Waiting in line at Finch & Apgar’s the morning of September 16th — Cornell’s registration day — the student noticed something fresh on the news rack. “The Cornell Sun,” it had emblazoned on its masthead. “PUBLISHED DAILY (SATURDAYS EXCEPTED) DURING TERM TIME,” it said below. “PRICE THREE CENTS.”

The student picked up the publication, gazing at its unsightly design. The first of eight black-and-white, 9-by-12 pages was humble enough: Three columns, the leftmost taken up solely by advertisements.

“We have no indulgence to ask, no favors to beg,” the student read to himself from the center column. “Believing that the interests of the University and of the students would be subserved by the publication of a daily paper, one which should present news not only from the various colleges, but whatever was of especial interest to students wherever it occurred, we determined to publish THE CORNELL SUN.” And so was a newspaper born.

The student reached into his pocket, pulled out three pennies, and placed them on the counter, taking the paper on his way to registration. That was 1880.

In 2005, The Sun is free, online, 28 pages (usually), in color (partially), and older than any breathing person (definitely). Over 125 years, it has consistently provided Cornellians quality news and opinion five — and sometimes, six — days a week. “Cornell’s journalism department,” as one Sunnie called the paper on its 100th birthday, has also spawned countless journalists and authors, including literary greats E.B. White ’21 and Kurt Vonnegut ’44.

In the Beginning

America’s third college daily — after The Yale Daily News and the now-defunct Harvard Echo — was created by veterans of the weekly, University-sponsored Cornell Era. In March 1880, Era editor William Ballard Hoyt ’81 enlisted outgoing business manager George Francis Gifford ’80 in realizing his vision of an independent daily newspaper for Cornell.

The two spent the summer preparing for a fall release, attracting sponsors and assembling student writers for the paper’s first staff. For its name, The Sun was chosen over The Star — appropriately, for “Ithaca’s only morning newspaper,” as the masthead would begin advertising in 1935. (The Ithaca Journal was then an afternoon paper.)

Two weeks before fall term, Cornellians received a letter heralding the paper’s arrival and soliciting subscriptions. The price: 35 cents a month; $1 a term; $3 a year. Many rolled their eyes, wondering aloud how a campus of 400 could staff, much less finance, a daily newspaper. To their surprise, The Sun flourished.

And grew — literally.

In Fall 1882, The Sun waxed from 9” x 12” to 10” x 14,” the first of four expansions before the sleeker tabloid size was permanently adopted in January 1938. The word Daily, too, took root in a new ivy-decorated Cornell Daily Sun masthead, adorned with oars, books, a Cayuga Lake sunset, and a sash carrying Ezra Cornell’s famous “I would found an institution…” words. This mastual monstrosity would overload student senses for five years (1882-87), its gaudiness rivaled by another (1888-89) in which middle words Cornell Daily squeezed into a drawing of the sun. Visual stimulation was finally reserved for pictures, appearing in 1892, though another century would pass before students could see them in color.

Growing Pains

In June 1893, two years after The Sun began electing all its editors — some had been chosen by the student body — its board deadlocked 4-4 on the business-manager vote. 147 revotes later, a tie remained between candidates John L. Ahern ’94 and Samuel Scott Slater ’94. Neither camp willing to budge, each set out to publish its own version of The Cornell Daily Sun. And so fall 1893 at Cornell began with two Suns rising each morning. Two weeks into the schism, President Jacob Gould Schurman intervened, imposing a binding campus referendum to decide which would survive. The “Ahern Sun” won. And the Saturday edition it had begun publishing to outdo its rival was preserved, making The Cornell Daily Sun a six-day-a-week outfit.

Three years later, a smaller election fiasco broke out when losing business manager candidate Frank Gannett ’98 angrily quit The Sun. Gannett, for whom Cornell’s student health center is named, would live to establish one of America’s most extensive newspaper chains, including USA Today and The Ithaca Journal. Gannett’s defeat at The Sun would not be his last; in 1940, he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Cornell Daily Sun began the new century in its first full offices, on 202 North Tioga Street, and started printing at night, allowing it to be delivered before morning classes. The Sun also raised its price from three to five cents; the editors rescinded the increase when circulation dropped precipitously. The price would fluctuate between three cents and a nickel until 1959, when it hit a dime. The Sun would raise its price only twice more — first to fifteen cents and then a quarter — before going free in 2004.

