Welcome to Cornell, Class of 2030 and congratulations. You arrive from all 50 states and 102 countries, from nearly every language and tradition a college campus can hold, to spend the next four years on a campus that is now, undeniably, yours.
The Cornell Daily Sun has been Cornell’s living record since 1880, which is to say that for 145 years a rotating cast of undergraduates has walked into our downtown office and decided, against most reasonable advice, that Cornell in all of its dimensions, the shadowy parts and the glistening ones, the assemblies and the protests and the snowstorms and the Saturday games and the meetings nobody else sits through, is worth putting on the record — and starting this month you are worth putting on it too, because you are what happens to Cornell next, and what happens to Cornell is kind of our thing.
Over the next four years, you will come to understand Cornell not through a brochure or a tour or a welcome speech but through the slow accumulation of our record, day by day, and by extension through what it comes to hold about you. But, our record is only as true as it is representative, and a paper written entirely by undergraduates is only as representative as the undergraduates who write it.
Which is where you come in. The Sun is written, edited, photographed and published entirely by students who decided, at some point in a semester like the one you are about to start, that they wanted to be one of the people keeping that record rather than one of the people kept in it. If you feel that same pull at all, follow us on Instagram at @cornellsun for recruitment updates, walk into our office at 139 W. State St., submit a guest piece to our Associate and Opinion editors or write to me directly. There is always room on the masthead for the next class of folks willing to help keep the record true.
You will hear the chimes soon. You will cross the gorges in the fog and stare down the slope at a sunset that will embarrass every sunset you have seen before it. You will build a version of yourself that you have only just started to imagine.
And through all of it, The Sun will keep the record, on you and with you.
— Sophia Dasser
Signal/Cell: +1.321.203.6550
Sophia Dasser '28 is the Editor in Chief of the 144th Editorial Board and was the Opinion Editor of the 143rd Editorial Board. She is a Computer Science and Philosophy student in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her column Dass(er) The Point explores the intersection of technology, ethics and social justice, with a focus on the overlooked and underrepresented. She can be reached at sdasser@cornellsun.com or at 321-203-6550.
