Chili Fest, Team Newsday and Others

Team Newsday, from left: Casey
Musarra, Kaydi Poirier and Erin Geismar

Chili Fest last Saturday brought students flocking to The Commons — and alumni returning to town. Among those who came in for the event were our three alumni at newsday.com: former Ithacan Editor in Chief Erin Geismar ’09, now newsday.com's online community news editor; former Multimedia Editor Kaydi Poirier ’11, now newsday.com's assistant entertainment news editor; and former Managing Editor Casey Musarra ’11, now a newsday.com sports web producer. They drove up from the city with former Multimedia Editor Andy Swift ’09, now senior entertainment editor at hollywoodlife.com.

From left: Kaydi Poirier, Andy Swift,
 current Editor in Chief Kelsey O’Connor,
Aaron Edwards and Erin Geismar.

We made the rounds of chili stands (VIP tickets are the only way to go) and later ran into Aaron Munzer ’08 and   Kara Cusolito ’08. Last year’s editor in chief, Aaron Edwards ’12, was here for the weekend as well. He’s currently a news producer at Digital First Media in New York. In addition to attending Chili Fest, he spoke to a group of our feature writers on Sunday, spent some time in the Ithacan office and gave us all his cold. Thanks, Aaron.

Aaron Munzer and Kara
Cusolito

Kerry Tkacik ’12, who’s living in Queens and freelancing in Manhattan after interning at Rolling Stone last fall and graduating in December, stopped in on Friday on her way to visit her family. And former Managing Editor Deepa Shah ’06 was in town this weekend as well, although we missed each other.
One highlight of Chili Fest was watching our current sports editor, junior Taylor Palmer, compete in the  hot pepper–eating contest. He’d won the competition the past two years, but finished second this year. You can read his first-person account of the experience in this Thursday’s Ithacan.
Seeing these former students was a pleasant preview of next month’s annual dinner with the New York alumni in conjunction with the spring National College Media Convention at the Sheraton Hotel and Towers in Manhattan. Eight students and I will be attending.

Taylor Palmer competing in the hot pepper–eating contest.