The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/rights/)
In a twist this year, the League of Women Voters of Tompkins County will be acknowledging Women’s Inequality Day on Friday on the Ithaca Commons to highlight the ways they feel women have lost basic rights in recent years.
After last year’s meme-fracas, one might be forgiven for wiping the Student Assembly from memory, or perhaps just forgetting that positions beyond that of the president exist. But that would be a mistake. Starting Tuesday at 9 a.m., and continuing until noon Feb. 14, students will have the opportunity to vote four new representatives onto the Student Assembly: one LGBTQ+ liaison, one first-generation student representative and two minority students liaisons. Cornell’s unique system of shared governance and S.A. affinity representation creates seats at the table for communities long marginalized in higher education.
At the point of writing, the next holders of many of the 470 federal offices on the ballot this year have been decided. Beginning with Kentucky at 6 p.m., polls have closed across the country, with Democrats taking the House and Republicans consolidating their control of the Senate. Perhaps even more important than these federal elections, though, are state elections, which will have more numerous and longer-lasting implications. In the midst of our current political divisions, state governments not only provide a place for opponents of federal policies to try out their own policies, but state attorneys general have increasingly used their offices to launch legal challenges against the actions and policies of presidential administrations. It is not just in their role as laboratories of democracy, though, that the results of state elections will play an important role in future elections.
Cornell Graduate Students United came out with 20 other labor unions of graduate workers at private universities from all over the country — including Harvard, University of Michigan and Wayne State University — in order to call for the reform of higher education. The organization hosted activities on Thursday — also known as the “We Are Workers Day of Action” — to raise public awareness that many graduate students are not recognized as workers. “This is a national day of action that will be taking place around the country to remind university administrations that graduate students are workers and deserve to have their voice heard and rights respected in the workplace,” said Andrew Crook, a member of CGSU. In 2004, Brown University argued in front of the National Labor Relations Board that teaching and research are essential parts of academic development and graduate training. The outcome of this ruling denied the rights of the employee-employer relationship to graduates working for private universities.