Daily Sun

[Tom \'03]

Interesting article:

http://www.cornelldailysun.com/perl/getArticle.pl?id=4533

Personally I don't know that it's really well written, but it's an interesting take on what happened last weekend.

[Greg Berge]

It's The Sun.  We should count ourselves lucky they didn't have an obvious typo in the headline.

(Why Cornell has the worst daily in the Ivy League has always eluded me.  If you come to Ithaca for journalism you should, sadly, pick the other hill.)

[Ben Doyle 03]

To our friend Charles:

Two comments:

(1) If you were in Lake Placid last year, you'll know that signs beig ripped down was something that was instigated by the St. Lawrence fans, they took ours down and our fans merely did the same. I'm not defending these actions but at least get your story straight!!!

(2) Again, not defending the throwing of bottles on the ice after a win, but the bottles after the Brown game came from exactly as you stated, six year olds, only they were seated in section O.


 ::nut:: Words to the wise: Don't make yourself look stupid b/c you didn't take the time to get all the facts!!! ::nut::

[Charles Persons]

Ok, normally it's not my place to talk on this forum, especially about this kind of issue. I usually allow you all to bash my articles, or the articles of other writers freely, without really taking up a side or trying to defend them or myself. However, when you claim that the Daily Sun is the worst daily in the Ivy League, you are simply wrong, Greg.
First, the Daily Sun has been voted, for several successive years, the best college daily newspaper in New York by the Associated Press, and yes, that includes Columbia and Syracuse.
Second, if you've ever seen the Yale Daily News, the Princetonian, the Dartmouth or the Brown Daily Herald, you will realize what shoddy papers they truly and how they cannot hold a torch to the Daily Sun. This is a simple fact.
Finally, the people in charge of creating this paper spend upwards of 10 hours a day working at the newspaper offices, on top of a normal schedule of classes and homework. They, like you, travel with the team, write constantly and generally put more effort into that publication than most of you put into any college activity, I almost guarentee. They work 40+ hours a week, every single week and don't get paid for it.
So, attack my writing if you will, or my lack of facts (i was refering to the ripping up of a 7-year-old girl's sign, btw... and frankly, I don't care who throws stuff, it's our job to stop them), but don't attack the newspaper as a whole with blanket generalizations that you have no basis of argument for.
Oh, and finally, for those of you in town, my sincere hope is that you like what we've done with the wraps for the last two weekends. It's just another instance where we're trying to provide more information for our readers. I hope its been helpful, but if not, we'll stop. Believe me, it will save me a ton of time and pain.

Charles Persons
Sun Senior Editor

[rhovorka]

Well...I'm gonna stick up for Charles and the Sun.  I didn't think his article was poorly written...and it got a great point across.  And since he reaches a lot more of the student body than any of us here do, I'm certainly happy about that.  I'm also glad that an editor would care enough about the team to read and participate in this and the uscho forum.

Second, the Sun is pretty decent for a student run paper.  No, it's not the New York Times, but think about how much they have to do as well as be students.  I lived with 2 Sunnies my senior year, and the amount of dedication is quite impressive.  My sister (a Cornell communications major) went to Penn (sucks) for grad school, and she told me that she really pined for the Daily Sun while she was there, because the Daily Pennsylvanian was pretty poor, in her opinion.

Charles, I think the wraps are a great idea!  I noticed that you people started doing that for football games, and to start that for the home stretch of the hockey season is great.  During my years at Cornell, the only hockey-related front-page wraps were for the 25th anniversary commemoration of the 1970 perfect season, when we beat Harvard in '95, and the return to the ECAC final four.  I kept them all.

[marty\'74]

Charles,

Thanks for writing the article.  I don't care how accurate it was - it needed to be written.

Please, no more garbage on the ice!

[jeh25]

I have to agree with Charles here. Admittedly, my sample size is small but the Daily Sun is head and shoulders above the Yale Daily News and the Syracuse Daily Orange.

Regardless of the details of who ripped down who's sign first, the point remains that we need to ask ourselves if the fans at Lynah are transforming from a raucous, obnoxious,  clever bunch armed with sarcasm and what passes for wit at a hockey game into a group of boring vulgar hooligans.

