student activism is alive and well in Ithaca

[edenfalling]

I don't go to Cornell anymore, but I take a bus through campus twice a day, and take shameless advantage of the public access computer labs. So I maintain a passing interest in what's going on there.

Apparently the university wants to build a new parking lot somewhere near West Campus, to go along with the new dorms they've been putting up. This strikes me as a perfectly sensible thing to do, especially since West Campus has had a chronic parking shortage for decades. (The really big lots are way the hell out by the vet school, and up on North Campus.) However, they want to cut down a tract of forest land to do so. And people are upset.

There have been protestors outside Day Hall for the past week, and yesterday they apparently took possession of the university president's office for several hours, to the point where police were called in to get them out.

They seemed to be out this morning, but the cluster of tents and signs and twenty-some people was still outside Day Hall when the bus drove past.

Frankly, I don't really care who wins. I am massively apathetic about the whole thing, since I A) think it's a little weird to be so attached to one small stand of trees when you can get lost in forest areas about two miles from town, and B) don't have a car and don't really care about students who are so lazy they can't, y'know, walk the fifteen minutes up the slope into Central Campus, or catch a bus.

But hey, go protestors! It's great that you're actually making your presence known, even if I think you're a little silly.

Comments

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Hee. My family was living in Rhode Island during the part of the sixties when Day Hall was taken over by protestors. But a few years later, when we moved back to Ithaca, some of the pavilions in Stewart Park were still lined with the chicken wire that had been used to cage the protestors after the mass arrests. Ah, memories.

I don't know which specific bit of forest land they're talking about replacing with a parking lot. But I admit that I'd be upset about it getting cut down if it were a group of trees to which I had any personal attachment.

Are they blaring "Paved Paradise" out of loudspeakers at the protest site? That would seem almost mandatory.

[edenfalling]

Are they blaring "Paved Paradise" out of loudspeakers at the protest site?

Not that I've noticed. But they have signs up asking people driving by to honk their horns in support of the protest, and they cheer after every honk, which must get rather annoying to the people in Day Hall. :-)