1967 Residential Club fire in the news

[www.nytimes.com]

TL;DR:

For decades there's been a whole lot of silence about what happened with official investigations on the tragic fire that most considered a probable arson. Police investigators had given up on pursuing the case for lack of conclusive evidence and a lack of a confession. Cornell had effectively swept it under the rug, perhaps to not draw attention to their failed fast-track PhD. program or their faults in the fire hazards of the dorm or their weak response in helping the victims and survivors. A Cornell alum (Class of 1970) living in Arizona got obsessed with the unsolved case and did some amateur investigating, eventually assembling a narrative that blames a certain member of the Res Club for criminal arson and, with plenty of conjecture, blames Cornell officials for covering up the crime. His stirring the pot is the subject of and reason for this NY Times article, which lends more credence to the allegations against the individual in question (who remained unnamed in the article because he was never deemed a suspect by police). The story is certainly a troubling sequence of events in Cornell history which has never gotten the resolution the Cornell community deserves.

so many people had lives changed by this

1992 grad here, I never heard of the fire or the Phud program. Stunning read, thanks for posting. I feel a Netflix documentary coming.