Opinion
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GROSKAUFMANIS | Odds and Ends

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It only took a few hours after my brother dropped me off at my freshman dorm for me to text him something along the lines of “I don’t think I’m going to like it here.” In some ways I was right. But  in more ways, I was wrong. My time at Cornell has since followed a pretty common formula: I arrived and found that this school is not necessarily the easiest place to be immediately happy. Eventually I started to like it more, recently I grew to love it and now it’s almost time for me to leave. I imagined before coming here that my favorite moments would conform to Cornell-y college tropes: throwing fish onto the ice at hockey games with some kind of regularity and watching daily sunsets over Libe Slope.

Opinion
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KAMBHAMPATY | Vampire Weekly

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Sometime sophomore year of high school, 2013
“A-Punk” plays on the radio while my friend Elizabeth and I are driving back from a high school tennis match. The following month
I’ve refused to listen to anything but Contra for this whole period of time. The rest of high school
My confusion with being a person of color in a predominantly white high school, love for the Polo Bear, lust and disappointment with life and fascination with Futura are all manifested, fostered and finally made sense of through Vampire Weekend’s lyrics and work. Freshman year through the first half of sophomore year of college
I don’t listen to Vampire Weekend as religiously as I did during my formative years as an angsty adolescent who hated her suburban hometown, but they remained part of the background music of my life throughout the years. The winter of sophomore year
I move to the Upper West Side of New York to complete a fashion internship.

Dueling Columns
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CHANG | Capitalism Is Worth It

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Editor’s Note: This piece is part of The Sun’s dueling columns feature. In this feature, Darren Chang ’21 and Jade Pinero ’19 debate, “Is capitalism good?” Read the counterpart column here. Today, fewer than half of young Americans support capitalism. It’s a sympathetic statistic, since young adults’ conception of the economy has been irrevocably shaped by the Great Recession, unequal wealth distribution and poor wage growth. Yet, while capitalism may not be perfect, it’s worth keeping and fixing because of the prosperity it has wrought.

Dueling Columns
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PINERO | Capitalism Is Literally the Worst

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Editor’s Note: This piece is part of The Sun’s dueling columns feature. In this feature, Darren Chang ’21 and Jade Pinero ’19 debate, “Is capitalism good?” Read the counterpart column here. For a lucky few trust-fund babies and Horatio Alger protagonists, capitalism is great! For almost everyone else, capitalism ensures a crippled existence, devoid of agency, entirely contingent on one’s continued productive utility. Also, notably, free two-day shipping.

Opinion
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DZODZOMENYO | Beyond Water Fountain Freedom

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It’s possible I wouldn’t be writing to you as a black student on this campus without the occurrence of the Willard Straight Hall Takeover in 1969. This semester marked the 50th anniversary of the event, and despite a 12-page Sun special issue, many students know nothing about its history. The Takeover forced the University and institutions nationwide not only to accept black students as names on the registrar but to recognize us as part of its fabric. As a black woman on this campus, there is no way I could have made it this far in my Cornell career without acknowledging the men and women who paved the way for the rest of us. Yet so many don’t even know what it is.

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KIM | What it Means to Be a Transfer at Cornell

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It has been exactly one year since I received my official Cornell guaranteed transfer acceptance. I still remember it like it happened yesterday. It was a perfectly sunny day, and my close friend and I sat on my bed in my cramped dorm room at Case Western Reserve University eating to-go sushi rolls while watching The Office on my carefully balanced laptop. What had always seemed so distant had suddenly become shockingly close. Before I knew it, I was no longer strolling down Euclid Avenue in Cleveland.

Opinion
Letter to the Editor

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Call to Action After Sexual Assault Awareness Week

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Cornell is challenging in many ways that it should be — academically, professionally, socially — yet when a quarter of undergraduate women, 18 percent of TGQN* students and seven percent of undergraduate men are experiencing sexual assault after arriving on campus, these challenges are compounded to an unacceptable level. This week concludes the fifth annual installment of Sexual Assault Awareness Week at Cornell. Throughout this week, we, the planning board of SAAW, have strived to bring members of the Cornell community together to discuss the impact of sexual violence on our campus and beyond. These conversations were meaningful, educational and supremely important. There will always be a place for dialogue.

Opinion
Letter to the Editor

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Re: ‘Sheriff, District Attorney Weigh In on Legalizing Recreational Marijuana’

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To the editor:

I was pleased to see the topic of marijuana legalization covered at the recent League of Women Voters of Tompkins County panel in your April 29 article. As a local physician who treats people diagnosed with substance use disorder, I strongly support legalization. Every day, I see how marijuana prohibition actively hurts the people I serve. I would like to offer a few clarifications on the panelists’ comments. First, it’s impossible to overdose on marijuana.

Opinion
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TRUSTEE VIEWPOINT | Lessons From the Hill

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After two years, two months and three days (but who’s counting), my time as the Student-Elected Trustee has begun to come to a close. Serving as the Student-Elected Trustee has been one of the greatest honors in my lifetime. In an act of nostalgia and personal curiosity, I spent this past week looking through my past viewpoints and notes to pull out my most memorable lessons from the Hill and the Board of Trustees. While I still am unable to describe industrial and labor relations to my grandma in Chinese, I’m happy to report that my time at Cornell has been filled with learning moments that I hope others reading this can carry forward. I learned that organizational traditions are not all pure.

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AHMAD | High Hopes

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Well, we made it. We have at long last reached the end of the road. It was a tough journey, certainly not one for the faint of heart, but despite all the pain, I believe it was worth it. This right here is my last column. As I sit write, I have to admit I’m glad I decided to go to Olin to do this because I can already feel the emotions that would no doubt have poured out in the form of tears if I wasn’t in a public place.