The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/opinion/)
The leadership of Cornell Dining and Campus Life Enterprise Services was surprised and disappointed to read the recent Guest Room column, “Dear Cornell: You’re Breaking the Law and Students Are Going Hungry,” featuring opinions and allegations signed by some of our valued partners and other community groups.
Years ago, I was asked to be a part of The Cornell Daily Sun’s “Humans of Cornell” project, riffing on Humans of New York.
Some are surely immune to it by now, but most food service workers can remember the first time they had to chuck pounds upon pounds of perfectly edible food into the waste bin while on the job. The same holds true for students and full-time workers at Cornell Dining. Its a sort of collective trauma that countless workers share. While such superfluous and unthinking waste is tragically commonplace across private food providers across the country, in recent years we have seen legal interventions come into effect that should result in dramatic reductions in food waste. The NYS Food Donation and Food Scrap Recycling Law, which took effect Jan.
Laila Rahbari is a sophomore in the ILR School with a minor in Near Eastern Studies. On campus, she works in the Einhorn Center as the Senior Manager of Student Programs and President of the Einhorn Leadership Council. Laila is fluent in Farsi, the official language of Iran, and has previously interned for Florida House Representative Anna Eskamani, one of only five Iranians who hold public office in the United States. Upon graduation, Laila plans on attending law school. On May 1, 2023, she sat down with me to discuss her heritage and experience as an Iranian-American woman.
It is already May. Very soon, Cornell students will fight through final exam after final exam in an effort to excel in one of the toughest academic programs out there. As a freshman, this will be my second time going through the final exam period. Even though five months have already passed, my first experience of finals, from December 7-19, still remains vivid in my mind. I am hoping that my reflections of that period can help the school administration make some relatively easy improvements to the student experience during final exam week.
Some of us don’t know where we’ll be next year and even for those that do, whether it’s a job or graduate school, our everyday lives will probably be drastically different from what we’ve known for the last four years.
Even at graduation’s door, I am finding out more about what I could love further.
Cornell can be cacophonous. There is so much going on at all times, so many dialogues and conversations, that it’s easy to feel like your voice doesn’t matter. But it does. Find your version of The Sun, a place where you know that your voice matters.
Every graduating senior knows some version of my story at Cornell. The class of 2023 is unique, and unified, in our trials and triumphs through COVID-19. We alone have seen the before and after. We are the class that watched Cornell fall apart, and we are the class that rebuilt it — preserving and restoring the traditions, cultures and communities that make this place worthwhile. For once, I write not to break news in The Sun, but to express generational solidarity. Our class, despite all odds and administrative difficulties, saved Cornell.
