Cornell encampment protesters, student media clash with school officials

Cornell University may impose another round of suspensions related to the Palestine protests on campus, school officials announced.

Student protests broke out on the CU campus Thursday morning and continued into this past weekend as a student-led coalition set up tents in the university's Arts Quad, and now the university is threatening suspensions for students and human resources reports for staff involved.

Sudden statement on suspensions

Late in the day on Monday, April 29, Cornell University President Martha Pollack released a statement to the Cornell community at large through the university’s website and email system, regarding the protests that broke out on campus April 25 , led by the student Coalition For Mutual Liberation .

Pollack addressed the ongoing campus events that have been causing turmoil across the country and grappled with the tension between free expression, including the right to peaceful protest, and ensuring that protests do not encroach upon the rights of students, faculty and staff.

Upon learning of the encampment early Thursday morning, the university’s leadership team offered an alternative protest location between Day Hall and Sage Chapel, which “would have been significantly less disruptive” than their presence on the university’s Arts Quad, according to Pollack. The protesters were given multiple opportunities over five hours to consider their options, but they decided not to move.

The protesters were reminded several times that if the tents were not taken down, they would be subject to disciplinary action for violating the university’s time, place, and manner rules. They refused to comply, leading to a first set of immediate temporary suspensions.

The second set of temporary suspensions, which reportedly included “HR referrals for employees engaged with the encampment,” are pending according to Pollack.

In a Friday statement, the coalition said, "In our Liberated Zone (and at encampments across the country) we have called into question whether students ought to participate in institutions that are complicit in an ongoing genocide. If our actions were not meaningful in the fight for divestment — if our encampment were not a genuine threat to the legitimacy of this institution — Cornell would not have cracked down on students so severely within twenty-four hours without ever engaging with our demands."

Suspension length?

When asked Tuesday morning if the length of the temporary suspensions had been decided or if student protesters will be subject to further disciplinary actions, university Media Relations Director Rebecca Valli offered no details on the issue.

Pollack’s Monday statement emphasized Cornell’s content-neutral time, place, and manner rules, which “exist to guide expressive activity on campus so that one’s speech does not suppress or otherwise limit anothers,” she said, and claimed that the current student encampment violates these rules and causes disruptions, including noise from associated rallies that can be heard in classrooms on the Arts Quad and displacement of other previously registered events.

“Our policies are content-neutral for a reason, and we need to apply them in the same way in all cases, both today and into the future,” Pollack stated. “Since last Thursday, we have tried to engage thoughtfully with the (encampment) participants and will try to continue to do so. But we need to soon get to a resolution that respects our policies, promotes the public health and safety of the community, and preserves the rights of all to do their work.”

Pollack announced in April that the theme of the university’s 2023-2024 academic year would be “Freedom of Expression.”

The Cornell Daily Sun’s editorial team argues in its latest piece supporting the protests that “The very purpose of an education is to prepare students with the moral and intellectual courage to stand up when history demands them to do so,” calling the university’s recent track record “particularly regrettable, ironically in an academic year it has themed around free expression.”

This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: Cornell encampment protesters, student media clash with school officials