PREFACE:

It is far too evident that Cornell University has contributed to the fundamental injustice, inequity, and 
violence that disproportionately impacts Black people. Cornell continuously fails its Black students; 
it can be fervently argued that very little has substantially changed in terms of racial and cultural 
responsiveness on Cornell University’s campus following the 1969 demands concurrent with the 
Willard Straight Hall Takeover and Black Student United’s demands to President Martha Pollack in 
2017. Black students have and continue to repeatedly call on Cornell to change, and it has not. 
Words of support without meaningful, systemic action make the University complicit in the acts of 
racism and hate towards its Black students, and Black people writ large. ​The way in which students
at Cornell are punished, especially when it comes to racially charged infractions, does not
reflect education or mutual accountability. ​As such, we are reintroducing Black Student United’s 
demands for the creation of an Alternative Justice Board and an Anti-Racism Institute, as well as 
other demands oriented towards improving the experience of Black and other (racially) minoritized 
students, faculty, staff, and community members tied to Cornell. 

“​We demand that there be a creation of a Student Honor Board or Alternative Justice Board as
an alternate method for Cornell’s dispute resolution process.
Currently, only faculty have the power to discipline students at Cornell. In order to increase
student power, we are demanding the creation of a Student Honor Board who will oversee
various judicial cases. Shared governance is necessary for all bodies within any academic
institution to feel seen and heard; Cornell is no different. Students should be able to have a
direct say in the punishment of their peers. Student Honor boards allow for resolutions of
student situations on a case by case basis that the University either does not have a
mechanism to resolve or is too busy to resolve. Additionally, most honor boards use
suspension, academic sanctions, and/or community service hours as a punishment, which
allows the individual or party being punished to resolve their issue without leaving the school,
and more importantly force[s] them to contribute back to their community. The creation of the
Honor Board will work to restore student trust in Cornell’s judicial system and ensure justice in
these cases.” [1]

This Alternative Justice Board should include a diverse group of students, comprised of at least
50% with one or more minoritized identities [1] and should be allowed to decide what the
appropriate punishments are when students are harmed/hurt by other students or student
organizations, including but not limited to physical violence, identity-based harassment, assault,
abuse, or discrimination (on the basis of race, gender/sexual identity, sexual/romantic
orientation, nationality, religion, etc.) and hazing. ​Student involvement, especially that of students 
of color, would allow those on the Board to actualize and feel a sense of justice, and to create 
community solutions, as well as improve trust in Cornell’s administration of justice. Knowing that 
roughly 30% of Cornell students belong to a non-academic Greek organization, the Alternative 
Justice Board will include six appointed positions for members of the Tri-Council, with each 
organization (Panhellenic, MGFC, and IFC) appointing two board members from each of their 
respective memberships. The remaining 21 spots will be chosen through open elections for which 
no more than three board members with Tri-Council affiliations may be elected to serve. 
 
This board would be a powerful tool for students to formally discipline their peers while still 
providing due process, and would make students more comfortable in bringing forth allegations of 
racist and other misbehavior perpetrated by their peers. It would dole out just punishment that would 
be much more effective in reforming/educating the offending individual than a suspension. This 
Board could also serve as a learning mechanism for Law students, students interested in restorative 
justice, etc.  
 
Relatedly, we demand a readjustment in the training for Resident Advisors (RAs). Currently, 
Residential Life insists that RAs call the police if they smell marijuana in the dorms. If RAs refuse to 
do this, particularly those who work in Ujamaa or the Latino Living Center, in an attempt to be 
culturally responsive given the history of police brutality within Black and Latinx communities, their 
employment may be put in danger. Likewise, we call for more direct funding for Ujamaa and Black 
Students United, akin to the dispersal of alumni funding the Pan-Hellenic Council and Interfraternity 
Council receive [2].  
 

“​We demand the creation of an Anti-Racism Institute where Cornell can centralize its efforts to
educate the campus and community about the horrors of white supremacy and political
education.
Cornell has a variety of decentralized efforts to address racial bias on campus. Programs such
as the Intergroup Dialogue [Project], Engaged Cornell, the Skills for Success program[, the
Center for the Study of Inequality] and other[s] are important, but if Cornell is going to commit to
a changing campus climate they must create a centralized department or program that has the
explicit purpose of fighting racism.”

