By April 28, 2004
On Monday, the Jewish Student Union celebrated Israeli Independence Day on the Rawlings Green on North Campus. Along with the moon bounce, rides of Eli the Camel and lots of food, Jewish organizations from Cornell, Ithaca College and the greater Tompkins County area attended the event to display information and educate passers-by about Israel. “Traditionally, Israeli Independence Day is a time of the community coming together and celebrating the existence of Israel,” said Malka Benjamin ’07, a co-chair of creative development of the JSU. Benjamin organized the whole event along with co-chair Dena Ruebusch ’04. “The new thing we did was push for education about different aspects of Israel,” said Benjamin. Tents were set up selling food, Israeli products and t-shirts along with tents set up independently by different Jewish organizations. Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee was there to promote the group’s “Israel is Gorges” campaign. Purpose “The purpose of the campaign is to express the beauty of Israel, the different strides Israel has made in environmentalism, technology that has changed all of our lives, women rights and gay rights,” said Eli Magid ’06, vice president of programming for CIPAC. “It is not a political campaign at all,” he said. The group is selling “Israel is Gorges” t-shirts. The proceeds will go to the One Family Fund — Israel Emergency Solidarity Fund. “It’s a fund to support victims of terrorism and their families,” said Sarah Boxer ’07, “It’s not a political charity as much as a really tremendous way to support the Israeli people.” In creating the idea for the t-shirt, Dan Greenwald, vice president of campus relations for CIPAC, explained, “We always talk about how beautiful Israel is and one day we saw an “Ithaca is Gorges” t-shirt and said ‘Wow’. It just made perfect sense.” KOACH, a group that gives students the opportunity to maintain and develop connections to Conservative Judaism, set up a small reenactment of the signing of the Israeli Declaration of the Independence. On the table was a copy of the original declaration that students could sign and behind the table were two Israeli flags surrounding a picture of Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Linda Mandel attended, representing Temple Beth El, a conservative synagogue in downtown Ithaca. She created and sold Hebrew name necklaces as a fundraiser for Rabbi Felix Aber’s religious school. Several Jewish students, not affiliated with any particular organization, were at the festival running face-painting and sand art tables. Other attractions at the celebration were a shuk, or an open-air Israeli market, food provided by the Kosher Dining Hall and local caterer David Sayada, and an inflatable climbing wall. “This year we tried to open up to more individual groups,” said Alex Shapero ’06, vice chair for public relations for the JSU. Other organizations at the event were the Jewish Community Men’s Club, Ithaca College Hillel, Chabad of Ithaca, Ithaca Area United Jewish Communities, Birthright Israel, Sepharadi Mizrahi Association at Cornell and the Jewish Russian Club. “All over cities, colleges, temples, everywhere in America you see this kind of thing,” said Benjamin. Archived article by Casey HolmesSun Staff Writer
By April 28, 2004
Bleary-eyed students stumbling to early morning classes may be a thing of the past at Duke University, which recently announced a plan to eliminate 8 a.m. classes. At Cornell, however, where there are no such plans to push back class hours, students continue to do their best to cope with the few hours of sleep their busy schedules afford them. If you don’t have trouble getting to early morning classes, you might organize your time better than some Cornell students and factor plenty of sleep into your daily routine. Or you might be someone like Katelyn Hollars ’07, who grew up on a farm and is used to early mornings. “I’ve kind of had perfect attendance since fourth grade,” Hollars said. “I haven’t missed class yet.” Although Hollars is awake nearly every weekday morning by 7:30 a.m. for her 9:05 a.m. class, at least one former student found that with the stress of a full course load and social life, there was little time for enough sleep to be functional. “I’d make it to class, but would fall asleep regularly,” said Richard Lee ’03, in an e-mail regarding an 8:40 a.m. class his freshman year. “My first semester at Cornell was very stressful because I found it hard to manage both my social life and academic life, and it always felt like it was hard to balance the two out and be successful at both,” he added. According to a survey released in April 2003 by the Senate Educational Policy Committee titled “Attitudes and Preferences of Cornell Undergraduates Toward Academic Scheduling,” 70.8 percent of students are “somewhat or very alert during class on a regular day.” Students tended to be most alert from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., whereas professors generally function on a different sleep pattern. According to one of the study’s co-designers, Prof. Susan Piliero, education, professors usually reach their peak about two hours before students because they go to sleep and get up earlier. “I have trouble going to class because it’s really early, my body’s not really awake at that time, so a lot of times I just don’t go and when I do go, usually I have trouble staying awake unless I got a good night’s sleep the night before,” said Andres Blanco ’04 of his 8:40 a.m. class on Monday and Wednesday. Compared to his other classes, Blanco is “doing the worst in that class,” he said. The study also found that during weeknights 4 percent of students often pull all-nighters while 42.8 percent of students never pull all-nighters. Questionnaires were sent to all undergraduates, with 5,874 students completing the survey. “We wanted to do some really thorough analysis by subgroup,” Piliero said. Data was found across age, race and gender categories. The summary report of the findings reads: “sophomores and juniors reported higher levels of alertness than freshmen and seniors. Asian students reported the highest level of alertness, while black and Hispanic students reported the lowest level of alertness.” Higher levels of alertness were also found among females, and higher alertness generally corresponded to higher GPAs. According to Piliero, the differences in alertness between different age, racial and gender groups could have been due to self-perception — one student’s definition of high alertness may be another student’s definition of low alertness. The debate is still open as to how to help students who feel they have low levels of alertness. “The question is, should we accommodate this or should we try to think of strategies to help students become more functional during normal business hours,” Piliero said. Classes and prelims are currently not offered from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., and according to Piliero, most classes are offered from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. By extending academic hours, students might have higher overall levels of alertness, Piliero said. This sentiment was echoed by Annabel Moreo ’04, who works from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Tuesdays and during her time at Cornell has always had at least one 9 a.m. class. “I think you just need to make sure the classes are offered at a variety of times because there are people who prefer to be up early and prefer to be up late and they’ll do best if their classes are at whatever time they prefer,” Moreo said. Archived article by Clark MerrefieldSun Staff Writer