The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/cornell_democrats/)
According to Blake, “marching and tweeting is not enough,” and millennials need to transfer their energy for activism into showing up voting booths.
“I will admit because we are a liberal campus, we have had more opportunities to poke things in the Republican faces over the years.”
There was little agreement at the debate and each side contested the validity of statistics and political facts raised by the other.
As students crossed the Arts Quad on their way to class on Friday afternoon, they wove around tables set up by different student organizations to commemorate Lift Your Spirits Day, an event organized by the Student Assembly. In fact, Friday’s event was the second Lift Your Spirits Day held this year. S.A. members explained that this event began in 2009 to raise awareness for mental health on campus, especially as a result of the circumstances of that year. “This is an event that is ingrained within Cornell because it’s been happening since 2009 or 2010 when there was a string of suicides on campus. It was put on by the Student Assembly with a bunch of different student organizations on campus to lift spirits in response to that,” said Matt Indimine ’18, organizer of the event.
Among other proposals, many democrats suggested reaching out to Republicans and supporters of President Trump as a “way to heal” and “move past division.”
The Cornell Democrats and The College Republicans found common ground in Rockefeller Hall last night during a debate concerning media bias and its effect on civic education. The debate was sponsored by the newly founded Freedom and Free Societies. The sponsors of the debate defined civic education as education enabling citizens to make informed decisions concerning public policy and elected officials.
“Bias is inevitable,” said Prof. Barry Strauss, history, one of the judges of the debate. “You have to force yourself to look at different points of view regularly and accept [that] media bias is real.”
While both republicans and democrats agreed that bias exists within the media and results in the decline of civic education, they disagreed on why and how the bias is elicited.
54 Cornell students packed into 12 cars made the three-hour drive this weekend to Pennsylvania — a crucial battleground state with a narrow democratic victory in the 2004 presidential election. The group, organized by the Cornell Democrats, traveled to the town of Stroudsburg to volunteer for Barack Obama’s campaign in Monroe County.
Students were put to work immediately upon their arrival Friday evening making phone calls to undecided voters.
The campaign’s goal for Saturday was to knock on 1,000 doors and make as many calls as possible. But Cornell students exceeded local campaign organizers’ expectations, according to John Spears, one of three campaign leaders in Stroudsburg.
The voter registration tables provided by the Cornell Democrats and College Republicans are a familiar sight to most Cornellians, and many feel that students helping other students “get out the vote” is a positive service to the campus community. But when out-of-state students register to vote in Tompkins County, are they potentially diminishing their political power? Are they affecting campaign strategies and election outcomes?
Elizabeth W. Kree, co-commissioner of the Tompkins County Board of Elections, explained that New York State law has given college students the right to register to vote using their college addresses since the mid-1980s. However, to the politically active on campus, the decision of out-of-staters to vote in-state has a strategic motive.
In an effort to connect the Cornell community with those serving in the Iraq War, the Cornell Democrats have begun collecting goods in order to put together care packages and send them overseas.
Packages will be sent to the 40th Expeditionary Signal Battalion located at Camp Victory at the Baghdad International Airport. The C.U. Democrats expect to send the first package by Spring Break.
Throughout the month, the Cornell Democrats will collect a variety of products ranging from non-perishable food to travel games in order to provide the troops with entertainment for their spare time.