FREE
THURSDAY
april 28, 2022 high 48°, low 31°
t h e i n de p e n de n t s t u de n t n e w s pa p e r of s y r a c u s e , n e w yor k |
N • Climate comments
A public comment session at SUNY-ESF was one of 11 throughout New York to allow feedback on the state’s Climate Act draft scoping plan. Page 3
dailyorange.com
C • Powerful punk
The Blue Room hosted their last and largest two-day festival with 17 bands and five straight hours of thumping rock and punk music to end the year. Page 6
S • Predraft prep
Cody Roscoe trained for three months at Ford Sports Performance alongside veteran NFL and college players ahead of the NFL draft. Page 12
state
Immortalizing Lou Students in the School of Architecture remember Louise “Lou” Kearns as a mentor and friend
Court strikes down state maps By Danny Amron and Richard Perrins the daily orange
People who worked with Kearns left Lay’s potato chips on her memorial. The snack was a favorite of hers, those who worked with her said. photo illustration by meghan hendricks photo editor
By Kyle Chouinard asst. news editor
L
ouise “Lou” Kearns’ memorial outside the entrance of the Slocum Supply Store is packed with sticky-notes of love and wellwishes. Pink daisies and white lilies dot the display, along with a small knitted mitten. But, among these more typical gestures is a collection of Lay’s potato chip bags. Rachel Ly, a fifth-year architecture student at Syracuse University, said the chips are a memento. Ly worked with Kearns, who was the manager of the Slocum Supply Store. “(Lou) frequently asked us — during (our) shifts — to buy her snacks throughout the day, and her favorite request was usually a bag of Lay’s for her to snack on,” Ly said in an email to The Daily Orange. “For her memorial we wanted to do something that honored her — something like an inside joke for all of us working, for her and her alone.” Kearns died on April 14, School of Architecture Dean Michael Speaks announced the following day. She had worked at the university for 27 years. Three students in SU’s School of Architecture — Dylan Fromm, Jediel Ponnudurai and Jingge Zhao — created a petition shortly following Kearns’ death. The group, along with at least 160 other architecture students, signed on to name the Slocum Supply Store after Kearns.
Between the School of Architecture’s undergraduate and graduate populations, there are around 820 students in the program. Over 19% of the population of the entire school signed the petition. As of 11 p.m. on Wednesday, the petition received 224 signatures in total. The store is integral to students in the School of Architecture, serving as a hub where students can buy materials for their modeling projects. In a school-wide email Wednesday, Speaks confirmed that the bookstore will be renamed. The sign, which greets students as they walk through the College Place entrance of Slocum Hall, will read “Lou Kearns Supply Store” starting Thursday afternoon. Fromm and Ponnudurai wrote an email together to The D.O. saying Kearns deserved a permanent memorial to honor her. The pair noted her hard work, kindness and diligence. “(Renaming the store is) the best way to ensure that Lou’s immeasurable contribution to the work of everyone in the architecture community is remembered by future students who sadly cannot have the privilege of knowing her,” Fromm and Ponnudurai wrote. Maya Simms, a third-year student in the School of Architecture, said Kearns would always ask about projects architecture students were working on and provide any advice she could. see
lou kearns page 4
The New York State Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Democratic leaders had gerrymandered certain districts, and it called for primary elections for congressional and state senate seats to be postponed until August. The elections, originally scheduled to be held in June, will be pushed back so a court-appointed special master can redraw the disputed district lines, according to the decision filed in the New York Court of Appeals. But the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., told Sarah Ferris of Politico that the postponement may not be allowed under federal law. “(State law) requires a primary on June 28,” Maloney said. “Unless and until that federal court order is modified, the state needs to have a federal primary on June 28. The state decision ignores that fact. We think that’s a problem.” The New York State Supreme Court’s decision did not mention whether the elections for New York governor or state assembly seats would also have to be postponed. Judges scrapped proposed New York state electoral maps Thursday evening, siding with a Republicanbacked lawsuit that accused Democratic legislators of gerrymandering. The Appellate Division of the Fourth Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of New York gave a 3-2 ruling that struck down what it deemed to be electoral maps created with partisan bias. The court ruled that the procedure of the legislature, rather than the independent redistricting commission, devising the maps was not prohibited by state law. Aside from the other arguments made in the suit, the court decided that the congressional map was unconstitutional because the districts were drawn in a manner that discouraged competition or demonstrated bias toward particular candidates or parties, the decision wrote. The comparison between the proposed 2022 map and the 2012 redistricting map showed far more seats favoring Democrats than see
redistricting page 4