INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 136, No. 33
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2019
n
12 Pages – Free
ITHACA, NEW YORK
Business
Arts
Sports
Weather
CBD Startup Buds
FLASH:
Towering opening
Snow
Launched by a Cornell alumna, Head and Heal has grown its roots in the Ithaca area. | Page 3
The lucrative Flash game market of the 2000s isn’t quite dead, argues Olivia Bono ’20. | Page 6
Women’s basketball opens season with 20-point win over Albany.
HIGH: 27º LOW: 19º
| Page 12
Ithaca Common Council Passes 2020 Budget By JOHNATHAN STIMPSON Sun News Writer
JASON BEN NATHAN / SUN FILE PHOTO
On the books | Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 (seen above at the opening of the renovated Ithaca Commons) presided over the passage of the City of Ithaca’s 2020 budget last Wednesday.
After months of revisions, proposals and backand-forth, the City of Ithaca has finally settled on a budget for the upcoming 2020 year. Passed at a meeting of Ithaca’s Common Council meeting last Wednesday, the plan — which lists $80,397,578 in total spending — carries few surprises. Calling for a 5.2 percent increase in spending, the budget’s aims largely skewed towards financial restraint, seeking to reduce the City’s debt load and tax burden and to purchase more efficiently and eco-
nomically, according to a report published by Mayor Svante Myrick ’09 — who called the unanimously passed plan “a tremendous budget” and the product of
“We all agree the climate change is an emergency ... and we have acted.” Deb Mohlenoff “a very thorough process.” Constituting over 40 percent of Ithaca’s revenues, the property tax rate rose modestly to $11.71 per $1,000 of taxable valuation, up from $11.60 in the pre-
Students Hold Uyghur ‘Teach-in’ As China Faces Growing Scrutiny By MEGHNA MAHARISHI Sun Staff Writer
As China has come under international scrutiny for sending Uyghurs — a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority — to detention camps, dozens of Cornellians packed a room in Rockefeller Hall on Monday for a “teach-in” intended to shed light on the situation. Nick Kline grad, a third-year law student and lecturer at the event, told The Sun that it was important to stimulate a conversation about these human rights violations on campus.
“We wanted to bring attention to [the Uyghurs] because it’s important, but then we wanted to situate it in the larger context of Islamophobia and
“We wanted ... to talk about it in the right way.” Nick Kline try and talk about it in the right way because it’s often talked about it in the wrong way,” said Kline, who has a master’s degree in Chinese politics,
BORIS TSANG / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
China conflict | Students debate state of Uyghur situation.
foreign policy and international relations from Tsinghua University in Beijing. Since 2017, the Chinese government has imprisoned Uyghurs as well as other primarily Muslim ethnic groups like Uzbeks and Kazakhs in detention camps. The Chinese government has held approximately one to two million Uyghurs in detention camps in their native province of Xinjiang. While the government claims that the camps are “vocational training centers” and that there are no human rights violations, The New York Times reports that many have been forced to renounce Islam in the camps and are living in squalid conditions under constant surveillance. The event consisted of a presentation detailing China’s discrimination of the Uyghurs in what Kline described as “concentration See UYGHUR page 5
vious budget — meaning that the owner of a house worth $500,000 will expect to pay just $55 more than last year. However, that hiked rate still represents the City’s second lowest since 2003. The fee Ithaca residents pay for water increased by 10 percent from last year to $8.67 per 100 cubic feet of consumption, while sewage fees were unchanged. While spending and tax policy remained only slightly altered, one of the budget’s few notable highlights came in the form of a decision to earmark funds for the implementation of See BUDGET page 4
BORIS TSANG / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
5th Annual ‘Big Red Thon’ Draws Hundreds Dance marathon raises over $27,000 for children’s hospital By MIN SHIN Sun Contributor
Upbeat music vibrated from Barton Hall Saturday afternoon as crowds gathered in the gym for the annual Big Red Thon. Multi-colored lights lit up the crowd of students dancing along to the music — a mix of the Little Einsteins Theme Song and current pop songs. The event marked the fifth year of Cornell’s Big Red Thon, a dance mara-
thon that raises funds and awareness for the local Children’s Miracle Network Hospital, Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital in Syracuse, New York. The event runs from 2 p.m. until midnight, with each hour featuring a special event such as performances from dance or a cappella groups, lip-sync battles and story times — during which students met the “Miracle Children.” These children are patients of
the Miracle Children’s Network, comprised of 170 children’s hospitals, 10 million patients and 97 corporate partners, according to the Big Red Thon Instagram page. By the end of the night, Big Red Thon was able to raise over $27,000 from the almost 700 people who registered for the event, according to the group’s Instagram post. One of the “Miracle Children,” two-yearold Logan, came onstage with his moth-
er as she spoke about the impact of the hospital network after she discovered her son was sick. Surgeons were able to remove Logan’s neuroblastoma due to its early detection, his mother said, and spared him the process of chemotherapy or radiation. The Big Red Thon Facebook page states that all funds this year will be going to the just-established See DANCE page 4