The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/bpk29cornell-edu/)
As Sinead Lykins ’12 was about to start her Spring Break, she was unpleasantly surprised when maintenance personnel arrived at her Lyon Hall dorm room, intent on removing the two interior doors in her three-room suite.
As part of an effort to bring certain West Campus dorms into compliance with fire code changes, Cornell Housing scheduled interior doors to be removed from several West Campus dorm rooms on the afternoon of March 13.
Edward J. Conley, mayor of Ithaca from 1971 to 1979, died Friday at the age of 76. Known as the “Father of the Commons,” Conley was a lifetime resident of Ithaca and a prominent community leader.
Conley was born in Ithaca, attended Ithaca High School and was involved in multiple public boards, including the Common Council, the Tompkins County Board of Representatives and the Ithaca Town Board.
He held a variety of jobs — working as a counselor for minority students at Cornell, selling used cars and running a gas station at different times.
Conley’s election as mayor in 1971 was the closest in the history of Ithaca, coming down to a margin of only nine votes, although his subsequent victories in 1973, 1975 and 1977 were much more decisive, according to the Ithaca Journal.
With so much news focusing on economic problems at home, some Cornellians might not be aware that changes in the international value of the U.S. dollar have the potential to affect study abroad, a program in which over 800 undergraduates participate each year.
Changing dollar exchange rates have always been an issue in the U.S., and events like the formation of the European Union have caused dramatic fluctuations [img_assist|nid=34353|title=Off we go|desc=| The rate of exchange in foreign countries may deter students planning to study abroad. |link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]in the value of the dollar. But with decreasing prosperity at home, will the exchange rate issue become more important to Cornellians hoping to study abroad?
John Liu, New York City Councilman (D-Queens), spoke in Rockefeller Hall on Saturday, warming another frigid Ithacan afternoon with hopeful talk of a new era in American politics.
The first Asian American legislator in the history of New York State, Liu currently chairs the New York City Council’s Transportation Committee, one of its most influential bodies. The committee oversees the city’s mass transportation agencies and facilities.
Liu discussed the 2008 elections in terms of voter mobilization, race and international impact. He emphasized the historic significance of Barack Obama’s successful campaign for the presidency.
A five-member panel of international business leaders from Osram, one of the world’s leading lighting manufacturers, met in Sage Hall last night to discuss global leadership challenges and changes.
The panelists talked about topics ranging from green business and sustainable development to competing leadership models and corporate social responsibility. The student-organized International Leadership Forum sponsored the event. [img_assist|nid=33342|title=Looking for answers|desc=Panelist Larry Hu speaks yesterday in Sage Hall about international business.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
They focused on the need for sustainability in light of global climate change and the energy crisis.
Talk of taxes, war and healthcare reform filled the common room of Alice Cook House last night during a presidential forum organized by the Alice Cook House Election Committee. For nearly an hour and a half, three supporters of Barack Obama faced off against three supporters of John McCain in a heated debate moderated by Arjun Srivastava ’09.
The question that opened the debate, posed by an audience member, concerned how each of the candidates would adjust taxes to combat the current economic downturn. Each of the panel members was given two minutes to speak on their respective candidates’ relevant views. A two-minute rebuttal period followed the first round.
Prof. Jeff Rachlinski, law, and Greg Parks, law ’08, discussed the role of unconscious race and gender biases in the presidential race yesterday in Sage Chapel. Such implicit biases affect the voting process, they said.
“Although some Americans certainly are explicitly biased when it comes to race and gender, such individuals constitute a very small percentage of voters and it is our view that implicit or unconscious bias is the far bigger problem,” Rachlinski said.
Rachlinski explained that there are two types of voting — rationally and intuitively. “Whereas rational voting seems to override unconscious bias, intuitive voting is usually in line with it,” he said.
Overworked husbands push their wives out of the workforce, according to a study by Youngjoo Cha, a graduate student in Cornell’s department of sociology.
The study, presented Aug. 1st during a meeting of the American Sociological Association in Boston, was based on data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation, a longitudinal study managed by the U.S. Census Bureau. It was funded by a research grant from the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center.
The voter registration tables provided by the Cornell Democrats and College Republicans are a familiar sight to most Cornellians, and many feel that students helping other students “get out the vote” is a positive service to the campus community. But when out-of-state students register to vote in Tompkins County, are they potentially diminishing their political power? Are they affecting campaign strategies and election outcomes?
Elizabeth W. Kree, co-commissioner of the Tompkins County Board of Elections, explained that New York State law has given college students the right to register to vote using their college addresses since the mid-1980s. However, to the politically active on campus, the decision of out-of-staters to vote in-state has a strategic motive.
The Collegetown Neighborhood Council met yesterday afternoon in the basement of St. Luke’s to discuss an increase in the number of noise and open container violations recently issued by the Ithaca Police Department in Collegetown.
Neighborhood Council co-chairs Gary Stewart, deputy director of Cornell’s Office of Community Relations, and Mary Tomlan (D-3rd Ward) led the meeting. 15 other people attended, including representatives of the Ithaca and Cornell police departments, Collegetown landlords and concerned Cornell students.
The first issue tackled was whether or not there had actually been an increase in the number of noise and open container tickets issued.