board of trustees
Editorial

EDITORIAL: A Messy but Acceptable End to the JT Baker Saga

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What a terrible mess. This year’s student-elected trustee race saw Jaewon Sim ’21 take the prize, but only after the ugly disqualification of JT Baker ’21, who ran a campaign focused on student-athletes. The latest news is that Baker would’ve won were he not booted out for breaking an election rule. In light of that, the Committee on Board Composition and Governance opted to split the difference. The CBCG recommended Sim take the traditional student-elected trustee seat and Baker fill a vacant trustee seat.

Editorials
Editorial

EDITORIAL: When Tragedy Strikes, Pollack’s Statements Should Say More

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In her latest email, President Martha Pollack sent a brief statement expressing she is “shocked and horrified” about the bombings in Sri Lanka. It is important that Pollack is sending out these emails and addressing the Cornell community as tragedy strikes. It shows her cognizance of different student experiences and expresses her sincere sentiments. But a mere 68 words is probably not enough. Pollack’s 68-word Sri Lanka statement has less than one word for every three people that died in those bombings.

fossil fuel divestment
Fossil Fuel

EDITORIAL: Time to Divest From Fossil Fuels

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The moral case for Cornell divesting from fossil fuels has long been clear. Simply put, the University should not hold equity in resource extraction firms that have sent the planet hurtling toward climate ruin. An overwhelming body of science tells us the fallout of human-caused climate change will come in the form of severe developing-world food insecurity, more frequent extreme weather events and worse economic growth. Projections indicate death, disease, dislocation and malnutrition will sharply rise, especially for the global poor. The cost in human misery will be enormous.

Opinion
Editorial

EDITORIAL: Putting the Trust Back in Trustee Elections

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Just a few weeks ago, 10 candidates took to the campus quads, Willard Straight Hall and social media feeds to campaign for the undergraduate position of Student-Elected Trustee. We saw 39.9 percent of undergraduates — a 13 percentage point increase from last year — fill out the Qualtrics survey that also included slots for positions such as Student Assembly President and Executive Vice President. Elections closed on Wednesday, March 27 at 2 p.m.

The results rolled out: Joe Anderson ’20 as Student Assembly President, Cat Huang ’20 as Student Assembly Executive Vice President — and 13 days of radio silence from the Trustee Nominating Committee. For 13 days, the Nominating Committee has failed to report any results from the 2019 Trustee election. They have numbers and they have results, given that results for President and EVP were promptly released.

huawei
Editorial

EDITORIAL: Cornell’s Hush-Hush Huawei Ties

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Thursday’s news that Cornell quietly took millions in research contracts from Chinese telecom firm Huawei is alarming enough. But the University’s refusal to provide details about said contracts makes for an utter transparency failure. Cornell must acknowledge the perils of working with a firm wedded to China’s autocracy — and reveal the nature of its Huawei ties. Public data from the Department of Education shows that Cornell took $5.3 million from Huawei in 2017 via two research contracts. That’s troubling.

Opinion
Editorial

EDITORIAL: Sim Seems Right

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The following editorial reflects the opinions of The Cornell Daily Sun. Editorials are penned collaboratively between the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor and Opinion Editor, in consultation with additional Sun editors and staffers. The Sun’s editorials are independent of its news coverage and op-eds. Over the past week, The Sun has collected information about each of the trustee candidates and analyzed their platforms. Following the Trustee Candidate Debate on March 20, we sat down and interviewed our top choices. There are many good candidates for the role of student-elected trustee, but there is only one right candidate: Jaewon Sim ’21.

Opinion
endorsement

EDITORIAL: Student Assembly President and EVP Endorsements

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Beginning at 9 a.m. on Monday, March 25, all undergraduate students will have the opportunity to vote for their Student Assembly representatives for the 2019-2020 school year. The selected candidates will be taking the reins of the Student Assembly in the midst of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, before byline funding for student organizations and following the passing of free printing. This particular election stood out to The Sun for the light it shed on student perception of the Student Assembly. We were as intrigued as the student body was about the fresh faces involved and a potential new perspective. However, after watching the debate, sitting down with each presidential and vice presidential candidate for an interview and reviewing each of their informational forms, we felt there was one candidate for each position who was qualified, passionate and prepared.

Admissions
Editorial

EDITORIAL: The Small Things

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The biggest college admissions scandal the FBI has ever prosecuted: wealthy individuals paying for their kids’ admissions into elite institutions with fake athletic records and artificially inflated test scores. And a Cornell alumnus, Gordon Caplan ’88, is among the offenders. This scandal goes to the root of a noxious, pervasive problem in higher education — the influence of money on opportunity. Though the $500,000 in bribes from actress Lori Loughlin to the University of Southern California is an extreme example of this national problem, universities like Cornell let wealth legally influence their admissions in small but unfair ways every year. While our University is “need-blind” for domestic applicants, we do not remove money from the admissions process.

Editorials
Editorial

EDITORIAL: Ditch the Event Security Fee

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Surely, Cornell’s Event Management Planning Team wants to get it right this time. After last semester’s fiery blowback, EMPT recently announced that a “new, innovative” event security fee system was forthcoming. The announcement — a passing reference tucked away deep in the umpteenth line of a campus-wide bulletin — revealed no new plan, nor did it evince any new understanding of why the event security fee is so loathed. We’ve got no doubt that EMPT has a wonderfully meticulous plan to charge student organizations for security, replete with venue size breakdowns and clever classification schemes for what constitutes a “controversy.” Better would be to scrap it all. The event security fee is in fundamental tension with the University’s commitment to free expression.