INDEPENDENT SINCE 1880
The Corne¬ Daily Sun Vol. 135, No. 85
THURSDAY, MAY 2, 2019
n
16 Pages – Free
ITHACA, NEW YORK
News
Arts
Sports
Weather
Collegetown Eateries
Woodstock’s Future
Honor Roll
Chance Of Showers
The Eatery app now features Collegetown eateries in addition to campus locations.
Woodstock fans shouldn't give up hope just yet for a Watkins Glen festival this summer. | Page 11
| Page 3
10 Cornellians have earned places on the All-Ivy league Honor Roll.
HIGH: 65º LOW: 52º
| Page 16
Students Host Vigil Honoring Victims of Sri Lanka Attacks By CAROLINE JOHNSON Sun Contributor
ANANT SRIRAM / SUN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Standing vigil | Students speak and honor the victims of the Sri Lanka attacks during a vigil on Ho Plaza.
As the wind gently blew across Ho Plaza on Wednesday, it carried the voices of people sharing their connections to Sri Lanka and the people whose lives were lost on Easter Sunday. Students from all different backgrounds, ages and disciplines faced each other in a wide circle, candles given out by the organizers in hand. The vigil began with a moment of
silence, after which Amanda Pathmanathan ’19 introduced Ishini Gammanpila ’22, a student born in Sri Lanka who grew up under the country’s civil war until the age of nine. “I knew what it was like to live with a sense of anticipation,” Gammanpila said as she described the nature of the war while she was growing up, living in constant fear that tragedy could potentially happen. See VIGIL page 5
Female-Fronted Headliners Rare on Slope Days
Only two have appeared during last sixteen years By AMANDA H. CRONIN Sun News Editor
In the modern Slope Day’s 16-year history, only two female-fronted bands have headlined the festival. One of them was Misterwives in 2017, and another was the Pussycat Dolls in 2009. Besides those two, every other headliner has been a male soloist, duo or band. The modern Slope Day did not come into shape as a formalized annual event — or consistently had a musical headliner — until fall 2003, when Cornell administration started getting involved in its organization. However, a spring festival on-campus has occurred on and off since 1901. In an interview with The Sun, Pravir Samtani ’19, executive director of the
Slope Day Programming Board, admitted the difficulty to ensure gender diversity to Cornell’s flagship party. Samtani said that while the programming board has contacted and pursued female artists to headline the festival in the past, “big-name female artists are way above our price range.” The student activity fee, $19 per student, funds the Slope Day budget, which amounts to over $250,000 per year. Incoming Executive Director Alana Udwin ’20 declined to disclose the programming board’s exact budget but said that the committee’s ongoing focus is to at least include female performers as openers. See HEADLINER page 5
SABRINA XIE / SUN DESIGN EDITOR
Lack of women | In modern history, only two female-fronted acts have headlined Slope Day, an annual music festival held after the last day of classes.
Event Security Fee Is Eliminated By MARYAM ZAFAR Sun City Editor
BORIS TSANG / SUN PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Paying the price | Students express their concern with the event security fees at the September 13 Student Assembly meeting.
Cornell will no longer require student organizations to pay security fees for events, after nearly a year of continual changes to the event planning process. Vice President of Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi announced the chang-
es to the campus in an email Tuesday. The University implemented an $8,000 cap for university-covered security costs, a value that it said is higher than costs required by recent events. Any additional costs would be supplemented by organizations. “This will allow student groups to
have large and small events to promote the free exchange of ideas, which is a hallmark of our university,” Lomardi said in the email. The move is a complete reversal from a change implemented last July, which mandated student organizations pay security costs for “controversial” events — a sta-
tus determined by the Event Management Planning Team. Students responded to that announcement with outrage, grilling administrators in a Student Assembly meeting last semester until Dean of Students Vijay Penkadur temporarily paused fee implementation. See SECURITY page 4