The Student Assembly unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday to implement guidelines for campus-wide community restorative days in response to student deaths and sexual assault Crime Alerts.
Resolution 17 follows a string of campus tragedies in the past week, including a report of drugging and sexual assault at the Chi Phi house, a student found dead in Fall Creek Gorge and a student hospitalized after falling in the same area.
S.A. members expressed disappointment in what they see as an inadequate administrative response to these events, echoing student discontentment and calls for a “mental health day.”
The only communication sent to the entire student body was an email from Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi where he urged the Cornell community to “lean on each other and show support, empathy and care to each other,” provided links to counseling and victim advocacy resources and announced a campus-wide community support meeting held last Tuesday.
“Shame on you, shame on you,” Student Health Advisory Committee Chair Davian Gekman ’27 said in reaction to the administrative response.
V.P. of Finance Niles Hite ’26 explained that he hopes passing Resolution 17 following this week’s events will set a good precedent for the administrative responses to future tragedies.
“As hard as we work, as much as we go through in general, it can be a really stressful environment and then to have outside factors also contribute to that the least that people deserve is a mental health day,” Hite said.
In recognition of how these tragic events have negatively impacted the “mental, emotional, and physical health of the student population,” Resolution 17 seeks to create a written precedent for future responses to tragic events. A community restorative day would be granted in the event of a student death or a sexual assault Crime Alert.
“Everyone needs time to slow down, take in what’s happened and be able to kind of reset … and have that time to process it,” said V.P. of Diversity and Inclusion Christian Flournoy ’27.
Kendall Eddington is a Sun contributor and can be reached at [email protected].