Free Republic

<p>ITHACA--Responding to Donald Trump’s shocking presidential victory, several Cornell professors across departments cancelled class Wednesday, citing personal distress and concern for students’ emotional well-being.</p> <p>Prof. Jane-Marie Law, Asian, Near Eastern and religious studies, said she cancelled her “Introduction to Japan and Religion” lecture, because she was “so upset and worried I would break down, thinking about how dangerous the move the American electorate — half of them — made last night is.”</p>

The Cornell Daily Sun reports that students hosted a “Cry In” on the quad Wednesday in the wake of the presidential election results. “I’m quite terrified, honestly,” one student told the campus newspaper as she took part in the event. “It’s saying that people are really given into fear-mongering. They are willing to put people down based on their identity just so that they would feel vindicated that they would be getting rid of ‘Crooked Hillary.'” Another participant told the Sun many are in “shock” as she sipped on a Starbucks coffee cup, sitting cross-legged in the institution’s Ho Plaza....

As midnight approached and a series of swing states turned red...Cornellians expressed horror that Donald Trump could actually become president. “How the **** is he winning? What the ****?” said a student early on in the night... as Trump took the state of Ohio. “We should’ve died in 2012 while we still had the chance,” added Mitch Laski, echoing several students who said they fear a Trump presidency will be the end of equal rights for minorities and free speech in the United States. Shayra Kamal said she is genuinely concerned about her future in the United States. “I’m looking...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Tompkins County Democratic Victory Party in downtown Ithaca feels like a "morgue" as less than half a dozen people remain to watch the numbers of the presidential election roll in. One Democrat who left early said the room felt like a "morgue". Democrat Matt Van Houten, the newly elected District Attorney said, "I don't know what to say...I had thought that Hillary was a lock." He said he never remembers feeling this kind of dread on the eve of a national election before. The closest thing he can recall is when George W. Bush and Al...

We know you will be surprised to hear that Ithaca has been named among the “best cities for liberals” in the United States, according to a new ranking by Livability. The results cite Ithaca’s influence on Tompkins County, where 70% of voters supported President Obama in 2012 and Senator Bernie Sanders took a lead in this year’s presidential primary. Livability also points out that the City of Ithaca hasn’t elected a Republican mayor “since the mid 1980s.” (It’s actually been longer; Bill Shaw, the last Republican mayor, was elected in 1981 and served a two-year term before being succeeded by...

Cornell students passed a student-sponsored referendum to provide free tampons and pads in all Cornell bathrooms, with 78.6 percent of 3,034 voting students casting a ballot in favor. The "#FreetheTampon" initiative aims to provide all bathrooms on campus of both genders—yes, men’s too—with free menstrual products throughout the year, and comes shortly after Brown University recently implemented a similar program.

Cornell University Football Coach Roy Istvan apologized to students who were offended by an image he tweeted: an image of two of his players wearing sombreros. Why were they wearing sombreros? Istvan awards the big hat to the player or players who best represented team spirit on the field after a game. This practice has displeased some members of MEChA de Cornell, a Mexican student group. "They're appropriating a culture that isn't theirs and using it as a joke," wrote one student on MEChA's Facebook page, according to Campus Reform. "It's disgusting and I'm ashamed that you can't see that."...

Cornell is hiring a dean of students whose job it will be to promote diversity on campus... So far, though, the interview process isn’t going particularly well for one top candidate, Vijay Pendakur...he dared to say that he’d consider all students when making decisions as the dean of students. “If I say, ‘The dean’s area of focus is diversity and inclusion,’ the unspoken thought in response often is, ‘Oh, so he’s here for only the marginalized students,'” he told the crowd. “So we need to undo that, because that is a deeply problematic framework. If we’re going to make progress,...

Now in Newsweek, Cornell Law School professor Sherry F. Colb uses the Zika tragedy to promote infanticide. From, “Is Terminating a Late-Term Zika Fetus Euthanasia:” As a moral matter, some might want to argue that the lives of infants may be so compromised by defects, as would be the case for many of these babies, that killing them painlessly at birth would be a kindness rather than a harm. At this point in time, though, laws in the U.S. do not recognize euthanasia as a legitimate approach to an infant (or an adult) whose life might not be considered worthwhile,...

Cornell University College Republicans announced this afternoon that they will endorse Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson for president, in a statement that acknowledged the wide spectrum of conservative beliefs that compose the club. “Our organization does not solely represent the Republican Party,” the statement said, “Our first responsibility is to our members.” Club leadership stressed that Cornell Republicans are “libertarians, moderates, neoconservatives and everyone in between.” In an “unprecedented” election year, campus Republicans say they could not tolerate Donald Trump as their party’s nominee. “Mr. Trump should not be the face of American conservatism,” the club’s statement reads, proceeding to call...

