Yesterday, at 5 a.m., a group of concerned architecture students gathered to place signs both on and inside Sibley. The banners, which read “No More Incest,” “New Search” and “Mass Retire, Mass Rehire” indicated the students’ concerns over recent hiring (and lack thereof) within the college.

The main goal of the students involved was to promote dialogue regarding their concerns with hiring and to increase communication between administration and students about the issues.

In response, the architecture administration ordered that the signs be taken down around 8:30 a.m., about the time that they arrive to work and that students begin to arrive on campus.

While we recognize that the signs were likely taken down due to permit requirements or other campus rules, taking them down only serves to prove the students’ point — that the college is not working to facilitate discussion between students and faculty. We applaud the students involved for working to raise awareness about the issues they have with the recent hiring practices of the college.

But the issues that they brought up are not limited to the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. The University as a whole is facing budget cuts, hiring freezes and the expected upcoming retirement of the Baby Boomers. If the University is going to continue to hire the best possible instructors and staff, the process must be transparent. Further, the decisions must include students — it is ultimately those who are being instructed that are affected by the University’s hiring choices. Thus, students should be actively involved in the hiring process; if this is not possible, then they should at the very least be made aware of who the candidates are for certain positions. This is easy enough on the part of the University. Dozens of e-mails are sent out to students asking for their opinions regarding Cornell and its professors. If the University is going to fill our inboxes with surveys and requests for information, there is no reason that it should not ask our opinions as to who we would like to see standing before us in the classroom.

This issue was particularly salient for architecture students. Only two professors in the program are currently on tenure track, and many of the recently hired professors are Cornell graduates, which leads to homogeneity in the experience and backgrounds of the faculty. In response, the students stood up and asked for changes. While this may not be as pressing for students in other colleges, we implore students to ask for engagement and transparency in the hiring process.

Similarly, we ask the University to make a greater effort to engage students when making hiring decisions — they are the most directly affected by the hiring choices, and should not, in the future, have to revert to early morning signage to make their voices heard.