In August, the brand-new Equity and Engagement Living-Learning Community quietly opened its doors in the former house of Cornell’s chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity — infamous for sexual and racial assault incidents — at 2 Forest Park Lane in West Campus.
Five months after the Chi chapter of Psi Upsilon was closed, the first of two renovation phases to transform the former fraternity house into an open activity space for student organizations was completed.
In light of recent events, we as student-athletes at Cornell have an obligation to address the appalling behaviors that have occurred on our campus. Last Thursday night, a young black student was verbally and allegedly physically assaulted by a former member of the Cornell athletic community. As the voice of student-athletes at Cornell, we want to make it clear that this man’s actions do not represent the values and culture of Cornell Athletics. We are deeply troubled by this event, and this student’s conduct is unacceptable. Although we are all individual representatives of the athletic community, we want to make it clear that the biases and actions exhibited by this student do not accurately portray the beliefs of all student-athletes.
Hi, I’m Chris Westersund, and I’m an accidental fraternity brother. You know what I didn’t do in high school? Party. I didn’t drink alcohol until senior year, where my parents offered me some champagne on New Year’s Eve. I was in musical theatre, played trombone and sang in my school choir.
With tensions high after multiple racially charged events on and around campus, students filled Bache Auditorium for Student Assembly’s Thursday meeting looking for some action to be taken.
Psi Upsilon is immediately shuttering its chapter at Cornell University and plans to convert its fraternity house into a building available to student organizations that promote diversity and inclusion.
There’s a moment about halfway through Andrés Muschietti’s new film It, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, where the band of kids (“The Losers”) are discussing the monster that’s been haunting them. The monster is a being that takes various shapes but prefers that of a demonic clown, and the kids realize as they listen to each other that it has been appearing in the form of whatever they fear the most. Mike, whose parents burned to death, sees their charred arms struggling to get past a door; Eddie is a hypochondriac due to his mother’s emotional manipulation, so he’s stalked by a leper; Beverley, who has a sexually abusive father and is afraid of how the arrival of her period will challenge her father’s insistence on her remaining “daddy’s little girl,” faces a sink erupting in a fountain of blood. Finally, Richie, the comic relief of the group, is asked what he is most afraid of. In response, he pushes his glasses up his nose, shivers and mutters, “Clowns.” Rough luck, Richie.