Free Republic

Amanda Kirchgessner, a progressive Democratic candidate contending for a seat in the New York State Senate representing the 58th District, has been accused of several instances of domestic violence and abuse during their marriage. Kirchgessner’s ex-wife, Brandi Morgan, has told the Ithaca Times that Kirchgessner participated in a pattern of abusive behavior during the latter years of their marriage, which officially ended in 2016. The allegations include grabbing, pushing, throwing objects, verbal abuse, intimidation and possible threats against Morgan and their pets.... Morgan has chosen to come forward and gave the Ithaca Times permission to use her name despite her...

Found near the ruined Temple of Zeus in the ancient city of Olympia, the tablet has been dated to Roman times. It is engraved with 13 verses from the poem recounting the adventures of the hero Odysseus after the fall of Troy. The tale was probably composed by Homer in the late 8th Century BC. It would have been handed down in an oral tradition for hundreds of years before the tablet was inscribed. The exact date of the tablet still needed to be confirmed, but its discovery was "a great archaeological, epigraphic, literary and historical exhibit", the Greek culture...

Racism and discrimination continue to grab headlines throughout the country on a near daily basis. These incidents present themselves often in tangible, visible ways that lend themselves to those very headlines naturally, but not always. For example, one of them has hung prominently in school classrooms for decades as doctrine of healthy living despite, some argue, inequities of who exactly it is healthy for. Doctor Milton Mills explained these inequalities of the US Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines at length, painting a picture of the historical negligence of the US government when it comes to crafting their food recommendations to...

Cornell Republicans are worried that students may have collected as many as 88 tickets to lower turnout for Tuesday’s Dick Cheney lecture in a move taken without seeking approval from the student organizations leading the protest against the former U.S. vice president. Marco Antonio Peralta-Ochoa, freshmen representative-at-large for the Student Assembly, approached members of the Cornell Republicans and admitted to collecting dozens of tickets “countless times” in what Weston Barker, current C.R. freshmen representative and incoming treasurer, considered a serious, 45 minutes to 1 hour-long conversation in Amit Bhatia Libe Cafe last Wednesday. Peralta-Ochoa declined to comment to The Sun...

Cynthia Nixon's answer to a question that has perplexed New Yorkers for generations is turning heads on social media. Nixon, the Sex and the City actor challenging Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was asked by The New York Times Magazine where she believes upstate New York begins, a query that regularly sparks fierce debate — and a wide-ranging array of responses — on Twitter and Facebook. Her answer? Somewhere near Ithaca. "I don't think the Hudson Valley is upstate," Nixon said, according to the Times. "Once you get to Ithaca, by around there, you're starting to get upstate."

<p>Amid national and local uproar over gun violence, Justin Langfan is leading an effort to tackle the issue from a different approach: using mass social action to “revolutionize our politics.”</p> <p>“The NRA has said that ‘people who are dangerous should not have access to firearms.’ If the NRA believes this statement, why is it against implementing background checks for the 22% of gun purchases that don’t require them? #JoinUsandPostThis #ShapingtheFuturenow.com.”</p>

high school in New York has pulled its musical The Hunchback of Notre Dame after social justice student activists complained about a leading role being handed to a white student. “Protests of the production began when an African-American student quit Ithaca High School’s musical production due to the role of Esmeralda being given to a white classmate,” Fox News reported. “Student activists then banded together under the umbrella of Students United Ithaca …” Caving to social justice activists Shortly after the Board of Education of the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) pulled the musical, it was replaced with a new...

Ithaca High School’s spring musical was “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” A story whose message is one of inclusiveness and acceptance should be welcomed and encouraged. A white actress was cast for the role of Esmerelda, prompting a student black actress to quite the play, saying, “It shows you that theater wasn’t made for you. And it shows you that, if you can’t get the parts that are written for you, what parts are you going to get?” The resignation prompted Students United Ithaca to make a list of demands for the school, one of which was, “STOP the racist...

The president of Ithaca College in upstate pleaded no contest to sexually abusing a patient when she worked at a psychiatric hospital... Shirley M. Collado..., was accused of having a five-month sexual relationship with a female patient who was undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress in 2000.... The patient, who was receiving treatment ... after she suffered the abuse of another doctor, alleged she and Collado kissed after a therapy session on May 20... Collado fondled her on at least two occasions and the two kissed after most individual therapy sessions in the following weeks... Collado received a 30-day suspension, 18...

Last year Cornell University undergraduate Neetu Chandak appeared on “Fox and Friends” to share her objection to a course description that seemed overly critical of President Donald Trump while glorifying former President Barack Obama. Now, in an essay in The College Fix, Chandak says her remarks on Fox expressing concerns about liberal bias at the college and the explicit agenda of the course led to threats on her life and such constant harassment that she sought therapy and was afraid to leave her apartment. “It is difficult to express conservative views as a college student without being called names, attacked...