A 1904 agreement with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World enabled The Sun to print national and international news, which it received evenings via telegraph. And in 1912, The Cornell Daily Sun became one of the first two collegiate members of the Associated Press. The Sun would not print photos from United Press International, however, for another fifty years.

Paper, Interrupted. (Twice.)

Some may notice that The Cornell Daily Sun’s 125th birthday is celebrated by its 123rd editorial board. How to account for the disparity? World War II.

It was not the first time The Sun had set. With World War I raging, The Sun announced in Spring 1918 that it would “not even attempt publication” for the 1918-19 academic year; printing, however, resumed on December 30, 1918. Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White ’21 would be named editor in chief less than two years later.

World War II would prove far greater a disruption than its predecessor.

On December 7, 1941, at approximately 8 a.m. — 1 p.m. Ithaca time — Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japanese warplanes.

“I heard about the bombing while I was sitting in a bathtub,” later wrote Sunday’s news editor. “I tore down to the office, and we laid out a new first and last page, keeping the stale insides of the previous issue, as I recall. We took whatever was coming off the AP machine, slapped it in, and were, I still believe, the first paper in the state to hit the streets with an extra.”

The headline: “JAPS START WAR ON U.S.”

The editor: Kurt Vonnegut ’44.

Vonnegut enlisted in 1943 and would base his classic Slaughterhouse-Five on his wartime experiences. The office at 109 East State Street, to which Vonnegut ran that day, was then only five years old and would serve as The Cornell Daily Sun’s headquarters until 1992’s move to 119 South Cayuga Street.

Strained by the war, The Sun stopped printing Mondays in November 1942, making it again a five-day-a-week publication. The Sun published into the summer that year — Cornell being open on an accelerated schedule — but only thrice a week, whereupon Daily was dropped from its masthead.

In October, The Sun’s newly elected — and first female — editor in chief Guinevere Griest ’44 wrote that The Sun would not be further impeded by the war. That issue would be its last for three years, Miss Greist’s term having lasted but three days.

During The Sun’s absence, the campus’ primary source of news became the weekly, University-sponsored Cornell Bulletin — staffed primarily by former Sunnies.

After the Sunset

The Cornell Daily Sun returned on October 11, 1946, under the direction of war veteran and former Sunnie Harold “Ron” Reynolds — ’46 before the war, ’48 after. He remains the only editor in chief to have served two terms.

The Sun published Tuesday through Saturday that year, as it had early in the war. Six years after resuming its Monday edition, however, The Sun stopped publishing Saturdays in Fall 1953 and has been a Monday-Friday paper since.

The pace of Sun history slowed in the second half of the century as the paper began assuming its current style and shape. The Sun continued covering politics on the campus, local and national levels — opining on all three — remaining until 1996 “Ithaca’s only morning newspaper.” With the Ithaca Journal suddenly sharing that niche, The Sun began focusing on its area of expertise: Cornell.

The Journal would prove the least of The Sun’s worries. In Spring 2004, Cornell’s Student Assembly approved a program to provide the New York Times and USA Today free to undergraduates. Fearing eclipse by these journalistic giants, The Sun, too, went free in Fall 2004.

The new “price” was only one in a flurry of turn-of-the century changes at The Cornell Daily Sun. Keeping up with times, The Sun introduced a website: students —as well as parents and alumni — could browse the entire paper at CornellSun.com. In June 2003, The Sun moved into a more spacious building, purchased by its alumni association, at 139 West State Street. And beginning Fall 2004, The Sun livened its front and back pages every day with color. That fall the paper also underwent a radical redesign that gave it, among other things, a more readable font.

With these recent feats, The Cornell Daily Sun may find itself searching in the years ahead for avenues of improvement. And, indeed, there is progress to be made. Yet the chronicler from A Century at Cornell wrote truthfully that “whatever the next century holds, those who run The Sun would do well to aspire to a future as distinguished as its past.”