The Cornell Employee Assembly unanimously voted to pass a resolution to declare its support for undocumented students under the Deferred Action of Children Arrivals program.
More than 2,000 Cornell students, faculty, staff and alumni have supported the original petition in November and similar petitions are circulating at over 100 other colleges and universities, according to the resolution.
The resolution comes at a time when, following the presidential election,according to multiple news sources, the nation has seen an increase in the frequency of discriminatory actions against people of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims and other historically marginalized people.
Before approving the amendment, the Assembly changed the name of the resolution and added content from statements by Interim President Hunter Rawlings.
The Assembly additionally discussed parking and transportation at Cornell, emphasizing that the two should be addressed “as a single unit,” said Jeremy Kruser, executive vice chair of the E.A.
“My personal belief is that part of the problems that we are running into is trying to separate those into two individual things without enough connection between them,” said Kruser.
Kruser cited difficulties with using TCAT as one of the primary reasons why the issues should be tackled together.
“TCAT buses are often not showing up when they’re supposed to, the information is often not updated, there are routes disappearing, and the other side of that is that we’re hearing from TCAT that they are underfunded,” Kruser said.
“We require reliable transportation across campus,” Kruser added. “As parking gets pushed farther to the edges of campus, and spots harder to come by, we require reliable transportation across campus.”