On Halloween evening, dozens gathered in Kroch library for the opening of “The World Bewitch’d,” an exhibition — on display through August 2018 — exploring the history of witchcraft. The exhibit features a variety of rare manuscripts, photographs and historical movie posters and is known to be the largest witchcraft collection in North America. The exhibit holds over 3,000 objects on superstition and witchcraft in Europe, mostly acquired in the 1880s but spanning multiple centuries of artifacts since the 1400s, according to the Cornell University Library website.... Students like Ellen Haines ’18 attended the event on their own. Hains said...

“God Bless America” is a “warmongering song” that should not be played at sporting events, according to an Ithaca College professor. “In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, the expressions of hyper-patriotism took hold,” Professor Stephen Mosher wrote in an op-ed for The Ithacan, “Irving Berlin’s warmongering song ‘God Bless America’ became our second, unofficial national anthem at the ballpark.” That song, “God Bless America,” was sung by concertgoers in Las Vegas on Sunday night, led by country duo Big & Rich, just an hour before a shooter opened fire on them.... He added: “Maybe ‘America the Beautiful’ would be...

More than 300 students marched with Black Students United to Willard Straight Hall on Wednesday afternoon and are occupying the building at Cornell University after delivering a list of demands to the University’s president Martha Pollack. The protest follows the arrest of a Cornell student on Friday who police charged with assault after a black student said he was punched by a group of white men who had called him the N-word in Collegetown. The group’s 12 demands to Cornell include requiring coursework on “privilege and power,” hiring additional mental health personnel of color, and permanently banning the Psi Upsilon...

Members of the Cornell University Student Assembly (SA) are calling for “repercussions” against a fraternity after one of its members was heard chanting “build a wall.” According to The Cornell Daily Sun, the SA held a meeting Thursday attended by Cornell President Martha Pollack and Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi, during which several SA members agreed that consequences needed to be enacted for “verbal marginalization.”

Caleb Slater, a conservative student and the president of the Ithaca College Republicans, recently attended YAF’s 39th Annual National Conservative Student Conference, where he received a baseball cap with the Young America’s Foundation logo and our slogan, “The Conservative Movement Starts Here,” printed on the back. Caleb chose to wear his YAF hat when he attended a vigil in Syracuse, New York, for the victims of last weekend’s violent clash in Charlottesville. “I wore my Young America’s Foundation hat to the rally as a symbol of peace,” Caleb explained. “I wore the hat to show that conservatives condemn the actions...

WASHINGTON -- A CNN journalist who resigned this week, after the network retracted a story about Russia and President Donald Trump's transition team, is a Syracuse native with strong ties to the region. Eric Lichtblau, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a graduate of Jamesville-DeWitt High School and Cornell University. He began his journalism career at The Post-Standard, where he covered the Ithaca region for the newspaper. Lichtblau was thrust into the national spotlight after he and two other CNN journalists resigned, prompting Trump to blast the journalists and the network on Tuesday for reporting "fake news." The story was posted...

Reclaim NY hosted the event leading up to the release of a fully-fledged report on the affordability crisis and its detailed effect on Tompkins County. The report accredits a general economic decline in the Southern Tier to a loss of manufacturing sectors while other regions in the state continue to develop and therefore put Albany’s spending one step ahead. “Unlike Long Island or the Lower Hudson Valley that have higher incomes and larger tax bases, unfunded mandates are bankrupting county and town governments in the Southern Tier to the point where some can’t even afford a paint job on public...

Cornell University is adding a class to its fall curriculum called "America Confronts the World," The course description says the class will examine the differences between President Trump's "xenophobic nationalism" and President Obama's "pragmatic cosmopolitanism." Neetu Chandak, a student at the Ithaca, N.Y. school, said the campus is already well-known for its tendency toward liberal indoctrination. Chandak said the course sounds like one where she would not feel comfortable expressing her own personal views. She added that as a residency staff member, she is already ostracized by her fellow R.A.'s who do not share her worldview.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took an undocumented Mexican immigrant into custody Tuesday morning in Ithaca and scores of people in the community who considered the city a "sanctuary" are asking the same question: “How did this happen here?” Jose Lopez Guzman, 32, was taken into custody by multiple ICE agents around 11:30 a.m. on Cascadilla Street. He does not have family members in Ithaca. ICE said in a brief statement Tuesday night that the arrest happened “following a routine targeted enforcement action.” Khaalid Walls, regional director of communications for the northeast region of ICE, clarified...

ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University officials say the college's oldest all-male a capella group has been permanently dismissed from campus for hazing that included requiring new members to put Icy Hot muscle cream on their genitals........