Univ. Assembly to Assess Role on Campus

In the first University Assembly meeting of the academic year yesterday, its members agreed to hold an additional discussion to analyze their organization’s role on campus.
This impromptu decision was the result of a major assembly initiative to rewrite the current U.A. Charter. Rewriting the U.A. Charter has been on the assembly’s agenda since last year and is a top priority for the recently re-elected chair of the assembly, Rodney Orme, who works in the Office of the Registrar. But when the initiative was mentioned at yesterday’s meeting, faculty representative Prof. Marty Hatch, music, encouraged his colleagues to first establish how the U.A.’s role on campus had changed since it was first created.

GPSA Tries for New Levels of Dialogue, Cooperation

Amidst the general upheaval created by the economy, a significant environmental initiative on campus and Reimagining Cornell, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly held their first meeting of the semester last night in the Straight with approximately 35 in attendance. In addition to the internal campus initiatives, the GPSA also began to discuss the Ivy Summit, an annual summit for all graduate-level assembly members on Ivy League campuses, which Cornell is hosting this year.

Cover Africa Camps on Quad

Last night on the Arts Quad, Cover Africa threw an outdoor slumber party, a philanthropic event and an educational session all wrapped in one. The event, the third of its kind in the last two years, is meant to raise both money and awareness for those suffering from the malaria epidemic throughout Africa.
Malaria, which infects 250 million people each year, is predominantly a problem for countries in Africa. As the Cover Africa pamphlet explains, every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria in Africa; it is the number one cause of death among children under five years old.

S.A Votes Against Median Grades for Transfers

The Student Assembly passed a resolution — by a vote of 17 to 1 — yesterday that seeks to ensure that current transfer students will not be subjected to the University’s new policy of publishing median grades on transcripts.
Andrew Brokman ’11, S.A. Transfer Representative, had proposed Resolution 26, which “requests that the registrar clarify the Median Grade Policy, so that it is in conformity with the Faculty Senate Resolution.” It states that students who will graduate any date earlier than June 2012 should not have the median grades on their transcripts.

Collegetown Neighborhood Council Details Building Plans

It has been almost a year since consultants visited Collegetown to develop a vision for renewal and nearly six months since an entire book was compiled to lay out the plans that will bring make that vision a reality. Last night, the Collegetown Neighborhood Council devoted its bimonthly meeting to update the status of the Collegetown development plan.
The meeting had approximately 30 attendees. According to Mary Tomlan ’71 (D-3rd Ward), co-chair of the CNC, the meeting had a much larger turnout than usual, attesting to the interest on the development plan.

C.U. Historians Praise Obama's Policy on Information Freedom

Cornell’s historians — professors, graduate students and archivists — see President Barack Obama’s policies toward a more transparent government not merely as a step forward, but a complete reversal in direction.
On Jan. 21, Obama released a memo in which he encouraged governmental agencies to “adopt a presumption of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in the Freedom of Information Act and to usher in a new era of open government.”
The act, which allowed for the disclosure of most official governmental documents, was first instated in 1966 during the Lyndon Johnson’s Administration.
“FOIA was built on a presumption of openness and disclosure rather than secrecy,” explained Prof. Fredrick Logevall, history.

Campus Celebrations Ring in Year of the Ox

Some Chinese students at Cornell are just a four-hour car ride from their houses in New York City. Others are a 14-hour flight from their families in China. No matter the distance between Ithaca and their homes, all tried to find alternative and communal ways to celebrate the Chinese New Year and the start of the Year of the Ox. [img_assist|nid=34440|title=Festive feasting|desc=Students crowded into Okenshield’s yesterday for the annual Chinese New Year dinner, where they ate traditional Chinese dishes in honor of the incoming Year of the Ox. Some had to wait up to 40 minutes before they could enter.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]

Prof Recounts Kristallnacht Story on 70th Anniversary

Last night, Prof. Emeritus Edgar Rosenberg, English and comparative literature, recounted his childhood experiences of a night of terror, known to German Jews as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Seventy years ago, on Nov. 9, 1938, Nazis destroyed synagogues, smashed Jewish shop windows and burned Jewish books, leaving German cities littered with glass, broken furniture, and strewn shop items. [img_assist|nid=33466|title=Gather ’round|desc=Prof. Emeritus Edgar Rosenberg, English and comparative literature, shares his personal memories to commemorate the 70th anniversary in RPCC last night.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]

Judge Discusses Debaathification in Iraq

Judge Ra’id Juhi Hamadi al-Saedi lectured about the vast problems with the debaathification committee in Iraq yesterday afternoon. Juhi is Cornell Law School’s first Clark Middle Eastern Fellow; he is known for indicting Saddam Hussein in 2004.
Debaathification, which began with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, refers to the process of ridding Iraq of all Baath supporters; in other words, all Saddam Hussein supporters.