INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 129, No. 11
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
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ITHACA, NEW YORK
16 Pages – Free
Three Reported Sexual Attacks Prompt Univ.to Warn Students Police,administrators express concern about student safety
By KERRY CLOSE Sun News Editor
ZAC PETERSON / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Dangerous accident | A woman was hospitalized Friday after falling 60 feet at the Six Mile Creek gorge’s second dam, above.
Student,EMTs May Have Prevented Gorge Tragedy By JEFF STEIN Sun Managing Editor
A Cornell student’s alert eye and quick thinking — aided by the expertise of a few nearby EMTs — may have been the difference between life and death for a woman who fell approximately 60 feet at
News Dances With Wolves
The Sun sits down with Charlie Weill grad, who spent several months living with wolves. | Page 3
Opinion Of Monsters and Men
In the wake of the reported assaults on and near campus, Tom Moore ’14 encourages students to take responsibility for being part of a “rape culture.” | Page 7
Arts Keeping Up With the Times
Zachary Zahos ’15 praises Cornell Cinema’s screening of the Charlie Chaplin film Modern Times. | Page 9
Sports Double Trouble
The men’s soccer team emerges twice victorious from its trip to the West Coast this weekend. | Page 16
Weather Thunderstorms HIGH: 79 LOW: 68
the Six Mile Creek gorge Friday. Tom Collum ’14 was enjoying a day at the gorges with some friends when, he said, he noticed a “visibly intoxicated” woman contemplating a dangerous dive into the waters below. Just after she began her See GORGES page 4
In the wake of three reports of sexual assaults on or near campus Sunday, concerned administrators, police and student leaders emphasized the necessity of students taking increased personal safety measures. A female Cornell student said she was accosted and raped at 3:45 a.m. Sunday while walking down the stairs leading to the south side of the suspension bridge, north of the Arts Quad. Thirty minutes earlier, at 3:15 a.m., an unknown male allegedly forced his way into a second female victim’s Collegetown home and forcibly touched her. A third female Cornell student reported a forcible touching incident in the parking lot near Hughes Hall at about 2 a.m. The reported incidents shocked the Cornell community. “This is something completely different from what we’ve been dealing with,” said Narda Terrones ’14, the women’s issues at-large representative for the Student Assembly. “When you think you’ve done a lot to prevent this kind of incident and you realize it’s still happening, it hurts a lot.” The victim of the reported rape near the suspension bridge told police she was grabbed from behind by an unknown male who forced her to have sexual intercourse. After the alleged crime, the suspect fled north across the suspension bridge, according to the Cornell University Police Department. The victim of the reported forcible touching in Collegetown, who lives at 205 College Ave., said she answered a knock on her door to find an unknown male asking for someone who did not
TIMELINE OF SEPT. 2, 2012 • 2 A.M.: A female Cornell student is reportedly forcibly touched in the parking lot near Hughes Hall.
• 3:15 A.M.: An unknown male
forcibly enters and touches a female in Collegetown, police say.
• 3:45 A.M.: A female student is reportedly raped near the suspension bridge. 8:05 A.M.: The female assaulted in Collegetown reports the incident to police.
reside there. The resident told the male subject that she was unfamiliar with the person he was asking for and attempted to close the door on him, according to the Ithaca Police Department. The male, however, allegedly forced his way into the residence. After a brief struggle, he put his arm around the victim and reached under her dress, police said. The female victim was eventually able to push the intruder from her home, according to IPD. The victim said the assailant was a college-aged Hispanic male with dark hair, between 5’9” and 5’10” tall, with a mole on one cheek. At the time See ASSAULTS page 5
Life for Cornell’s Graduate Students ‘A Bit More Lonely’ By NIKKI LEE Sun Staff Writer
The dimly-lit Chapter House bustles with people drawn to its 49 beers on tap, a crowd comprised primarily of graduate students, commiserating on their long hours and small stipends, bemoaning a lack of social life as they, in fact, socialize — this, at least, was the picture Tim Gorman grad painted of graduate student life outside of the classroom, office or lab. The joys of life as a graduate student are legion: an excellent education, the freedom to conduct individual research, a path to faculty tenure. But separate from academics, many graduate students said one facet remains sorely lacking: a sense of community. Mariam Wassif grad said that a cumbersome academic workload can make life in the graduate school “isolating.” “People tend to withdraw into their own research and that makes it difficult to connect with other people,” she said. Gorman also attributed minimal cohesion among graduate students in part to the individually-focused environment of graduate school. “It’s a more alienating lifestyle, a bit more lonely,” he said. “People are in the lab all the time or grading.” In response to these concerns, the Graduate Professional Student Assembly will work this semester to address what its president, Mitch Paine grad, lamented as the lack of a “full sense
of community” among graduate students. With a “gigantic thesis that defines your time here always looming over you,” graduate study can be “overwhelming,” Paine said. As the GPSA considers how to improve some graduate students’ sense of alienation, Jessica Abel grad cautioned that when planning social events, the University needs to be cognizant that graduate students are in a different
stage of their lives than undergraduates. “When we want to socialize, we generally go to bars, not ice cream socials,” she said. “I think Cornell wants to be careful to avoid treating us like undergraduates. It is sort of their responsibility to reflect and perhaps cater to a sense that graduate students are professionals rather than See GRAD page 4
City styling
CARLOS RUIZ-VARGAS / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Kaleb Hunkele, a local artist and art supply shop owner, works on an art project on the corner of University Avenue and East Avenue in an attempt to beautify the City of Ithaca.