INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 136, No. 28
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2019
n
16 Pages – Free
ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Arts
Sports
Weather
Solar Flashback: Halloween
Diverse Thought
Hunt for Revenge
Dark And Stormy
The Sun takes a look back at the spooky history of the holiday on campus. | Page 3
Diversity in art should be included for more than just diversity's sake, writes Ruby Que '20. | Page 10
Men’s hockey and football both look for revenge against teams that dominated them last season. | Page 16
HIGH: 67° LOW: 57º
Curtains Close on Vagina Monologues IFC Cancels All GJAC announces its severance of support for annual production By SOPHIE ARZUMANOV Sun Staff Writer
The student actors of the play The Vagina Monologues unknowingly took their final bows last winter. The past sponsor of the popular show, the Women’s Resource Center, has announced that due to recent changes in its mission statement — the group was rebranded the Gender Justice Advocacy Coalition this year — it will no longer support the play. The show is a collection of interviews-turned-narratives from people of all ages and backgrounds about their relationships and experiences with their vaginas. “The limitations of the script, namely that it equates having a vagina with female identity, and the requirement by Eve Ensler that it remain unchanged, leaves us with an incomplete play that doesn’t honor the experiences of trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people. It is thus hurtful, harmful and exclusionary to folks with these identities,” said Shura Gat, interim director of the Women’s Resource Center and advisor to GJAC. Co-director of the 2019 production Nikita Lakhani ’19 was first notified of GJAC’s decision on October 9. Gat told her via email that GJAC had “decided to step away from funding a TVM production,” citing inclusivity concerns. The Coalition expanded on these concerns in a statement sent to The Sun. “Exclusion of gender-marginalized people is counter-productive to gender justice on our campus and after much deliberation GJAC has decided that we cannot continue to support this production.” Auditions for the production are customarily held this time of year, and are open to any undergraduate or graduate students. All those who audition are assigned a role in at least one monologue; no auditionees are turned away. The show is also directed by students, with help from advisors. For many years, the show has also concluded with an additional monologue authored by cast members to reflect Cornell student
experiences. The episodic play has been performed annually for the past 21 years by a large student cast in Bailey Hall. In past years, the monologues were witness to roughly one thousand audience members, which generated ticket revenues between $10,000 and $12,000, The Sun previously reported. The majority of ticket sales — 90 percent — is donated to the Tompkins County Advocacy Center, the local shelter and resource center for victims of domestic and relationship violence. According to Gat, the WRC, GJAC, and the Advocacy Center are currently collaborating to find “some new, more inclusive ways to engage people with these issues and raise funds for the Advocacy Center.” The Tompkins County Advocacy Center did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Callie Aboaf ’21 performed in the 2018 and 2019 productions, and even donned a pink feather-clad vagina costume for a monologue last year. According to Aboaf, past TVM cast
members were excluded from the deliberation process, and therefore “generally seem disappointed,” she said. “[We] don’t fully understand the decision.” Most notably, in its See MONOLOGUES page 4
Vaginas vetoed | Callie Aboaf ’21 performs “The Vagina Workshop” monologue at the 2019 performance. BORIS TSANG / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Halloweekend Frat Parties, Events By MARYAM ZAFAR Sun City Editor
Cornell’s fraternities “overwhelmingly” decided to suspend all registered social events scheduled for the upcoming weekend. The Wednesday evening decision — which was made by the executive board of the Interfraternity Council and the presidents of active fraternity chapters on Cornell’s campus — was prompted by last weekend’s tragedy, IFC President Cristian Gonzalez ’20 said. The council made the decision after freshman Antonio Tsialas ’23 was found dead Saturday in Fall Creek Gorge. The vote passed with a supermajority, Gonzalez said. The Cornell student had been missing since Thursday night, after last being seen at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party. The Phi Kappa Psi president did not respond to The Sun’s requests for comment. “We believe that it would be disrespectful
and wrong to be celebrating this weekend given the passing of Antonio,” Gonzalez said in a message to The Sun. Tsialas reportedly met with his mother for dinner on Thursday, and had planned to take his parents — who were in town during FirstYear Family Weekend — on a tour of the campus over the next few days. His parents reported him missing when he failed to meet with them on Friday, state troopers said. On Tuesday afternoon, a memorial service held in honor of Tsialas overflowed, as students packed the Anabel Taylor Hall chapel so fully that those who couldn’t fit inside stood in a circle outside of the building. The University was not involved in the IFC decision, Gonzalez said. Maryam Zafar can be reached at mzafar@cornellsun.com.
Crass Zine Is ‘Loud and Obnoxious’ LGBTQ+ Campus Publication Group of writers see it as outlet for unlimited creativity By HUNTER SEITZ Sun Assistant News Editor
Seeking to be “loud and queer,” the student-run mag-
“We wanted a space to be loud and queer... a space for organized chaos.” Naira Bezerr-Gastesi ’21 azine Crass hopes to provide a new type of space for
LGBTQ+ students on campus through self-expression across a variety of media. “We wanted a space to be loud and queer in a very particular sense — queer as disgustingness not respectability. We were interested in writing about our feelings in ways that we weren’t able to in other spaces on campus. We wanted a space for organized chaos,” Naira Bezerra-Gastesi ’21, an executive board member, told the Sun in an interview. Crass seeks to fill a hole in existing LGBTQ+ spaces on
campus by providing a space for what some members affectionately call “bullshit.” The free zine is published in print once a semester. “We wanted a space to write and make bullshit and not pretend as if everything we do is pretty and amazing,” Bezerra-Gastesi continued, explaining why they felt something lacking from other campus LGBTQ+ spaces. “From the beginning, we wanted it to be a space for art See CRASS page 5
ALICIA WANG / SUN GRAHICS EDITOR
Zine scene | The publication includes an assortment of multimedia: poetry, short stories, watercolors, marker drawings, etc. Contributors are welcome to submit anything.