INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun 8 Pages – Free
Vol. 139 No. 38
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2023 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Arts
Sports
Weather
Voter Ambassadors
Music for Chickens
Men's Lacrosse
Chance of Rain
Cornell Votes rolled out its new voter ambassador program to increase turnout. | Page 3
Kiki Plowe '25 reviews Tall Travis' new album, "Chicken Music." | Page 5
Men's lacrosse opened its season with a 12-10 win over Albany on Saturday. | Page 8
HIGH: 45º LOW: 25º
Inside Cornell's Climate Projects Cornell's plans for carbon-neutrality by 2035 continue amid challenges By ISABELA WILSON Sun Contributor
Cornell sustainability teams have made technological strides in Cornell’s goal for a carbon neutral campus, but the decades-long struggle for legislative and community agreement continues to pose challenges. The University’s overarching Climate Action Plan is a comprehensive sustainability program that includes campus-wide carbon neutrality by 2035. Prof. Edwin Cowen, civil and environmental engineering, is a member of the Carbon Neutral Campus Steering Committee, a council responsible for monitoring the projects that comprise the plan. One component of the plan is the Earth Source Heat project, for which Cowen served as an executive committee member. The project’s aim is to eliminate the use of natural gas by harvesting groundwater, warming it and repeatedly cycling it through campus in order to heat facilities. Additionally, the University hopes that the project can scale and serve as a solution for renewable heating in New York and other cold-climate regions worldwide. “It is a win for the region and the environment
[because] it would reduce our use of fossil fuels, so it lowers our greenhouse gas footprint and potentially lowers the amount of fuel we need,” Cowen said. This geothermal energy project is the first one in Central New York and the East Coast to power a land area as large as Cornell, which Cowen said will set a precedent for future clean energy harvesting. Solar farms on Cornell land have the ability to provide more than 20 percent of the electricity on campus. Prof. Max Zhang, mechanical and aerospace engineering, is the faculty director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and conducts research on solar farm designs. Zhang stated that solar power’s implementation in the carbon neutrality goal has been easier in comparison to other universities, in part due to Cornell’s ample suitable land and $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to design tools that enable solar farm design. The University’s sustainability goals accompany the recently-adopted 2019 Ithaca Green New Deal, a set of resolutions aiming to reach citywide carbon neutrality by 2030, five years earlier than the University’s timeline. See SUSTAINABILITY page 3
JULIA NAGEL / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Solar strategies | One facet of the University's climate action plan will involve increasing reliance on solar energy. Solar panels on Cornell's land, as shown above, can provide up to 20 percent of campus energy requirements.
CKB Intruder Sparks Freshman Fears By SOFIA RUBINSON Sun News Editor
Court-Kay-Bauer Hall residents are shaken up following a Cornell University Police Department report that an intruder was found in a CKB dorm room yesterday. The CUPD received a report on Feb. 16 at 5:09 p.m. that a resident found an unauthorized individual underneath their bed when they awoke from a nap around 4:30 p.m, according to an email sent by Housing and Residential Life to CKB resi-
dents obtained by The Sun. The resident’s room was unlocked during entry. According to a source who The Sun has confirmed is close to the victim — who did not wish to be named out of safety concerns since the perpetrator is still at-large — the victim came home from class and took a nap and was awoken by a phone call from the source. The victim commented that there was a rotten smell in the room. When the victim fully awoke, she checked under the bed, without her glasses on, and stared at the
intruder for five seconds before he crawled out from underneath the bed and exited the room. “CUPD is working diligently to find this individual, but Housing and Residential Life would like to remind students to not permit non-CKB residents into the building,” the email read. “If you don’t know them, it’s okay to tell someone to use their own ID to gain entry or ask for a visitor to wait for their host to let them into the building.” See INTRUDER page 4
JULIA NAGEL / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Slava Ukraini | Musicians performed in a benefit concert at the local rotary club on Sunday. All proceeds will go to upgrading a bomb shelter Lviv, Ukraine's School #95, a special education school.
Ukraine Concert Raises $5,100 for Lviv Bomb Shelter By SOFIA RUBINSON Sun News Editor
It was standing room only for Music for Ukraine, a benefit concert and art auction hosted by the Ithaca Rotary Club to raise money for an upgraded school bomb shelter in Lviv, Ukraine. Sunday’s concert and bomb shelter, held at the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, raised $5,100 for the cause. “The Rotary Club is really dedicated both to international efforts to do good, and also to do good in our own community,” said Ithaca Rotary Club President Mary Kane. “This concert allows us to do both of those things at the same time, which is a very exciting concept.” Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of the major escalation in the Russian-Ukrainian War, which Western intelligence sources have estimated has caused 150,000 casualties on each side and displaced millions of Ukrainians. Though the concert was not planned specifically to fall on the anniversary, organizers said that ongoing attention as the war continues to advance is more important than ever. “Having been in Ukraine, I’ve never looked at it, like, one year, whatever. It’s just always been various levels of turmoil,” said organizer and associate vice president of Cornell’s Office of Community Relations Gary Stewart. “There’s no significance in [the one-year anniversary]. It’s more like we’re in this position,
and we’re in this well-connected international organization. And we know people over there which personalizes the relationship even more.” The Ithaca Rotary Club has met with members of a Rotary Club chapter in Lviv who identified school bomb shelters as a top fundraising priority. Starting in November, the Club began an effort to raise $31,000 to upgrade a high school bomb shelter to integrate permanent toilets, portable heaters, comfortable benches, projectors, WiFi and board games — a fundraising goal they were able to accomplish in two months. Cornell University donated $1,000 for this cause, according to Stewart. Now, the Club is raising $65,000 to rebuild and furnish the bomb shelter at School #95, which is Lviv’s flagship school for inclusive education and enrolls 47 children with disabilities and special education needs. “The bomb shelter is just some long hallways. They want to tear down some walls, create a classroom and gymnasium, upgrade the bathrooms and add comfortable benches. They want to put in a projector and a screen and add Wi-Fi,” said communications chair of the Ithaca Rotary Club Sherrie Negrea. “Several Rotary Clubs are coming together to raise the money, and we’re one of them. So whatever we raise in the concert will go towards this particular school bomb shelter project.” See UKRAINE page 3