Letters From

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: Growing Season

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Thank you for reading our paper; we couldn’t make it without your support. Try new things this semester, stretch your wings and let yourself grow — but remember that The Sun will appear every day, and you always have a home within our pages.

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

SIMS | As Seen on TV

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The best fictional dramatization of a newsroom is the 2012-2014 HBO series The Newsroom. The best dramatization of a newsroom, though, is the Sun office. They have a lot in common: ringing phones, dry humor, hair-trigger reactivity, lots of take-out, late nights, more coffee, love-hating co-workers, excitement, frustration. It’s regrettable that The Newsroom doesn’t have scenes about being late to a meeting because you were playing mini golf with the other editors or when you have an office slumber party and watch The Proposal. But their main characterizations about journalists — as seekers of goodness and truth, tireless and exhilarated workers and self-righteous investigators — mapped accurately to my time at The Sun.

Columns

REYNOLDS | A Girl, a Newspaper, a Voice

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As I reflect on my time at Cornell, The Sun will shine brightly as one of my most lasting and positive experiences. Not because it jump started my career as a journalist or gave me the thrill of seeing my name attached to a published piece, not because it allowed me to speak to science luminaries like Steve Squyres or Carla Gomez (although I covet the audio recordings of our interviews), but because I got to work with and learn from a talented team of passionate writers, reporters and friends. Working as a writer and editor for The Sun primarily taught me about journalism, but it also taught me about myself (cheesy, I know). Ultimately, it solidified my long-held appreciation for good writing and reporting. What I learned about journalism, through my time at the Sun, is reflected in the words of author John Irving — “Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.” It is the responsibility of a journalist to report on what is noticed and, importantly, what people fail to notice.

Columns

JUNEJA | Rays of Sunshine

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I came to Cornell as a naive, optimistic, wide-eyed freshman, filled with a sense of unbridled excitement about what the future would bring. I left as a cynical, pessimistic senior with bags under my eyes, filled with a sense of overwhelming fear about what the future would bring. Not exactly the profound character development I had been hoping for. Alas, life isn’t a sitcom and happy endings aren’t guaranteed, but I am so incredibly thankful for the many moments of Sun-shine I experienced in between an awe-inspiring arrival and a dismal departure during my (almost) four years in Ithaca. Four years ago, I didn’t know what I was going to major in, I didn’t know who my friends would be, I didn’t know which extracurriculars I wanted to join and I especially didn’t know if the brand new winter coat and snow boots I bought would get me through the Ithaca winters.

Columns

ARORA | Final Sunset

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After four years of being a reporter on the objective side of things, I’ve often dreaded this graduation column. I’m not very good at articulating how I feel, and definitely don’t think I’m a great writer. So I’m going to stick to the basics and do what I know best: Talk about The Sun. When I first got to Cornell, I followed the advice that almost all of us receive and tried new things. I signed up for way too many listservs at Club Fest and attended a lot of G-bodies as that excited freshman during the first semester.

Columns

FLEER | Thank You, Cornell

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While searching through The Sun’s online archives for a Solar Flashback story last fall, I came across an editorial that touched me profoundly. It was from September 27, 1910, over a century ago, and it captured the very essence of my experience as a Cornellian. “And let us say that you do not realize now the days you are passing through,” it read, addressing new students. “Look back at the remembrance. It is a wholesome existence with room for work and play, room for thought but little thoughtlessness.

Graduation Columns

LIU | Who Tells Your Story?

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I joined The Sun in fall 2017 for reasons I no longer remember, but I was certain that I would not last a semester. I had never done any journalism in my life, and before college, I had never written anything in English more than 300 words. Somehow, I stuck around and even made it to editorship, but every single day I was down at The Sun’s red brick office in the Commons, I questioned if I was qualified to be there. When I had to call the shots on something, I wondered if the swarm of talented people in the newsroom was actually convinced by my reasonings, or if they were just being nice. I’ve been hyper-aware of who I am since the very beginning of my time in this country, when a customs officer at John F. Kennedy airport commented on how well I speak English “for a Chinese student” as he stamped my passport.