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CHANCELLOR | It’s Morality, Stupid!

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The answer is morality. It has been common political parlance to follow Bill Clinton’s chief strategist James Carville’s advice “It’s the economy, stupid” but current times seem to undermine the wisdom of the phrase.

Editorials

EDITORIAL | Ban the Frats

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The problem runs deep at Cornell. It’s deeper than any one frat, deeper than any generation of students and certainly deeper than can be solved with any one action or suspension. It’s the result of misogynistic, hierarchical organizations that are themselves rotten to the core.

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ADALET | The Administration’s Use of Persona Non Grata Status is Incoherent and Unreasonable

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We are writing in response to Cornell administration’s use of temporary suspensions and “persona non grata” status as a disproportionate disciplinary tool to prevent student activism and protest. 

Four student activists were issued persona non grata status and banned from campus for three years in the wake of the Statler protest. The three-year no-trespass orders were issued during one-on-one disciplinary meetings with the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards . They were issued by Cornell University Police Department, separate from and in addition to the suspensions meted out by OSCCS.  

Why was an additional ban added onto the suspensions which already banned students from campus? The key is in the work done by the figure of the “persona non grata,” or “an unwelcome person.” As philosophical, political and moral investigations of belonging and hospitality show, the figure reveals how membership in a community is predicated on the exclusion of others. It makes visible the work of boundary drawing and policing in the making and re-making of communities. 

We have to understand the imposition of PNG status in these cases of political protest as being explicitly intended to expel certain ideas, not as a disciplinary measure.

Columns

WEIRENS | Coming to Terms With Our Ivory Tower

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I don’t speak out on politics, or controversial issues in general, much less write about them in my column. I usually stick to ranking bathrooms, discussing cute animals on campus and judging ice cream competitions. 

But I had some observations about the aftermath of the election. As a government major, there was serious build-up in my classes to this election, as well as a significant analysis afterwards. The degree of partisanship here not just in the government department, but also other humanities departments, is significant but not surprising. 

I’m no Trump fan, and know that most of my classmates aren’t either, but I think the level of partisan behavior in Cornell classrooms is inappropriate. And it shouldn’t matter if you’re a Trump fan or not.

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ABOU-ALFA | The Democratic Party Needs Change

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This election, the Democratic Party has been handed its most humiliating loss in recent memory. For the first time in 20 years, a Republican candidate won the popular vote. With the exception of a handful of representatives, such as Josh Riley, the Democratic performance in the Senate, gubernatorial and House races has been equally disappointing.

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MARKELL | Expressive Activity After the Election

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That’s why Cornell also has an obligation to take the larger circumstances behind a disruption into account, and to extend “tolerance,” too, to on-campus disruptions that are proportionate to the larger disruptive events in the world to which they respond. Content-neutral cannot mean content-free.