We envision this Institute as both an academic and student centric space, where advisors and
student leaders could find employment opportunities, and where faculty and staff members
could coalesce and share their work in a centralized manner, while maintaining their department
and research’s own individualistic integrity. ​An Institute could create a University-wide streamlined 
approach to confronting racism and discrimination through the creation of a diversity coursework 
requirement [3] along with ongoing trainings for staff, faculty, and student leaders. It could provide 
resources for student groups, educators, Greek Life, and the administration. This Institute would be 
the catalyst for change on campus inside and outside of the classroom. Working with existing 
programs like the Intergroup Dialogue Project, the Institute could require that all staff, faculty, and 
student leaders go through diversity training, which could help reduce discrimination and racism on 
campus. While reducing racism and discrimination amongst all members of the Cornell community 
is necessary, it is especially important for those who serve as gatekeepers to clubs, courses, and 
academic opportunities. The Institute could be an immensely powerful change agent at the 
University. Such an Institute could be home to a standing Presidential Task Force, helping preserve 
institutional knowledge amongst student groups and long-term campaigns that outlast the typical 
four-year student cycle.This would also limit the redundancy of a lot of administrative work in setting 
up committees, and would allow more effective work to be done more quickly. It is indisputably in 
the Administration's best interest to set up a permanent anti-racism structure. 
The Anti-Racism Institute would help the University build a more direct approach to recognizing and 
amplifying Black voices and Black stories of the past to better help inform the student body and 
greater community about how we reached our present. Upstate NY, especially in the areas near 
Ithaca, is home to rich amounts of Black history that is tied to the Underground Railroad. There are 
AME churches and Underground Railroad artifacts and important historical buildings, like Harriet 
Tubman’s home and final resting place, that are struggling to stay funded because of their location. 
If Cornell made a stronger effort to support and publicize these monuments and if more people 
knew that Cornell was near this rich area of Black history geographically, these irreplaceable 
monuments could receive the necessary support to stay afloat. Moreover, the Cornell University 
Library system has a fairly large collection of Black American artifacts, like an original copy of The 
Narrative of Fredrick Douglass, which very few students know about, but many of these artifacts of 
Black American history live right below our feet in the Olin Library basement [4]. 
 
We also call for more funding for the Africana Library, such that it can expand its collection of books, 
resources, and events held, as well as any renovations to the building or technology it may need to 
be on par with the other libraries in the Cornell University Library system, and a better location. The 
current location is literally and metaphorically ostracized from the rest of campus, and reflects a 
dismissal of Africana scholarship.  
 
Another way in which the University can begin to hold itself more accountable is the creation of a 
Cornell University Police Department Oversight Committee.​ T ​ he persons on this Committee should 
not be appointed by CUPD. This Committee should be composed by a majority of undergraduate 
students, but should also have members from the graduate student, faculty, and staff populations at 
Cornell University. This Committee should reside within the Anti-Racism Institute, in the case that 
there are faculty or staff members interested in participating, and due to the Alternative Justice 
Board being made up exclusively of students [5].
 
 
CONCLUSION: 
As you actualize these demands, it is essential that the Cornell community be updated continuously 
every 30 days and that any website or materials be dynamic. Cornell must present the changes it 
makes and the demands it fails to meet in a way that is easy for the public to access. Burying the 
work of its students behind a pile of hyperlinks on a never-updated site not only reduces the work 
that they have done, but denies the Cornell community the ability to realize the fierce urgency behind 
the action items and denies the Cornell community the ability to hold the University accountable. 
Updates on the University’s progress and regarding the initiatives above must not be squashed into a 
website with no regard for continually updating the community, or at the very least, making status 
updates compelling and visible. PDFs hyperlinked and stored away on old, hard-to-navigate websites, 
which may have fallen out of use since their creation, does not indicate the anti-racist stance Cornell 
presents to the public and allows the avoidance of responsibility. 
 
Cornell University must do better at conceptualizing and carrying out actionable, non-performative 
solutions and making its progress (or lack thereof) visible to the community. This petition serves as 
a starting point and a foundation for subsequent demands, including the defunding, disarming, and 
disbanding of the Cornell University Police Department, to be met. It is not exhaustive nor is it 
comprehensive of the innumerable changes that Cornell needs to make. This petition does not 
negate the need for the University to actualize subsequent demands regarding racial and cultural 
responsiveness that may be presented to it; specifically, we support the demands requiring the 
University to mobilize against racist, transphobic, and misogynistic actions in the upcoming Fall 
2020 semester. The University’s current and prospective students, alumni, faculty, and staff, as well 
as concerned community members, are watching how it responds, and we will notice empty 
platitudes and false promises. The University must meet these demands to ensure students, 
especially Black students and other students of color, feel welcomed, safe, and embedded in Cornell, 
and will fortify the accessibility and truthfulness of “Any Person, Any Study.” Black lives matter. Act 
on this. President Pollack’s repeated words of solidarity for the Black community must be met with 
action! To prevent the repeated inaction and offenses Cornell has continued to perpetuate, the 
University must meet these demands. Now is the time to support our Black community members 
and meet their requests and needs.