The campus code of conduct fails to explicitly identify the rights afforded to students, which could put student liberties at risk. 

An anti-discrimination clause … who would ever oppose that? At face value, certainly no one would support discrimination. The answer is so trivial that The Sun’s editorial board chose to adopt Bush’s “with us or against us” mentality on the Campus Code of Conduct, claiming a code without an anti-discrimination clause “inherently accepts” discrimination.

In a peculiar editorial entitled “A Campus Code that Permits Discrimination,” The Sun responded to the University Assembly resolution to remove a clause from the Campus Code of Conduct preventing student groups from “discriminating against certain groups in their criteria for membership.” The U.A.’s decision was certainly a reaction to the events of last semester, when the adult pastors of Chi Alpha — a Pentecost group — asked an openly gay student leader to step down.

After months of deliberation, the University Assembly passed a resolution this October to remove a clause from the Campus Code of Conduct designed to prevent special-interest student organizations from discriminating against certain groups in their criteria for membership.

My column today was motivated by a current controversy on our campus and by the larger issues it represents. Articles in the Cornell Review’s orientation issue have once again put issues of civility, diversity, and free speech squarely before our campus community and the greater Cornell family. The views as expressed in the Review articles — one focused on minority students and one satirically linking Muslims to terrorism — were clearly at odds with the values of our university.

The current controversy raises three broad issues:

1. How should we as a campus respond to writings and other forms of speech that target certain groups within our campus community in ways that many find offensive?