The resources you mentioned are hosted through Cornell by volunteers (who have other full time jobs), presumably Cornell has a rigorous in-house hosting system. And this is only for receiving the articles submitted to them that are pre- and post-print, they do not solicit articles or comments, nor do they have management of any journal publications or events.

I truly do not think you are grasping the enormity of the tasks required to run a journal. It is not simply forwarding the article to peer reviewers and then hosting it. There are legal aspects that go along with managing a journal, recruiting a review board for each article (making sure they are experts in the field, not just random reviewers), getting comments on each article, maintaining a job board for a student chapter, hosting events, hosting annual or biannual conferences, and so many more things. Each article doesn't just get put up online, it literally needs to be PUBLISHED which comes with it's own aspects, isbn numbers, doi number, fees, etc.

The paywall includes paying for the specific article, or becoming a member of the journal. Being member of the journal unlocks ALL articles in the journal (which didn't used to be the case prior to digital editions. I still have my physical journals editions of many journals I'm a member of because it used to be you only had access to the articles from the years you were actually a member and were sent the physical copies). Many people that publish will be members of the journal which lowers the cost to submit articles significantly, while also giving them access to the articles published. Additionally, instead of looking solely at the journal for the article, most people know to look at the source of the research for the PDF (ie, look for the author's university site or personal page to look for a link to a PDF) because generally whoever paid for the research wants the research to be available to be read, especially if it was paid for by taxpayers. And STILL if you find an article that you don't have access to, and your university is not a member to the journal or local library is not a member and neither can do an interlibrary loan for it, you can STILL simply email the author and ask if they can send it to you and chances are they will be more than willing.

So I'm still not entirely sure what the issue is, except an incredibly immature and naive desire to complain about information not being open access because grr I've been told all capitalism is bad, so I must apply it to everything because I don't know how to actually look for information and don't know how to think for myself grrr.

Not exactly, you should do what interests you. I meant as in look at accepted papers for tips on organization, flow, how to explain your methodology and present figures etc. Really great research can suffer sometimes if no one can understand your methodology or your motivation for your experiments. But of course besides that it’s helpful if the presented work is meaningful and impactful for your field (your project advisor can help scope this)