College of Business

Board of Trustees Authorizes College of Business

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Cornell’s Board of Trustees authorized plans for the proposed College of Business Saturday morning, President Elizabeth Garrett and Provost Michael Kotlikoff announced in an email. The College of Business will merge the School of Hotel Administration, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. Garrett and Kotlikoff called the approval of the controversial new school “the beginning of an inclusive and crucial process that will more fully define the details of how the College of Business will be structured.” “The plan for the new college will be developed with broad input from faculty, students, staff and alumni,” they wrote. “We wish to underscore our commitment to making this process inclusive and open for all …

Cornell Hillel

Renowned Deaf Oscar Winner to Speak at Cornell

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Correction appended
Marlee Matlin, the first deaf performer to ever win an Oscar for Best Actress in Leading Role, will speak at Cornell on Feb. 8 — the first event in Cornell Hillel’s Major Speaker Series this semester, according to committee chair Jessi Silverman ’17. At 21, Matlin is also the youngest Oscar winner in this category to date. She is best known for her award-winning performance in the movie Children of a Lesser God, but she has also appeared in shows including The West Wing, The L Word, Switched at Birth and a Broadway performance of “Spring Awakening,” according to her website. Her work on both the big and small screen earned her a Golden Globe award and four Emmy nominations.

Ithaca College

Ithaca College President Announces Retirement Following Protests

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Ithaca College President Tom Rochon announced plans to retire Thursday, following months of protests over his administration’s handling of racial incidents and demands for his resignation. Rochon announced in a statement that he plans to retire in July 2017, after completing the 2016-17 academic year. The search for a new Ithaca College president will begin this summer. “I am proud of the progress and accomplishments achieved by the college over what will be a nine-year tenure as president,” Rochon said. “I look forward to working with the college community over the next 18 months …

News

Student Assembly Addresses Study Abroad Costs, Housing Lottery and Veterans’ Center

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The Student Assembly passed resolutions promising to address cost barriers to study abroad programs, reconfigure the housing lottery and create a veterans’ resource center at a meeting Friday in Rockefeller Hall. Parliamentarian Jordan Berger ’17 identified three main barriers she said prevent Cornell students from participating in study abroad programs, asserting that those reasons “all come back to money.”

Berger said students are deterred from the study abroad experience by tuition cost, a struggle to find subletters for apartments in Ithaca and the cost of plane tickets and other travel expenditures. She also stressed that Cornell does not continue provision of financial aid to students who choose to study abroad in the summer, a policy she said harms those students who for academic or extracurricular reasons do not feel they can go abroad for a full semester. “The $2,500 fee to study abroad used to be $5,000, so that shows that Cornell has played with the cost before,” Berger said. “We haven’t been able to meet with the trustees yet but the Cornell Study Abroad Office can’t explain why the fee is still this high.”

Berger and other S.A. members said they were committed to push for both increased transparency and lower costs to incentivize participation in the study abroad program, also suggesting Cornell provide more scholarships to those eager to go abroad.

News

Cornell Names Lifka Interim V.P. for Information Technology, CIO

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David Lifka, director of the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing and associate chief information officer, will take on the role of interim vice president for information technology and CIO on Dec. 6. Lifka will replace current vice president Ted Dodds, who plans to retire at the end of the fall semester after five years at Cornell, according to the University. As vice president for information technology and CIO, Dodds advanced the University’s strategic goals by pursuing sound information technology investments. He was also responsible for the entire IT@Cornell community and organized IT support groups — duties which will now be transferred to Lifka.

Black Students United

Students: Garrett Was Silent on Racial Protests

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This is the second story of a two-part series. “When other universities across the nation were dealing with racial issues, you didn’t speak on their behalf,” a student accused President Elizabeth Garrett at a Tuesday evening forum addressing problems facing Cornell’s students of color. “This week you spoke in solidarity with the people of France, a country all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, yet here in the United States, you couldn’t stand in solidarity.”
Many other students also expressed their frustration that Garrett has not spoken publicly on behalf of those protesting racial inequities on college campuses across the nation at the meeting with Garrett and Ryan Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life, facilitated by Black Students United in Ujamaa Residential College. In response to students who said they felt betrayed and unsupported by Cornell, Garrett explained that she prefers to have discussions with students rather than making “a series of statements.”
“It will be my policy to make fewer presidential statements than have happened in the past,” Garrett said. “I think it is more beneficial for me to listen to you, to work with you.