In the Ives stone courtyard, it feels like the harsh window of winter has finally cracked, and the sun streams through. Hannah Shvets, a Cornell sophomore and Ithaca Common Council Ward 5 candidate, meets me outside to chat about her work petitioning to get onto the June ballot. As we make introductions, she’s polite but nervous, with none of the gusto and eagerness I’d expected from an aspiring student politician. We shake hands—hers trembling subtly, like a ripple on water. I wonder how many times she’s been interviewed, and if she’s used to it yet.
Hannah’s campaign bridges two worlds: the working-class neighborhoods of Ithaca, and the ivory tower on the hill, Cornell University. Shvets moved to Ithaca from Texas in her childhood. “[Ithaca] was definitely a huge shift from Texas, and for a few years I was kind of hoping to go back,” she said.“But now that I’ve been here for close to a decade, it’s started to really feel like home. I’m glad I decided to stay here for college, because now I get to have a more continual relationship with the city. Ithaca is a town with a lot of really strong community and political groups, so it’s a great place to be involved.”
She explains to me how she first began to get involved with community organizing as a high school student writing for Ithaca High School’s student newspaper, The Tattler. Interviewing the teacher's union, the school’s administration, and fellow students gave her a sense of being “part of a greater community.”
We have a laugh about a Tattler piece she wrote in 2023, “The Good Parts of Ithaca”, where she described the various restaurants and cultural quirks she loved about the city. Her juvenilia contained the cynicism typical of teenage life, “I’ve lived in Ithaca for seven years now and have resigned myself to being here for another four,” she wrote. “Part of me dreads this, but I’ve also learned to really love this little town and all its quirkiness.” Though as I speak with her, this cynicism seems to shed.
“Did I mention Adam’s Grill in there? I still recommend that to every single Cornell student. It's good for us to be going—not just to Collegetown, but also downtown and to small businesses,” she says. “I think I mentioned Cup O’ Joe Cafe. Yeah, it left the Ithaca Mall; it's gone from Ithaca now. That's just a part of a bigger problem where taxes are so high that our favorite family businesses are leaving to go elsewhere.”
Throughout our interview, she answers my questions carefully and directly, without bragging. It takes some prodding for her to reveal she’s been endorsed by seven community groups—among them the Ithaca Democratic Socialists of America, the New York Working Families Party, and the Ithaca Tenants Union.
Since its founding in March 2020, the Ithaca Tenants Union has advocated for progressive housing legislation. Hannah contributed to the union’s push for Ithaca to join other New York cities in passing the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, a piece of legislation that stabilizes rent rates in certain buildings constructed before 1974.
“Working with them- that's how I realized that this was something I really cared about. I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to see done. And then when I saw that there was an opportunity to make those things happen, I kind of felt like this was the next step.”
There’s a palpable shift in her demeanor when she talks about the changes she wants for Ithaca. Her voice strengthens, her answers grow longer—she seems more comfortable talking about the city than about herself.
“It's disappointing that [rent stabilization measures] still haven't been passed, considering that the majority of Ithaca are tenants,” she says. “There's been a lot of pushback by people who think that it will unnecessarily hurt landlords or homeowners. What I would say to that is: it isn't saying that you can't rent out your properties. It's not saying you can't make any money off of them. It's just saying those increases in profit should not be increased exorbitantly. People need to have a chance for their wages to catch up with their rents. And I think it's important for all of us—homeowners and tenants—to see ourselves as, you know, not fighting each other. We're fighting a bigger thing.”
Another promise of Hannah’s campaign is Just Cause legislation, a movement that seeks to end at-will employment and establish protections against arbitrary dismissal by mandating that employers give a cause when terminating a worker.
“We all benefit from higher retention, lower turnover, and investing in workforces. Constantly having new workers, firing them over arbitrary reasons. It's not productive. And it just creates a culture that is not conducive for good work. Companies are concerned: How will this impact our company? Will we have to keep bad workers? What I tell them is that, no, you will keep good workers, you will invest in your workers, and you will give workers a chance.”
She tells me how frustrating it is as a local and a Cornell student to see the university separate itself from the Ithaca community. “None of this can really be achieved if Cornell continues to not contribute to the city that we live in. If we open the books, they have the money. We know they do. If Cornell saw themselves as part of the Ithaca community, we would all be better off. If they put money into the school district, they would have better faculty because people want to work in cities where their kids can get a good, quality education. If students were more concerned about these things and if we really gathered together to pressure Cornell to give to the school district, to the city, I think that Cornell would see that and they would reconsider their investments. We're the students, we're the customers—we have that power and we should be using it. Cornell should be doing what we want. So I think we need to speak to Cornell decision makers and explain to them that this rivalry between Ithaca and Cornell is not productive, and it is going to eventually come to a peak, and it's going to cause problems. So we need to start addressing it.”
The push for Cornell to contribute more financially to Ithaca is a contentious issue. In 2023, a new agreement was reached for Cornell to make an annual $4 million inflation-sensitive contribution to the city, which faced community outrage. Cornell is estimated to hold over $2 billion in tax-exempt property, around 60% of Tompkins’ total tax-exempt property. In 2023, Tompkins County Assessor Jay Franklin reported that if “all Cornell property was taxable at the same rate as all homeowners pay, Cornell would owe the city $33 million, the county $15 million, and the school district $46 million.” With a 2025 city budget of around $108 million, a financial contribution more reflective of Cornell’s land holdings could mean significant reductions to taxes paid by homeowners, businesses, and tenants in Ithaca.
