By November 11, 2005
With victories over Penn (8-15, 5-6 Ivy) and Princeton (14-8, 5-6) this weekend, the volleyball team could achieve an unprecedented feat – become the first Ivy League team to go undefeated in league play since the conference went to a 14-game format in 2001. But as it has all season, the team is taking it one game at a time, focusing on earning the single victory that would assure it sole possession of a league championship. “I don’t think there’s any pressure to go 14-0, that would just be a bonus. It’s not something we have to do – 13-1 we have to do,” said head coach Deitre Collins. As the case has been all season long, the Red (19-3, 12-0) enters the final weekend of league play with a bulls-eye on its back. Penn and Princeton, who lost to Cornell by identical scores of 3-0 earlier this season in Newman Arena, will be looking to become the first team to take a match from the Red this season. “Nothing is guaranteed,” Collins said. “And I think Princeton is playing better than they have been playing, so anything can happen. – The seniors have never won at Penn, so there are some mental things that we have to get past and just go out and play.” The Quakers have struggled lately, dropping three consecutive matches and eight of their last 10. However, Penn has a balanced offense, with five players averaging more than 2.00 kills per game. Setter Linda Zhang ranks sixth in the Ancient Eight with 9.31 assists per game, as well as eighth in hitting percentage (.269). The defense is anchored by outside hitter Cara Thomason and libero Elizabeth Hurst, who rank fifth and sixth in the league with 4.08 and 4.06 digs per game, respectively. Tomorrow the Red will face Princeton, which has been inconsistent in league play, dropping matches to Yale and Brown last weekend after sweeping Dartmouth and Harvard the week before. However, the Tigers have been consistent statistically, led by outside hitter Jenny McReynolds, who is ranked second in the nation with 6.50 digs per game. Parker Henritze is second in the league – behind Cornell’s junior Elizabeth Bishop – with 4.76 kills per game, and 15th in the nation with 0.60 aces. Jenny Senske is second in the Ivies with 12.74 assists per game, while Lindsey Ensign (.387) and Brittany Wood (.301) are second and fifth, respectively, in hitting percentage behind the league leader, the Red’s junior Joanna Weiss (.408). The Tigers also lead the conference with 2.14 service aces per game. However, the Red is confident that its own numbers and skills will be enough to get the job done. “We’ve been doing a good job of closing out games and winning matches, and so we just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Collins said. Bishop, who has been averaging 5.03 kills per game, needs one more kill to set a new career record for the Cornell program. Weiss has hit .517 over the last five matches, averaging 4.11 kills and 1.67 blocks per game. The Red’s senior co-captains have also put up big numbers on the court, as setter Whitney Fair is handing out 13.06 assists per game and libero Kelly Kramer is averaging 5.16 digs per game. The team will be back on the road after sweeping Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia by a combined score of 9-1 in its final homestand of the season last weekend. “Everybody [on the team] recognizes that we don’t want to give anybody confidence that they can beat us,” Collins said. “Playing well [Monday] against Columbia, and just the excitement that it’s in our control and we have to do it, we tend to rise to the occasion. So home or away or whatever, we’re just going to get it done.” Archived article by Olivia Dwyer Sun Assistant Sports Editor
By November 11, 2005
“The American Dream is in serious jeopardy,” according to Thomas Kochan, the George Maverick Bunker Professor of Management at MIT, and “we need to make it a public issue.” A former associate professor in ILR, Kochan was in Ithaca promoting his new book, Restoring the American Dream: A Working Families’ Agenda for America. Kochan described what he termed the problems facing the vast majority of working Americans, including a broken health care and pension system, stagnant wages, growing inequality, longer working hours and a lack of both union presence and worker voice in employment issues. He said that these issues present not only a problem to the economy, but are a “national democratic issue” and must be tackled effectively in order to maintain a healthy society. The evidence suggests, Kochan said, that the vast majority of Americans are either barely holding on to the quality of life they have enjoyed, or are falling behind. He described the inability of recent economic “recoveries” to produce enough jobs to meet demand, and the fact that only 17 percent of Americans now have defined benefit pensions, as a few examples of statistics that are “all going in the wrong direction.” The only thing that “has kept society from exploding,” he said, “are the added wages from women and mothers who have added more family [working] hours.” As part of the solution to both the structural and social challenges facing workers in this country, Kochan proposed “giving working families the tools they need to contribute and prosper in a modern, knowledge-based economy.” Because a large government program will not solve these problems, and businesses will not act unilaterally, there is a “responsibility to re-think how we approach workplace problems,” he explained. Kochan’s vision for solving these problems, described in his new book, begins by changing the traditional image of an “ideal” worker, innovating programs at a local level, and most importantly by expanding upon the existing employment relationship to create a more flexible, “family oriented” model. In order to best help the 38 million working people that live below the poverty line, business, stakeholders, churches, worker associations and unions must combine to create incentives for increased participation in training, renew focus on the educational system and find plausible solutions for solving our health-care crisis. Besides the scope of the issues discussed in his book, Kochan remains confident that Americans will begin to agitate for dialogue on these problems, and will eventually pressure companies, government and policy groups to engage the workforce to find appropriate remedies. About 75 faculty members and students attended his talk, including Daniel MacDonald MILR ’06, who is planning to work in the field of conflict resolution. “These are exciting ideas,” he commented, and “[it’s] evident that we need to have a conversation about these issues.” Similarly, Beth Dyer said that “it’s very hard to disagree with anything [Kochan] said. I think we’re in an incredibly difficult situation, and it’s going to take a lot of thought and a lot of discussion.” Kochan, who returns to Ithaca bi-annually to visit friends, has fond memories of his time spent at Cornell. “Those were fantastic years,” he said. “It was an opportunity to work with such challenging students, and with a group of faculty who worked together – and went on to do great things.”Archived article by Scott RosenthalSun Contributor