Ithaca
Ithaca Residents Share Thoughts on Students’ Return
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Ithaca residents have shared varying reactions to Cornell students’ return for the spring semester.
Columns
SAMILOW | Cornell is Betraying Its Students
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Cornell students returned to campus last week for the fifth semester of the pandemic era. What’s different about spring 2022, though, is that it is the first semester in which the University has actually gone backward in its return to normal operations. The entirely in-person fall 2021 has given way to a virtual start to the semester. Classes that cost an arm and a leg have been reduced to an experience akin to watching Khan Academy videos on YouTube. Students pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of online school, take-out meals, zero extracurricular activities and half-empty hockey games.
The University administration has sold these two weeks of remote instruction as a means of minimizing academic disruption for students returning to Ithaca (President Martha Pollack, you see, is really doing you a favor).
fashion
Sustainable Fashion: How Individual Actions Can Make a Big Impact
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Mia Bachrack ’25 and Prof. Margaret Frey, human centered design, discuss techniques to promote fashion sustainability in the midst of climate change and the pandemic.
semester updates
Spring 2022: Everything You Need to Know About Cornell’s Start of Semester Plan
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After an abrupt end to the fall semester due to a campus-wide COVID-19 outbreak, the University has updated Cornellians on campus operations for the beginning of spring semester.
COVID-19
Amid Rising COVID Cases, Tompkins Advises Indoor Mask Wearing
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The Tompkins County Health Department is encouraging all residents, regardless of their vaccination status, to wear masks indoors while around others, the department said in a health advisory issued Friday.
Off Campus
Despite Lingering Caution, Tompkins Gives Unmasking Go-Ahead for the Vaccinated
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With nearly 70 percent of Tompkins County fully vaccinated and with New York State guidance that releases fully vaccinated individuals from masking and distancing, most Ithaca local businesses have taken down their “masks required” signs, allowing customers to linger inside without wearing a face covering.
COVID vaccine
‘I Want to Feel Like This Is Ending’: Vaccinated Students Unmask After New Guidelines
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While some students said they’re excited for more opportunities to gather in-person, others said they worried about unknown vaccination statuses.
masks
With 50 Percent of the Campus Vaccinated, Mask Wearing Restrictions are Lightening Up
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With half of Cornell’s on-campus students getting vaccinated, the University has relaxed certain distancing restrictions — allowing vaccinated students to gather in small groups without masks.
Columns
BETTEZ | The Death of the Acquaintance
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An acquaintance was once someone who you could run into as you rush through Ho Plaza on your way to class and chat, or attempt to catch up with over the roar of a frat party’s Spotify playlist. Maybe they were even a friend of a friend, or an ally when you frantically needed help on your problem set the night it’s due. Without these relatively inconsequential interactions, Cornell’s campus is no longer a community of interconnections, but a set of isolated bubbles. An unfortunate, but not unexpected consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic lasting as long as it has is the death of an entire class of friends. The loss of the acquaintance is just another symptom of the loss of the campus space and sense of community we’ve experienced over the last year.
Columns
SEX ON THURSDAY | Masquerade of the Red Death
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I couldn’t tell what caused it initially, but everyone was sexier when I came back to campus after an endless summer of quarantine. Certainly some of this was attributed to my pent-up isolation lust, but there was an added x-factor that really churned my butter. Never before have I thought such a vast number of people were attractive as I twiddled my thumbs, six-feet-apart, in the arrival test line. That is, until I recollected my childhood crushes: Zorro, the Phantom of the Opera, Mrs. Incredible, and Hannibal Lecter. All of them wore masks.