The Asian American Coalition for Education lodged a complaint with Department of Education last Wednesday, accusing Cornell and Columbia University of discriminating against an Asian student in the admissions process. The complaint, filed within the Office of Civil Rights, claims that Hubert Zhao ...was unjustly denied admission to both schools last year. Zhao is an “outstanding student with excellent academic and extracurricular achievements,” a 5.3 GPA and high PSAT and SAT scores, according to the AACE website. He and an Indian American classmate were the only students in their 700-person class who qualified as National Merit semifinalists. While other students...

Ithaca College flies to the top of the "Reefer Madness" list in the Princeton Review. College students answered the survey question, "How widely is marijuana used at your school?" to determine the rankings. Ithaca College, home to 6,323 undergraduate students, shares the small town of Ithaca with Cornell University within the Finger Lakes region. Besides the "reefer madness" list, Ithaca College also made lists for the "Best College Newspaper," the "Most Liberal Students" and "Little Race/Class Interaction" among others.

(CNN) — One Ithaca College student was killed and another was injured after being stabbed during a "large fight" on the nearby Cornell University campus early Sunday in Ithaca, New York, officials from both schools said. Cornell University Police were called to the intersection in front of Olin Hall, which houses Cornell's school of chemical and biomolecular engineering, just before 2 a.m. There, they found two men had been stabbed, according to a police news release.

ITHACA, NY - When Christopher Dunn joined Cornell Plantations as its new director in April 2014, his freshly printed business cards suggested to him the organization he was set to lead had an identity problem. Even within the Cornell community, Dunn discovered the name left many perplexed. While other places on campus have easily identifiable descriptors – a library and museum have definite, universal connotations – Plantations had no such grounding for potential visitors. And for many others, there was an emotional response: Plantations conjured negative associations with America’s history of slavery and racial oppression. Dunn also communicated with Black...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Ithaca was shockingly named the Most Hippie Town in New York in an article published by Thrillist last week. The list -- which includes classically hippie towns such as: Homer, Alaska; Santa Cruz, California; Athens, Georgia; and Asheville, North Carolina -- was written by Matt Meltzer. He wrote, "Thought we'd go Woodstock, did ya? Well, aside from being home to the mud-soaked music fest on Yasgur's farm, it's really become more of a hippie tourist trap than an actual town. Ithaca, however, has THE WORLD'S LARGEST FREAKING PEACE SIGN."

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A man accused of sexually abusing two young children was taken into custody less than 25 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Saturday, two days before his trial was set to begin in Ithaca. Ever Benites, 36, who was out on bail after being charged with multiple felonies for abusing two children over several years, was taken into custody at a travel center in Edinburg, Texas.... The final destination of the bus, operated by Tornado Bus Company, was Brownsville, Texas, a city directly bordering Mexico. Benites, who was released on $20,000 cash bail or $40,000...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- This weekend Ithaca Police will have extra officers patrolling the streets on the lookout for unsafe and intolerable activity - in particular, violations committed by pedestrians. Police say extra officers will be on patrol from July 22 to July 25 during various hours of the day and night. A release by police advises that "officers will utilize a zero tolerance approach for all violations observed." The department says the goal is to increase pedestrian safety on Ithaca's streets, sidewalks and crosswalks.

In January, 2016...an Ithaca (NY) Black Lives Matter rally over the death of Sandra Bland and others set up a procedure to segregate speakers by race, with “people of color” being given priority over whites... The segregation of speakers just happened again, at a rally on July 8, 2016, with non-people of color speakers told to sit at the back of the speakers’ line... About 400 people marched from the Southside Community Center to the Ithaca Commons Friday night and called for an end to systemic racism and police killing black people. [Black Lives Matter Ithaca organizer Dubian] Ade addressed...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A man snatched about $700 from a Maine-based ice cream vendor who was selling at the Ithaca Festival for the first time on Saturday. Robert and Jane Walters were selling ice cream around 5:30 p.m. on the 130 block of West State Street when the incident happened. The two have run the Island Cow Ice Cream Co. for the past 20 years out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine and usually sell ice cream along the east coast during the summer. Robert Walters said he was separating the bills in a basket he places money in and began talking...

It is a presidential election year, but do not expect that candidates will come a-wooing to Ithaca this fall. For decades, ours has been a reliably Democratic city in a reliably Democratic state.... The joke has always been that Ithaca is “centrally isolated.” We are not really on the way to anywhere else, and candidates in the heat of battle put their time and money into swing communities in swing counties in swing states. It was not always so, though, and Ithaca has seen its share of supplicants over the years. Presidential election campaigning—as we have known it since the...