Several years ago, I brought a High School friend who went to IC to a hockey game. To this day, he talks about how clever the fans were. Yet, at last weekend's game, for the most part, all I heard was a lone fan yelling Har-vard or Brow-wn to the inevitable crowd response of Sucks. While I have no problem using the word sucks, it gets a little tiresome when it is the only cheer people use. I don't worry so much about being vulgar or profane, but rather, I'm afraid of being the crowd becoming witless and boring.  

I know that the people around me, Ben and Age particularly, were getting sick of hearing Schoool sucks!, yet whenever I tried to start something else, it invariably died a quick death. Admittedly, a fan that hasn't seen a Brown game before is unlikely to join in for "Round the bowl, do the hole, if it's Brown flush it down" on the first try, but you'd think that after the 2nd or 3th try, people could follow along....

"What's the color of Poop? Brown" and "Brown is Poop, Poop is Brown" may not strain one's intellect but at least it gives us some variety from hearing Brown sucks over and over. While playing a school named Brown, the scatalogical potential is endless!

[Josh '99]

Charles-

Glad you read this forum, it'd be much easier than trying to hunt you down on USCHO.  Anyway, no comments about the quality of the paper, I'm an engineer so I'm certainly not qualified to talk about the quality of anyone's writing.

Anyway, I read your article, and I think you're dead on about the throwing of extra fish, and of bottles on the ice after the game.  The newspaper and the fish the one time are special cases (as are hats after a hat trick, as someone pointed out on USCHO), but other than that it's inexcusable.  It takes balls to go on a public forum (the Sun being, realistically, a much more widely read platform than anything posted on this board) and say, flat out, that what a number of students did was wrong.  I for one applaud you for doing so.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to meet you and thank you for it in person.

[Greg Berge]

OK, OK, put down the knife.  I'm sure everybody at the Sun works very hard, and I hereby retract everything bad I've ever said about them.

Suffice that I think the paper is far better than it was when I was an undergrad.

Honestly, the only thing I expect from the school paper is good coverage of the hockey team, and in that category the Sun has always been a valuable asset.  We need all the voices we can muster to get kids to stop causing trouble for the team and the large majority of good fans, so thank you very much Charles - I owe you a beer.

[Tom Hamill \'85]

Thanks, Charles, for giving this issue the exposure that it deserves.

[Al DeFlorio]

Thanks, Charles.  Here's another vote for the wraps.

[ugarte]

Bravo, Charles. I'm glad you entered the fray to defend yourself and the (unfairly) maligned Sun.

College papers, by and large, aren't very good.  They are run by dedicated, hardworking kids.  (Why many big city newspapers are such godawful trash is a different question.) College columnists, by and large, write as if they were 21 or younger.  They have a moral and intellectual clarity that can only come from a lack of experience in the world. And they desperately need editing by someone who really knows how to write.

I do not believe that Charles' facts are wrong. Every report of the game said that Cornell students were throwing water bottles on the ice.  You are the first person, Ben '03, to say otherwise.  

The Sun is far better than other college papers I have read (not to mention the Denver Post, among other "real" newspapers), and while Charles' column was not itself spectacular, it was certainly better than what you will get in other college papers. I appreciated the Sun while I was at Cornell, and am surprised that others didn't feel the same.

Ed. note: By the time I finished writing this, I was happy to see that Charles and the Sun had picked up a half-dozen defenders. My post became overkill, but here it remains.

[Ben Doyle 03]

big red apple, I believe I said,

    "(2) Again, not defending the throwing of bottles on the ice after a  win, but the bottles after the Brown game came from exactly as you stated, six year olds, only they were seated in section O."


I never said students did not throw bottles at the Harvard game, the Brown game was another story, the first bottles after the win on Saturday came from section O, they were little kids, six or eight year old little kids. After that, students may have thrown more on the ice, I never claimed otherwise and that was not my point. I was just stating that the reference to six year olds was in fact true.

[Rich Shapiro \'85]

Disclosure -- I am a former Sun sportswriter ('81 through '85).  That said, I can say with reasonable objectivity that the only Ivy paper comparable to the Daily Sun is the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Greg, I love your comments on this board, but on this topic I think you are off-base.  But since you have already offered your mea culpa, you are foregiven.

[Charles Persons]

I appreciate the kind words, everyone. I really don't normally go that ballistic, there are just some nerves you shouldn't hit.

Nonetheless, apology accepted, and in general we really do appreciate the feedback, positive and negative. It's the only way we know what you're thinking. We may not post, but all the sports editors read what goes on in here.

Thanks again,
Charles