The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/do-better-cornell/)
On the Friday that began Family Weekend, students, employees and alumni from various campus groups rallied for free public transportation and more resources for low-income students among other concerns.
Basic Needs Coalition and community members are set on continuing basic needs advocacy and community work on campus, despite slow progress in negotiations for a Basic Needs Center at Cornell.
Throughout all these crises, the idea of being “the campus on the hill,” separate and safe from the dangers of the rest of the world, seemed to many students as a farce. It would appear as though Cornell doesn’t address the student deaths as a collective event that continuously impacts the student body morale; the numbers of lost students have not been made readily accessible to the public prior to Do Better Cornell’s statement, which only adds to the atmosphere of secrecy and fear. Throughout all these examples of anxiety-inducing events, there has existed a surreal amount of dissonance between the Cornell administration’s attitudes, those of its faculty and those of its students.
We, a collective of students from various parts and communities on campus, issue these demands to hold Cornell University accountable for its atrocious lack of action and leadership in the aftermath of events on Nov 7, 2021 and Nov 9, 2021. These events, including a bomb threat and an active shooter threat, lasted for hours and left students in panic with vague, inconsistent communication from the University. While students feared for their safety, trying to figure out what to do and where to go, many continued to receive emails from professors about assignments, exams, and classes scheduled for the next day. Empathy was nowhere to be found—especially as the Nov 7 situation failed to even receive the usual empty messages of understanding from top-ranking University officials, including President Pollack and Vice President for Student and Campus Life Lombardi.
Hundreds of Cornell faculty, graduate students and staff have released demands that they hope will hold the University accountable for long-term anti-racist action.
In the latest in a long line of emails about anti-racism at Cornell, President Martha E. Pollack gave updates about the University’s progress.
Responding to the national conversation about anti-racism and two student petitions, the University announced several new initiatives, spanning academics, staff and the Cornell University Police.