Kathy Zoner was sworn in yesterday as the chief of the Cornell University Police Department, becoming the first woman to hold the position since its inception. Zoner, who had served as the interim chief since May 20, was sworn in by retiring chief Curtis S. Ostrander at an impromptu ceremony at the Crash Fire Rescue building at the Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport.

Correction Appended

Risley Hall recently shed some light on a piece of its historic architecture — literally. In September, lampposts were installed on the four gates the residential college, a project that was initiated by one of Cornell’s student architects.

It all started in 2006, when Joe DeSense ’09, then architecture student and Risley resident, came across several old photos of Risley from 1913, dug up by a friend who had been writing a paper on the history of Risley.

“I noticed these brick lampposts, two in each driveway leading up to the building, and thought, ‘Why did they get rid of something so nice?’” DeSense said.

DeSense eventually proposed his idea of restoring the lampposts to Elaine Bushey, Risley’s residence hall director, who responded favorably.

Jose Bladimir Antuna, a Mexican reporter who often reported on violent drug crime, was found dead in the Northern Mexican state of Durango yesterday, shortly after he was kidnapped. Antuna’s strangled body was discovered alongside a note claiming he had been killed for giving information to the Mexican military, according to the Associated Press.

While the federal judge previously twice dismissed Margaret Leibowitz’s ’73 charges against Cornell without a trial, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided to give Leibowitz the opportunity to make her case in her six-year legal battle against the School of Industrial Labor School on Oct. 23.

Early exit polls from Virginia’s gubernatorial race showed that the percentage of voters who were under 30 shrank significantly from last year. The same seems to be true for the Tompkins County local elections, as most Cornellians did not turn out for what were largely uncontested elections.

Correction Appended

In the wake of substantial budget cuts for Cornell’s libraries, the University signed a deal this past weekend to sell a 95,000 volume duplicative collection in Uris Library to Tsinghua University in Beijing, according to Anne Kenney, University librarian for the Carl A. Kroch Library.

Cornell has been collaborating with Tsinghua on research projects, faculty exchanges and student work and study options for the past decade. In 2004, former Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman '77 visited Tsinghua to initiate a “strategic partnership,” which laid the groundwork for future cooperation in the fields of engineering and physical sciences, according to the Cornell website.

Famed columnist, author and political commentator Arianna Huffington posted on her Twitter account just before she took to the stage at Ithaca College last night to address the current state of journalism and the rise of new media.

Despite the recession, Cornell’s cancer research has recently received a boost of $14 million. This funding will enable the establishment of a new Center on the Microenvironment and Metastasis, in which Cornell researchers in Ithaca will partner with clinicians and scientists at New York City’s Weill Cornell Medical College.

The Green Dragon Café lurks deep in the lower level of Sibley Hall, and has featured one of campus’s most laid-back atmospheres for coffee and chat since 1961. But new administrative measures requiring hats could threaten what has been termed “the Green Dragon brand,” and the staff is refusing to take the dictate without a fight.

Local grocery vendor Wilson Farms was the subject of an attempted robbery Sunday night, at approximately 10:49 p.m., the Ithaca Police Department said yesterday.