Cornell students are grappling with a series of tragedies that have left the campus shaken. In the past week, Winter Knutson ’27 was found dead in Fall Creek Gorge, a student was hospitalized after falling in the same area, a report of drugging and sexual assault at the Chi Phi house led to the fraternity’s suspension and a Cornell custodian was charged with second-degree murder in an Ithaca homicide.
Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi sent an email statement to the Cornell community on Monday highlighting resources for students and encouraging them to “lean on each other and show support, empathy and care to each other.” But many found the University’s response disappointing.
“The administration’s response seemed very impersonal and perfunctory to me,” said Ananya Prasad ’27, an Ithaca local who attended Ithaca High School alongside Knutson. “If just one of the three tragedies that happened over the weekend occurred, I think it still would’ve warranted a longer and more in-depth email.”
Prasad told The Sun that she hoped the administration would give students a “mental health day,” an idea that has gained traction among Cornell students on social media sites like Sidechat over the past few days. She added that it would be “a proactive way to support us, even though it obviously wouldn’t solve all mental health problems on campus.”
Peter John Loewen, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, told The Sun that Cornell’s administration rejected the mental health day idea. “They’ve done it in the past,” Loewen said. “But they took that decision not to provide it.”
Loewen hosted a community meeting Wednesday evening for members of arts and sciences — the college in which Knutson was enrolled and in which their father, Prof. Allen Knutson, mathematics, teaches — “to process events of the past week.”
“There’s a lot of pressure right now,” Loewen said in an interview right after the meeting concluded. “It’s a combination of the normal stress of being a Cornell student, the political events in the U.S. and these recent, terribly tragic events.”
“Most of us professors here have kids, right? So you think about what that’s like if you have a kid who was harmed on campus, or a kid who was the victim of a terrible accident, or a kid who felt that the dark waters had risen so high,” Loewen said. “It’s terrible, right? But I didn’t lose a kid. So I’m very thankful for that.”
Students told The Sun that they have been grappling with stress all week.
“The environment has definitely felt very anxiety-ridden and tense,” said Alia Amer ’26, an undergraduate resident fellow and peer mentor at William Keeton House. “Most of the people I’ve spoken with have felt like they’ve had to fend for themselves and haven’t received much support.”
The weight of recent events has been difficult for Mariam Saad ’27 to process. “When I go to classes and talk to classmates, it’s odd how things are brought up in conversation as if it’s just the next drama or rumor to be talked about,” Saad said. “We don’t get a chance to process one thing before something else happens.”
For Amer, the resources highlighted in Lombardi’s email felt insufficient. “Lombardi’s response kind of felt like he only addressed the situation because he was required to,” Amer said. “It’s the same resources we see on bulletin boards.”
Amer added that “there needs to be more communication about what the administration plans to do to help students rather than just throwing QR codes and links at us.”
Maryam Ismail ’27 is a Sun contributor and can be reached at [email protected].