2020 election

GUEST ROOM | ‘I’m Praying that My Vote is Counted’ — Voting Struggles Rob Students of Agency

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Two and a half weeks before the Nov. 3 general election, my sister, Natalie Sullivan Baker ’22, mailed her absentee ballot request 450 miles to Lucas County, Ohio, where she’s registered to vote. By Tuesday, October 27, she was nervous. Her request had still not been logged by the county’s ballot tracking website, so she called the Lucas County Board of Elections to check the status of her ballot. She texted me immediately afterward: “She said the mail is really slow, so I have to drop it off.

Columns

SULLIVAN BAKER | A Shattered Rock and Opened Gates

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In 1943, as World War II raged in Europe and Pacific, Ithaca lost The Cornell Daily Sun. From its ashes sprang an unfamiliar new paper, The Cornell Bulletin, which would exist for three years until The Sun returned to campus. Though The Bulletin was short-lived, its impact would be felt far beyond its run of publication, because it inaugurated a new era of Cornell student journalism. The paper’s inception marked the end of The  Cornell Daily Sun’s systematic exclusion of women from leadership, which had persisted since 1880. The Bulletin was the first Cornell paper of record with women at the helm, and these groundbreaking student journalists ensured that the gates of the reestablished Sun would be permanently open to women.

Columns

SULLIVAN BAKER | To Hear Remembered Chimes: Love Beyond Cornell

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As the rapids roared below us and the suspension bridge swayed in a Fall Creek February gale, she laughed with me (and at me) the way she’d done countless times before. She reminded me of the legend that says you’ll die if you kiss on the bridge. She made some crack about the smell of the Thai bubble tea on my breath. And she said something about how I shouldn’t hate her for not liking boba. Though I don’t remember her exact words, I vividly remember mine.

Columns

SULLIVAN BAKER | Our Campus is an Architectural Hodgepodge. We Should Treasure It.

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Cornellians crave order. Our campus teems with neurotic overachievers who meticulously plan their days, their semesters and their careers. But Cornell, an inherently disorderly institution, often leaves these order-seekers wanting. Cornell’s disorganization might be most evident in its campus landscape; to the chagrin of many, the buildings that form the East Hill skyline are a seemingly incoherent mishmash of architectural styles. But we should value Cornell’s architectural hodgepodge, as it reflects our identity as a “non-pretentious college,” (as historian Morris Bishop ’13, Ph.D. ’26 put it), and embodies the once-radical principles that have guided the university for more than 150 years.

Opinion

SULLIVAN BAKER | In Defense of Hot Takes in The Sun

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While sitting in Zeus, you absentmindedly scroll through Facebook, past a flash of red. You register that you skimmed something you didn’t like. You scroll back up. Uh oh, it’s another The Cornell Daily Sun opinion piece with a dramatic title and 43 comments.  You’ve just encountered a hot take, a column with a controversial argument that might not be all that “woke.”

A piece that’s part of this storied genre might rail against funding for Planned Parenthood, it might defend the legacy admissions system or it might discuss the isolating experience of being a Christian on campus. These columns, which fall across the political spectrum, tend to bring Ithaca’s notorious Facebook trolls out of the woodwork, evoke mainstream campus derision, and spawn many memes.

Opinion

SULLIVAN BAKER | When We Use Alcohol to Cope, We Fail Ourselves

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On a November evening — more winter than fall — two dozen Cornell Political Union members debated a contentious question: Is Cornell failing the United States? I passionately opposed a fellow ILRie who argued that Cornell does a disservice to the nation by failing to address its toxic student culture, since I’m confident that Cornellians’ contributions to society outweigh our institution’s flaws. But a portion of her speech stuck with me. “To deal with [Cornell’s] hyper competitive environment and zero-work life balance,” she observed, “Cornell students turn to alcohol — whether it’s karaoke Tuesday, Fishbowls or the handle of vodka in the closet.” This tendency should be glaringly obvious, but it’s one that many of us seem to be in denial about. For many Cornellians, alcohol doesn’t just enhance a night out; it’s seen as a tool for coping with the demands of life on East Hill.

Opinion

SULLIVAN BAKER | Be a Tourist at Cornell

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When I leave Ithaca for good come May, I want to be able to hang on to more than memories. If you follow me around campus long enough on any given day, you will see me go out of my way multiple times to photograph Cornell’s scenery — both the beautiful and the mundane.  A quick glance at my camera roll reveals a sunset photo of a West Campus staircase, a crooked picture of the Arts Quad after the season’s first snowfall, a gloomy shot of my favorite bus stop and a 37-second video of the McGraw Tower chimes performing a spooky rendition of the alma mater on Halloween. And although I might look like a clueless Midwestern dad taking pictures for the family group chat, approaching Cornell like a tourist has led me to better appreciate my college experience, and it can do the same for other Cornellians

During my first three years here, I took my experience too much for granted; until the end of my junior year, graduation seemed to be a century away.  I allowed myself to get too caught up in the daily grind — the demands of prelims, the responsibilities of campus involvement, the stress of social life — to fully appreciate living a lifestyle I’ll never experience again on a stunningly picturesque campus in America’s best college town. And I realized that memories of unpleasant or high-pressure experiences have a way of crowding out memories of the fleeting yet meaningful moments of calm, usually outdoors, that bond me to this place and help keep me sane. A tourist mentality creates and elevates positive memories.

antonio tsialas

SULLIVAN BAKER | Greek Life and the Exploitation of First-Year Vulnerability

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The Saturday before last, I woke up to a flood of Facebook posts depicting a smiling young man, Antonio Tsialas ’23, an 18-year old freshman who, according to one of the posts, had just been hired as a campus tour guide. Antonio had been missing since Thursday night, when he attended a fraternity event, and the posts implored anyone who knew his whereabouts to contact the authorities. As the hours passed and more “missing student” posts appeared in my timeline, the pit in my stomach grew and grew, and I braced myself for a tragedy. Late Saturday evening, my fears — Cornell’s fears — were confirmed with a brief mass email that told us Antonio’s body had been found in Fall Creek. I had never met Antonio, so my entire knowledge of his personality, of his humanity, came from three lonely adjectives in the mass email: thoughtful, smart, outgoing.