During its first meeting of the semester, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly passed a resolution formally expressing its disapproval of the Cornell Committee on Expressive Activity’srecommendations on a final Expressive Activity Policy. Resolution Six passed on Monday with 21 votes in approval and six abstentions.
In 2023, the CCEA was “charged with writing a report to evaluate and recommend changes to the existing expressive activity policies for Cornell University,” according to the committee’s Dec. 18 final report. The University is now preparing a final version of the Expressive Activity Policy, following a spring 2024 semester filled with frequent protest activity.
“We are hoping that [Resolution Six] gets the attention of Interim President Kotlikoff, his executive cabinet and the Board of Trustees,” said Nicholas Brennan, GPSA executive vice president. “Graduate students have serious concerns about the current recommendations.”
Although the statement accompanying Resolution Six acknowledges that changes have been made — such as updating the masking policy and removing the “Spontaneous Protest” policy that limited disruptive sound use without prior approval to Ho Plaza and Day Hall to a one-hour window — the GPSA is dismayed by a lack of change surrounding disruptive activity regulations.
“Changes have been made, but it’s not enough, unfortunately,” said Srinica Hampi, GPSA student advocacy committee chair and resolution sponsor.
Among the GPSA’s top concerns is that the University fails to protect minorities from hate speech on campus. According to GPSA’s statement, CCEA’s policy “currently absolves the university of the responsibility it has toward protecting its community from hate speech, which may make certain community members feel unsafe, harming our academic community and the interest the university has in maintaining an open culture.”
According to a University website, while hate speech can be considered “extremely offensive,” the posting of “hate speech does not generally constitute a violation of university policies or codes.” The website further explains that the policy protects “freedom of expression” at Cornell.
Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, and therefore “cannot lawfully be censored, punished, or unduly burdened by the government — including public colleges and universities,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The assembly is also concerned that the language used and recommended by the CCEA surrounding expressive activity regulations is vague and open to interpretation.
For example, the assembly addressed the CCEA’s use of the word “disruption,” arguing that this wording creates questions about how the University decides which actions are considered disruptive.
Echoing this concern, Brennan said that disruptions are not uncommon on campus.
“As a graduate student, I would say I’m disrupted all the time, every day. Whether that is a late TCAT bus or something in the lab breaks,” Brennan said. “This policy needs to be more in touch with the regularity that disruption and inconvenience happens.”
Hampi said that the assembly wants clearer definitions of open-ended phrases used in the CCEA’s recommendations.
In addition to clarifying ambiguous language, the assembly recommends removing content neutrality in all forms from the adopted policy and replacing it with language that “emphasizes fairness and clemency.”
Under the committee’s recommendations, activities deemed expressive are subject to both general policy and the Expressive Activity Policy, a standing that the GPSA calls “doubly damned.”
The CCEA recommends dividing expressive activity violations into five tiers for disciplinary purposes, ranging from peaceful assembly to threats, violence and property destruction. The proposed definitions of these categories may guide the disciplinary processes if an individual or group violates the policy.
“It is not content-neutral to determine the level of penalty deserved for an activity on the basis of its expressive value,” the GPSA wrote. “Nor is it content-neutral to expect any University officer to be making regular determinations on what extent an activity is expressive such that the recommended policy be applied.”
The GPSA wrote that under the latest policy recommendations, interrupting a lecture by protesting the loss of human life and interrupting a lecture with a loud typewriter would result in similar disciplinary action from the University.
“Our work in all of this is to make sure there is nitty-gritty policy language that matches that sentiment,” Brennan said. “That’s where our concerns rest.”
Hope Thomas ’27 is a Sun contributor and can be reached at ht496@cornell.edu.