Shvets is a supporter of Cornell increasing its contribution. “Universities are supposed to be educating people. Part of that means investing in public schools, because there are no people in universities if there's no one in public schools.”
A few weeks later, I sit in on a Cornell YDSA meeting, with Shvets next to me in a fold-out plastic chair. The room is a cozy mishmash of beanbags and armchairs, and a picnic table sits littered with campaign literature. For most of the meeting, she cracks jokes and applauds the achievements of other members. When peers ask about her petitioning progress, she speaks the same way she did when I interviewed her—direct, pragmatic, and uttered without the frills I’ve come to expect from public officials. She allows her more excitable campaign manager to deliver most of the updates, including the announcement that she’s gathered enough petition signatures to run.
To run for a Common Council seat in Ithaca, Hannah first had to petition door-to-door in the ward she planned to represent and collect signatures from 5% of the registered voters in her party. She is running as a Democrat in Ward 5, so this year that meant gathering 67 signatures from Democrats in the district, which includes North and most of West campus. Reaching that number secured her spot on the ballot for the June primary.
“We’ve had some really good responses,” she tells me of her experience petitioning door-to-door. “A lot of people are obviously concerned about rent and jobs in Ithaca, so I think a lot of people have expressed that this is a platform that speaks to them, and that's been really great to see.”
She adds, “I think some people also have concerns about my age and me being a student. People are startled by seeing a very young woman running for office. But what I say to all of them is: I might be young, but we have precedent of people being young on Common Council. Plus, I actually grew up here, so I feel like I have the necessary experience, even if I'm young, to do this work. Even with a lot of gender and age dynamics I have to fight against, it can be done, and it should be done. [Ward 5] is a student district, so it makes sense to have students representing us.”
As Hannah pointed out, Cornell students have held seats on Ithaca’s Common Council before. In fact, four of the ten Common Council seats are currently held by Cornell students, including the seat Hannah will be running for. However, this is not a trend everyone in Ithaca relishes. Patrick Kuehl’s 2023 write-in campaign faced intense criticism for its lack of publicity before Election Day, ousting an incumbent resident unaware he had any opponents. The debacle left some wondering whether Ithaca’s government should have any student involvement at all.
I ask her what sets her campaign apart from the campaigns of Cornell students before her. “I feel like I have a really direct stake in the game. My grandparents live in subsidized senior housing, my parents work here, my brother lives here. So it's deeply personal to me in a way that I think a lot of Cornell students don't have.”
Later, YDSA members sprawl across armchairs and patches of carpet, phone banking for Hannah’s campaign. Self-conscious chuckles rattle around the room as people dial numbers and speak to student neighbors. It’s endearing to see this side of politics—a group of young, passionate—though not especially suave—people trying to make something happen in their community.
“It's important to bring [Cornell] students into politics in a way that we're not usually involved in. Most students here are not registered, are not really politically active, and kind of see this as a temporary place for them. One of the reasons why I want to run as a student and a local is to kind of, like, convince students that this is their home and that they should be contributing to it. We can't just live here and use the TCAT and use fire services and use all these resources and not be a part of it. We need to engage. So I think that because I have that unique perspective as a local and a Cornell student, this is a way, especially in our current political climate, to bring more people into the political movement and get people involved and see themselves as part of a bigger community,” says Hannah.
She echoes this sentiment a few weeks later, standing in front of a large demonstration at Dewitt Park. People hoist creative anti-fascist and anti-Trump posters and chat excitedly as Hannah takes the stage.
“We’re here because our students, our classmates, our friends are being deported, because things that are necessary to all Ithacans and Americans are being cut, and because we have a government that does not care about working people anymore—that only protects billionaires. That’s why I’m running for city council. We need a city and a country that cares about average people. We need local protections. If our federal government won’t stand for us, we can do things here too. Showing up, and caring, and working with your neighbors—we can make a difference on our local level, and I’m so happy to see all of you here.” She leaves the stage to whoops, cheers, and even some tambourines from the raucous crowd.
As I’m chatting with her afterwards, an older woman approaches Hannah. “You look like a movie star up there!” she says excitedly. “Your sincerity was so beautiful… so uplifting.” Hannah blushes and thanks her as she hurries away.
We watch her go. “I actually hate public speaking,” Hannah jokes. “But that was nice of her to say.”
I laugh. It’s strange—she isn’t who I expected. She’s soft-spoken; her hands shake when she stands in front of a crowd. But something in the way she speaks—some sincerity, as the kind stranger pointed out—that endears me to her, makes me believe in her. Her utter lack of political bravado is refreshing. She’s a candidate who sees governance as a tool to achieve a just community—not an aspiration or a resume builder.
“I don't see this as part of a political journey for me. I don't really see myself as a politician—I don't really want to be a politician. It's kind of just something I saw as an opportunity to contribute back.”
The efforts of Hannah’s petitioning team have earned her 89 signatures, allowing her to run for a Common Council seat in the primary. Phone banking campaigns have helped her team engage with fellow students about absentee ballots and, as always, focus on getting young people involved. “It's really important to get people registered, get people to apply for those absentee ballots and convince people that even during the summer, you know, it only takes a few minutes. We’re trying to speak to people and get them excited about issues that really matter and make them want to engage even when they're back home.”
“So, why should they be excited?” I joke. “What’s the bottom line?”
“I'm part of this community, and I'm fighting for it,” she smiles. “I have the perspective of all sides in this, and I want to bring us together towards a better and more affordable and more just Ithaca. That's the line, affordable and just Ithaca.”