Black Students United held an “Emergency Meeting” Friday evening in response to a letter sent by the Department of Education ordering the elimination of “racial preferences” and race-conscious programs from admissions, hiring and institutional programming at federally funded educational institutions. At the forefront of the nearly 60-person meeting were concerns that community spaces for marginalized groups on campus would be targeted and closed.
In the Instagram post announcing the event, BSU stated, “The Trump Administration looks to end affinity groups for marginalized people across all schools & universities … we won’t allow this to happen.”
The Feb. 14 ED letter called the use of race in dormitories, such as some of Cornell’s program houses, a “shameful echo” of America’s history and banned the inclusion of race in decisions of all “aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” This includes admissions, financial aid, administrative support and housing. Educational institutions were given until Feb. 28 to comply, after which they may be subject to investigation and loss of federal funding.
Faced with the threat of the letter’s directives, leaders of BSU — a registered student organization that receives University funding — chose to convene on Friday.
"[We] wanted to just be a place in where we are all on the same page, so that if [Cornell does comply], we can mobilize quickly and we can make sure that we're letting Cornell know that we aren’t taking that for an answer,” said Athena Holloway ’27, BSU co-president. “We want to preserve our communities, our identities [and] our well-being.”
Various race-based programs are present across Cornell. Ujamaa Residential College — a living space that celebrates Black heritage — is among several program houses on campus that cater to communities based on race or cultural background. There are also dozens of affinity groups and student organizations on campus, and race remains a focus in many academic courses.
In a statement released by the University on Friday morning in response to campus concerns about changing federal guidelines, Interim President Michael Kotlikoff affirmed the University’s commitment to diversity, calling it a “driver of our excellence.” The statement, however, also emphasized that Cornell “follow[s] the law.”
“We will continue, as well, to work to ensure that our principles are consistently maintained, and to advance our mission in ways that comply with existing federal and state law,” Kotlikoff wrote.
Many students at Friday’s “emergency meeting” expressed dissatisfaction with the University's response and unease over their commitment to “follow the law” in the context of recent ED letter.
Celeste Naughton ’25, former president of Underrepresented Minorities in Computing, acknowledged that the University must at times “have their hands tied,” but still felt that the response was “disingenuous.”
“I feel like they're just saying words to us, and I think they kind of just discredit how critically that we, as students, are thinking about this issue,” Naughton said.
When asked by The Sun if the University would comply with the directives of the Feb. 14 ED letter if it was recognized into “law,” Cornell Media Relations did not respond in time to a request for comment.
Speaking at the event was also Christian Flournoy ’27, the Student Assembly’s vice president of diversity and inclusion, and Niles Hite ’26, the assembly's vice president of finance. Flournoy and Hite explained Resolution 33, which was passed by the assembly on Thursday and calls on Cornell to not comply with the directives of the ED letter.
“The University needs to be more intentional about actually actively fighting stuff, rather than being like, ‘Oh, we'll apply the law,’” Hite said in an interview with The Sun. “I get that's important, but [it’s] still ignoring the fact [that] these organizations exist.”
Hite explained that the Student Assembly is now waiting for Kotlikoff to respond to the resolution — the next step of the University’s shared governance process. Resolution 33 lists 56 academic and professional programs, as well as another 58 affinity groups that are “at risk of being defunded or shut down” if Cornell fully complies with the broad guidelines of the Feb. 14 ED letter.
For BSU leadership, there was a sense of urgency to the meeting. While BSU co-president Cameron Smith ’26 did not feel like the directives of the letter would take effect immediately, she shared concerns about action taken by the federal government in the near future.
“At one point we're trying to calm [the community] and say, ‘We have a little bit of time,’" Smith said. “[But] before this semester is over there are some things that we might have to do, there are some things that we might have to stand on, there are some fears that we might have to get over and we need to be ready as a community to do those things.”
Much of the over two-hour long meeting was dedicated toward “strategizing” ways to react if the University complied with the contents of the letter. Among were ideas to increase BSU’s independence from the University, maintain institutional knowledge and foster community — both within the Black community and with other affinity groups on campus.
“We're all neighbors with each other, and we're all gonna face it the same way,” Holloway said. “We need to all make sure that we're uniting together to be able to confront the change.”
Dorothy France-Miller ’27 contributed reporting.
