0-0 America East) at five games a piece and avenge last January’s 66-52 home court loss.

Cornell comes into tonight’s game riding the crest of a two-game winning streak, including a 79-66 victory over Army in Rochester and a 69-37 dismantling of Ithaca College on Tuesday at Newman Arena. Should the Red prove victorious, Cornell would have its first three-game non-conference winning streak since the 1996-97 season. A victory over Vermont would also give Cornell a winning record, the latest in a season that the team has been above .500 since that same 96-97 campaign.

In January’s defeat, the Red was outrebounded by Vermont, 39-25, and connected on just 36 percent of its shots. Perimeter defense doomed Cornell, as Vermont sunk a then season-high 10 three-pointers.

To win, the Red will have to improve on its defensive effort from the last meeting. Head coach Steve Donahue has made the right adjustments; the defensive prowess of this year’s team has been evident already in this young season. Cornell held Ithaca to under 20 points in both halves of Tuesday’s game, frustrating the Bombers into shooting 24.6 percent from the field. Senior point guard and co-captain Ka’Ron Barnes had a career-high five steals, and leads the Ivy League with an average of 3.0 thefts per game. The Red hopes to similarly stifle the Vermont attack, which has yet to score over 67 points in a game this season.

The Catamounts have a deceptively poor record and should not be overlooked. Vermont qualified for the NCAA tournament last spring as the champion of the America East conference. More recently, the team nearly beat UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Oct. 29, losing 68-67.

The Red will have to contain the past two America East Player of the Year honorees, both of which are on the Vermont roster. Last season’s winner, forward Taylor Coppenrath, is averaging 24.0 ppg and scored 38 against UCLA. Guard T.J. Sorrentine took an injury redshirt for the 2002-03 season, but was a backcourt stalwart for Vermont the year before.

After tonight’s game, the Red will stay in the America East conference and meet New Hampshire on Sunday. After taking exams, the team travels to Pennsylvania for games against Lafayette, Lehigh, and Duquesne (on New Year’s Eve). Cornell will face St. Francis (N.Y.) on the road and St. Francis (Pa.) back on the East Hill. Winter Break will come to an end as the Red visits junior guard Cody Toppert’s hometown Lobos in New Mexico.

Archived article by Per Ostman

String of Break-ins Plague Cascadilla

By wpengine December 15, 2003

A series of break-ins has upset life in Cascadilla Hall, where three female students’ rooms were broken into over Thanksgiving break, sparking anger and fear among residents. According to an e-mail sent to the Cascadilla community by Scott Helfrich, the residence hall director, there is no evidence that the rooms were forcibly entered, and very little was taken from the rooms. In a subsequent e-mail sent to Cascadilla residents and obtained by The Sun, Helfrich reported that one of the women whose room was entered, Marsha Lien ’04, requested that certain information about her case be shared. The e-mail explained that although “almost nothing was taken from the room,” Lien “found that her bed and pillow had been urinated on and the comforter pulled back over the mattress to conceal this situation.” According to Lien, she first noticed that something was wrong as she came back to her room Sunday night after break. Lien said that she saw that the door was crooked, and when she entered her room she found that the door had been unlocked and the lights turned on. When she asked her resident advisor if anyone had been in her room, her R.A. — who had heard of two similar cases — asked her to check her bed. Lien lifted her comforter to find a “huge stain.” “First I did not know what the hell it was,” Lien said, explaining that the previous cases had included instances where the perpetrator had ejaculated in the room. Because the Cornell University Police Department is conducting an investigation into the break-ins, information is limited. Helfrich warned in his e-mail that “some information will remain confidential and not be inclusive of the full situation.” Linda Grace-Kobas, interim vice president for communications and media relations, did say however that “it doesn’t appear that robbery was the prime motive.” Adam Brown ’04, whose friend lived in one of the invaded rooms, said that residents in Cascadilla continue to remain frightened by the break-ins. He said that one of his friends, an R.A., moved out for about one and a half weeks and only recently moved back in. “Once R.A.s start moving out of dorms, it’s a really bad sign,” Brown said. Brown reported that his friend whose room had been entered went home because of the incident. His friend, whom he said was “pretty shaken up about it,” asked not to be contacted. Brown and Lien both expressed extreme disappointment with the authorities’ response to the incidents. “I’m not very happy with [the response],” Lien said. “They’re very hush-hush.” She also said that the CUPD in particular were very unclear to her in regards to the other incidents. “I think that everyone should know,” she said. “Many of my friends that live there are worried that the police are doing little to protect them and to protect the evidence, and many feel they are not safe staying there,” Brown wrote in an e-mail to The Sun. The CUPD continue to conduct an investigation and “have asked that people keep their eyes open” for suspicious behavior, according to Grace-Kobas. She added that authorities are working with Campus Life, but both she and Helfrich said they cannot comment on the investigation because it is ongoing. Helfrich wrote in one of his e-mails that authorities were not yet sure how the perpetrator entered the rooms, but that “no master keys for the community have been reported missing to the knowledge of Cornell University Police or Community Development.” Helfrich said that although residents in Cascadilla are more cautious of letting strangers into the hall, he felt that the general atmosphere “is not that different from last year at this time.” Lien, however, said that she and many of her friends are “scared shitless” and will not sleep in their rooms over the weekends. She said that her floor is especially cautious both because it is the first floor — a high traffic area — and also because most of the residents there are female. Lien expressed frustration that Campus Life would not let her or other residents install deadbolts in their rooms, but said that she plans on installing one anyway. She also said that many of her friends push furniture against their doors at night as an added precaution and that she has taken to going to sleep with a knife. According to Grace-Kobas, the CUPD have not yet identified any suspects. She also could not predict what punishments the perpetrator would eventually face if caught, as that would largely depend on charges brought. Grace-Kobas further explained that because new evidence and information from questioning often arises once a criminal has been apprehended, it is too soon to know yet what the charges will be. Helfrich and Kobas have asked anyone with information about the break-ins to contact the CUPD at 255-1111.Archived article by Yuval Shavit
Schwab Named Dean of Law School

