Socio-Economic Differences Divide Ithaca and Cornell
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Cornell students and Ithaca residents bond over LGBTQ issues
October 25, 2007 - 11:01pmOn a recent Friday night, Mike Shub ’08 and his friends were sitting on the porch of their Collegetown house when City of Ithaca policemen threatened them with a noise violation if they did not break up their party.
“We were having a small get together, but you couldn’t hear us outside of the porch,” Shub said. “Then the cops came and said we all had to clear out, or they were going to clear out the party themselves.”
On Sept. 6, Gabriel Arana grad wrote in his Cornell Daily Sun column that the actions of recently sentenced Alexander Atkind ’06 exposed how many Cornell students feel entitled to act however they want without regard for the citizens of Ithaca.
Both of the above examples show contrasting aspects of the relationship between Cornell students and the residents of the City of Ithaca. How do these two groups interact, and what causes tensions between them?
“Students definitely have a sense of entitlement,” said Svante Myrick ’09, a candidate for Common Council. “They have to understand that this is other peoples’ home. A lot of residents view us as visitors. When we come and create a problem and then leave, that weighs heavily on their shoulders, especially when they pay so much to live in Ithaca.”
Prof. Annelise Riles, anthropology and law, said that there is a major cultural and socio-economic divide between Cornell and Ithaca residents.
“There’s a hierarchical relationship between the town and the University,” Riles said. “Most of the support for Cornell faculty is all townies. It’s amazing to see how separate the world of people who live in Ithaca is from those involved in University life. We don’t always eat at the same restaurants. We don’t always watch the same movies. We don’t always shop at the same stores. In this community we all have a different traffic pattern structured by relationships of class.”
This separation seems to be a phenomenon that results from a big university being in a small city, Riles said.
“People forget that Ithaca is a small town and has a small town culture,” Riles said. “There is a nexus of relationships where your next door neighbor might be your son’s soccer coach who you might see at the supermarket and so on. People recycle relationships and make connections. Then in come academics whose interactions are not based locally.”
Riles said that the physical separation between Cornell up on the hill looking below to downtown Ithaca, could work to cement these relationships as well.
However, Riles also made mention of a concept that she teaches in her introductory anthropology class — that “cultures are not billiard balls.” This means that every culture interacts with and affects every other culture. These relationships between students and townies are especially evident in the fight for gay rights, according to Riles; Ithaca is considered a haven for the LGBTQ community in Upstate New York, and Cornell students can be seen working with residents on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.
The two communities’ interaction with social issues is only one aspect of their relationship. Take a walk through Collegetown, and you will see students and permanent residents living side by side, a relationship more tangible and more immediate than cooperation on social issues.
“Collegetown is where the city meets the campus in highly visible ways and is vital to the Cornell experience,” according to the Cornell Master Plan’s presentation in April.
In a place where students are often drunk and rowdy and local residents often crave calm and quiet, tensions may arise in the form of noise violations. The City’s noise ordinance, which was passed in April 2004, was originally meant to control sound on South Hill near Ithaca College, according to an archived Cornell Daily Sun article. However, it has since affected Cornell.
“Before the strictness of the noise ordinance was enforced, parties would be very loud during orientation and senior week in Collegetown,” said Mary Tomlan ’71 (D-3rd Ward), who represents most of Collegetown and the Cornell campus. “There were massive parties with a lot of noise and vandalism.”
She said that she has received few noise complaints about students from the people who she represents in the last few years as a result of the ordinance. As a resident of Collegetown, she lives between two student houses and has no problems with the level of noise. Although she can often hear music in the background, she said she would feel comfortable asking neighbors to turn down the noise if need be.
Permanent residents and Cornell students alike compose the Collegetown Neighborhood Council. In May of this year, they published the Collegetown Vision Statement, outlining the strengths and weaknesses of the neighborhood, as well as suggestions for how to effect positive change.
The Cornell administration and the City government have each put $75,000 into hiring a designer to form an urban plan for Collegetown.
“The ultimate goal is to have a mixed use area combining residential and commercial infrastructure that is pedestrian and bicycle friendly, lively and attractive as a major entrance to Cornell,” Tomlan said.
Myrick, who was inspired to run for Common Council by looking at the changes that needed to be made in Collegetown, hopes to implement new initiatives to further increase communication, including installing information kiosks and electronic message boards.
He said that one of the best ways to make a difference is through another town-gown interaction — voting in the Ithaca elections.