INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 139 No. 52
TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2023 n ITHACA, NEW YORK
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News
Arts
Sports
Weather
Taiko Time
Content Warnings in Cinema
Last-Second Success
Cloudy
Yamatai performed their annual PULSE show at Bailey Hall on Saturday night.
Max Fattal '25 discusses the use of trigger warnings to alert movie viewers of sensitive content. | Page 5
| Page 3
Men's lacrosse defeated Army, scoring the winning goal in the last nine seconds of the game. | Page 8
HIGH: 45º LOW: 35º
Pollack Explains 2023-24 Theme Cornell Campaign Promotes Recycling, Composting Strategies By SOFIA RUBINSON Sun Managing Editor
President Martha Pollack provided details on the recently announced 2023-2024 academic year theme, “The Indispensable Condition: Freedom of Expression at Cornell,” in a Monday email sent to the Cornell community. “Free expression is the bedrock of democracy, just as academic freedom is the bedrock of higher education,” Pollack wrote. “These twin freedoms are at the heart of our core values, and have always been fundamental to Cornell’s excellence and its identity.” Solidified in 2019, Cornell has a core value of “free and open inquiry and expression,” defined as pursuing knowledge even of ideas some may consider wrong or offensive and engaging in reasoned opposition to messages to which one objects. Over the past few weeks, the University has garnered national attention following the Student Assembly’s resolution to institute mandatory “trigger warnings” in courses discussing sensitive issues. On April 3, Pollack rejected this resolution in defense of the freedom of expression. “Today, as we witness assaults on free expression and academic freedom from both ends of the political spectrum, it is vitally important that we, as a community of scholars, engage deeply with these values and the issues that can emerge in upholding them,” Pollack wrote in her Monday email. The theme will involve exploring the significance, history and challenges of free expression and academic freedom through a series of events and experiences designed to build knowledge and foster discussion. The initiative hopes to develop skills such
as active listening, leading controversial discussions, leading effective advocacy and managing responses to controversial interactions. In November, conservative media pundit Ann Coulter ’84 was met with student disruptions and protests that prompted an early exit from her scheduled speaking event. This sparked controversy and national attention to the state of free expression at Cornell. Following this event, there have been no
By ALLYSON KATZ Sun Contributor
ANTHONY CORRALES / SUN CONTRIBUTOR
Timely theme | Pollack explained the theme of the
2023-24 academic year in a Monday email to students.
other major public incidents of perceived threats to free expression until the Student Assembly’s content warning resolution. To continue reading this article, please visit www. cornellsun.com. Sofia Rubinson can be reached at srubinson@cornellsun.com.
Webinar Explores Turkish Politics Çagaptay and Hintz discuss the importance of Turkish elections By ASLI CIHANGIR Sun Contributor
Cornell’s Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies program organized a web conference titled “Turkish Elections: A Pivotal Change?” on Friday, April 14, in which Soner Çagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at
The Washington Institute and a columnist for The Hurriyet Daily News, and Lisel Hintz, an assistant professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University, discussed the election and its potential impacts for Turkey. The upcoming Turkish elections — in which citizens will vote for both the president and the parlia-
ARASH KHAMOOSHI / THE NEW YORK TIMES
Election education | Cornell's Critical Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Studies program hosted a webinar that discussed the Turkish elections.
ment — carry an immense importance due to the potential overturn of current President Recep Tayyip Erdo an’s 20-year rule. Turkey has faced several national challenges over the years — including an eroded right to freedom of expression through imprisoned journalists, democratic backsliding, human rights violations including hundreds of femicides, two massive earthquakes that caused thousands of deaths and destroyed several cities, a major economic crisis leading to spiraling inflation and extreme political polarization. The webinar discussed these national challenges within Turkey’s current political state, the role of democracy within the elections, the strategies that the opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroglu’s coalition should follow for a greater chance at victory, the potential fallout if Erdo an loses and the groups that will have a large impact on the results. See ELECTIONS page 3
Cornell’s annual Beyond Waste Campaign, which spanned from Feb. 14 to March 31 this year, is an initiative run by the Campus Sustainability Office that aims to create awareness, action and community around waste use and management. The campaign included participation in the national Campus Race to Zero Waste competition and featured events from faculty, student clubs like Residential Compost Management and Cornell alumni. The events included speakers like the Hatfield lecture with Marriott CEO Tony Capuano, gallery exhibitions on sustainable fashion and training on sustainable leadership and how to certify an event as sustainable. Campus Race to Zero Waste began in 2001 as Recylemania, a competition between Ohio University and Miami University that utilized the schools’ intense sports rivalry to incentivize students to see who could recycle the most. Cornell joined in 2010, and in the following 13 years the competition has expanded beyond recycling to include other categories such as food organics, waste minimization, targeted materials and diversion and electronics recycling. The competition’s goal is to
reduce waste to zero on college campuses by diverting at least 90 percent of waste from becoming trash through upcycling, recycling, composting, donations and resale. In 2020, the national campaign was renamed the Campus Waste to Zero Waste. Over the eight-week period, Cornell — among other schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Macalester and University of Ottawa — reported its waste and competed in each category. Cornell has historically performed well in the competition. In 2022, the University came first in electronics waste recycling, third for food waste diversion and 25th for landfill diversion. This year, Mark Hall — materials coordinator for Cornell’s recycling and waste repurposing center, R5 — said in an email to the Sun that Cornell came in 28th out of 89 in landfill diversion, 35th out of 101 for the Per Capita Classic and 12th out of 82 for food organics. According to Sarah Carson, the Campus Sustainability Office director, the University's priorities in the Beyond Waste campaign differ from those of the national competition. “Cornell puts more emphasis on waste reduction [versus waste diversion] than the national campaign,” Carson wrote in a statement to The Sun. See BEYOND WASTE page 3
Blossoms Bloom
LEILANI BURKE / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The cherry blossoms at Cornell are starting to bloom across campus as spring approaches and temperatures rise.