By wpengine December 12, 2003

Last Friday, President Jeffrey S. Lehman ’77 announced that Prof. Stewart J. Schwab, law, has been named the new Allan R. Tessler Dean of Cornell Law School. Schwab, replacing Lee Teitelbaum who resigned last winter after serving since 1999, inherits an “extraordinarily healthy” institution, according to Kevin Clermont, the James and Mark Flanagan Professor of Law and a member of the committee that recommended three candidates to Lehman. The committee was formed last spring and has met weekly this semester, looking for a candidate who had administrative experience, ambition, character, scholarship and commitment to teaching and students, Provost Biddy (Carolyn A.) Martin told The Sun earlier this summer. A list of five finalists was released in early October, and that list was then whittled down to three recommendations from which Lehman chose from. Before that final list, however, each finalist took part in a two-day interview process, allowing two non-University based candidates get a feel for the campus and Cornell in general. “I was honored to have been chosen as a finalist,” Schwab said, the last of the five to be interviewed. Schwab is now responsible for 45 full-time faculty members and about 600 students in the school’s J.D. degree program and another 60 additional students in the masters of laws degree program. “I am confident that, with his strong leadership, the Law School will make ever greater contributions to our understanding of the law and legal institutions and will continue to prepare our students for lives of accomplished service within a rapidly changing profession,” Lehman said. Schwab’s credentials indicate a range of experience and knowledge suitable for the position. He earned an M.A. in labor economics and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, after which he clerked for the Hon. J. Dickson Phillips of the U.S. Court of Appeals and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor before joining the law school faculty in 1983. At Cornell, Schwab has taught courses on subjects ranging from comparative labor, contracts in a global society and corporations to empirical studies of the legal system, torts and law and economics. He’s also moonlighted at various other positions, serving as distinguished visiting professor at the University of Nebraska Law School this spring and a Fullbright senior scholar at the Australian National University’s Centre for Law and Economics in 1998. He’s also been a visiting fellow at Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, and has served in various other positions at Victoria University, University of Virginia Law School, Duke University and the University of Michigan. Schwab has also written widely, authoring with Samuel Estreicher Foundations of Labor and Employment Law and also writing Employment Law: Cases and Materials alongside such legal luminaries as Steven L. Willborn and John F. Burton, Jr. His writings have been featured in the law journals of Yale University, University of Chicago, New York University, William and Mary, University of Michigan and Cornell. He currently is the co-editor of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. He has also served as a consultant for the World Bank on reform of labor and employment laws throughout the former Soviet Union and has been called upon for consultation for ERISA, ESOP and Title VII litigation. “Stewart brings to the position 20 years of teaching and scholarship in areas that have enormous significance and breadth. He is one of our most productive and distinguished legal scholars and is widely respected by his colleagues. I look forward to working with him,” Martin said. The members of the search committee were Martin; Walter Cohen, vice provost; Stephen Crane, chair, Law School Advisory Council; Prof. Theodore Eisenberg, the H. A. Mark Professor of Law; Prof. Stephen Garvey, law; Prof. Barbara Holden-Smith, law; Prof. Sheri Lynn Johnson, law; Prof. Annelise Riles, law; Prof. Faust Rossi, the S. S. Leibowitz Professor of Trial Technology and Prof. Carol Grumbach, senior lecturer and director, Lawyering Program. Archived article by Michael Morisy