INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 129, No. 8
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29, 2012
News World Traveler
The Sun sits down with Arthur Teng ’16, who has lived in locations across the globe and speaks four languages. | Page 3
By ERIN ELLIS
Political Animals
Sun Staff Writer
Opinion A Call to Action
Maggie Henry ’14 emphasizes the importance of student activism at Cornell. | Page 7
Arts All Roads Lead to Rome
The Sun reviews The Mirror of the City, an exhibit at the Johnson Museum focusing on Italian cities. | Page 10
Sports Lynah Faithful
Hockey fans prepare for season tickets for the Big Red’s upcoming season to go on sale Sept. 4. | Page 16
Weather Sunny HIGH: 77 LOW: 52
ITHACA, NEW YORK
16 Pages – Free
New Health Plan Covers, Costs More
News Former presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum and Howard Dean will debate at Cornell on Oct. 18. | Page 3
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This semester, Cornell released its most comprehensive student health insurance plan yet –– a policy that will expand coverage while raising the cost of insurance, according to officials from Gannett Health Services. The changes make the University’s Student Health Insurance Plan fully compliant with the coverage required by President Barack Obama’s Affordable HEALTH PLAN’S Care Act, which represents the most signifiNEW PERKS cant overhaul of the nation’s healthcare sys• Unlimited prescription tem since Medicare services and Medicaid in 1965. • Preventitive services proThe ACA, which aims vided without a co-pay to reduce the cost of • Preventitive services for healthcare, requires all students studying offhealth insurance plans campus to meet its require• Domestic partners ments by 2014. counted as dependents The changes to Cornell’s updated • No ceiling on policy health care plan affects benefits the 11,000 Cornell students — more than half the student population — enrolled in SHIP. The new plan, approved in April, is more comprehensive than previous plans. It provides preventive care without a co-pay, whether that Cornell student studies in Ithaca or at another campus; no limit to the amount one can spend on prescription drugs; no annual ceiling on the amount of money covered on health care serSee INSURANCE page 5
Math Prof Remembered as Genius By KAITLYN KWAN Sun Staff Writer
Prof. William Paul Thurston, mathematics, a scholar who revolutionized the study of three-dimensional spaces, died at the age of 65 on Aug. 21. Thurston died of melanoma — a type of skin cancer with which he was diagnosed a year ago — in Rochester, N.Y. In 1982, at age 37, Thurston received the 1982 Fields Medal, which is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for mathematics.
Through his work studying topology, or multidimensional shapes and surfaces with certain theoretical properties, Thurston was able to demonstrate how geometry, topology and other mathematical fields intertwine. According to Prof. James West, mathematics, Thurston made a lasting impact not only at See THURSTON page 5
For an in-depth look at Prof. Thurston’s accomplishments, see Science, p. 8.
SUN FILE PHOTO
Global vision | Dale Corson, Cornell’s eighth president, strived to connect American scientists with their peers in Russia, China and Puerto Rico throughout his life.
FBI Files of C.U.Pres. Revealed
Corson to feds: research in Russian for science, not politics By AKANE OTANI
of members of the American Soviet Science Society, Inc. — an organization deemed “subversive and Communist,” This article is based on the Federal according to the FBI files. Bureau of Investigation’s files of Dale Corson had also been a subscriber to Corson, the University’s eighth president, the Daily People’s World, a West Coast who died March 31. Communist newspaper, in September The FBI was on him. 1939. It was June For the FBI, 25, 1955, at seeing the the height of name of an the second Red American Scare, and Dale physics protégé Raymond who had aided Corson, then a the Manhattan professor of Project on such physics and lists brought up engineering several quesphysics at tions. Cornell, was A transcript from the FBI’s interrogation of The FBI under investi- former Cornell president Dale Corson. asked how long gation. He was he had been a hoping to be cleared for access to classi- member of the American Soviet society. fied defense information to help aid Why had he joined it? To what extent American security efforts. But the FBI had he — versed in nuclear research had found something it believed to be a aiding national security — participated credible threat — and brought Corson in the society’s activities? in for questioning. Corson, having no choice but to “What is your full name?” cooperate, responded to these ques“Dale Raymond Corson,” he tions, and others, according to FBI answered. files. “When and where were you born? “This is an organization which I had “April 5, 1914 … [in] Pittsburg, forgotten about until it was brought to Kansas,” he said. my attention in the investigation They cut to the chase. Corson was involved for an [Atomic Energy under investigation because, from 1944 to 1946, his name had appeared on a list See CORSON page 4
Sun News Editor
Avicii Tickets Sell Out in Record Time By LIANNE BORNFELD Sun Staff Writer
COURTESY OF AVICII.COM
Tickets for Swedish D.J. Avicii’s Homecoming performance sold out just 35 minutes after they were made available Tuesday, making it Cornell Concert Commission’s fastest selling show to date. The roughly 4,800 tickets sold nearly an hour and a half more quickly than CCC’s previously fastest sell-
ing concert — an unexpected degree of success, according to Dave Rodriguez ’13, executive director of CCC. “I was expecting it to sell out today at the very least, but I wasn’t expecting to get quite as much traffic as we did. I was shocked,” Rodriguez said. Before Avicii, tickets for Lupe Fiasco, who played Barton Hall in April 2011, made Cornell concert
history, selling out in roughly two hours. Second to that was KiD CuDi, who performed at Cornell in November 2010. The concert sold out in about seven hours, Rodriguez said. According to Rodriguez, CCC has been attentive to the student body’s interest in and demand for Avicii. For the Homecoming performance, Avicii’s management
wanted CCC to begin selling tickets exactly a month before the show, Rodriguez said. CCC postponed ticket sales to Tuesday to allow it to promote the concert more thoroughly. A l t h o u g h Rodriguez said he was surprised by how fast tickets to Avicii’s show sold out, he said that concerts on See AVICII page 4