Editorial Note: This editorial is the first in a multi-part series examining the Student Code of Conduct and the state of shared governance at the University. By tracing the University’s bureaucratic history, we ask what kind of university Cornell is becoming if its community remains excluded from the rules that govern it.
It’s 1969 again, only this time most of us are too distracted to see it. Back then, students risked everything to occupy Willard Straight Hall, ignited by racial tensions on campus and Vietnam War protests. One victory was a new judicial system focusing on shared governance, a promise that rights at Cornell would never rest in the hands of administrators alone.
Students today may not remember the Willard Straight Hall Takeover, but rest assured, Kotlikoff and his administration do. The power students took from the University served as a lesson to Cornell's administration: a truly discontent student body is one with too much bargaining power. Those very protections students fought for are being threatened behind closed doors. The administration is overhauling the Student Code of Conduct, counting on our distraction to keep us from fighting back.
Interim suspensions have always existed, but they were once understood as rare — only to be imposed in “extraordinary circumstances” when “public order and safety” was at stake, according to the 2018 Code. Only the University president or their designee had that power, and students could appeal to the University Hearing and Review Panel. Now, they’re a typical punishment for student protesters and student organizations.
After the administration stripped the Assemblies of authority and rewrote the Code, interim suspensions became open-ended. Now they can be imposed at an administrator’s discretion, the appeal presented only to Vice President of Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi, his decision being the final say for all temporary suspensions. During a Monday interview with The Sun, he called the appeal procedure an example of how the suspensions are “absolute due process.” Yet in practice, no appeal has ever been approved under his authority. What kind of democracy rests on a process that offers students the right to appeal but never the possibility of success?
We’ve seen the consequences of the temporary suspension policy already, and it’s devastating. Students lose their housing and dining overnight, their ID cards void, their positions in organizations robbed. International students risk losing visas — livelihoods. They are left in limbo for weeks, months, semesters before ever receiving word on a hearing. Is this the “absolute due process” Vice President Lombardi is referring to?
In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled in Goss v. Lopez that even a ten-day suspension in a public high school is unconstitutional without fundamentally fair procedures. Cornell’s — a university that takes pride in its public, contract colleges – indefinite suspensions is a glaring violation. If ten days is unconstitutional in high school, how can indefinite exile at a university be tolerated?
While suspensions are abused in practice, the Code itself is now being rewritten in ways that gut the protections students once had. Suspensions may leave students in limbo, but the revision process could ensure that limbo becomes the rule, not the exception. A new revision committee is meeting this semester. This committee has met once thus far and will only meet a few more times before producing a draft that governs every one of us. It is chaired by Dean of Students Marla Love, with administrators filling over half of the committee — many of whom answer to the same chain of command. The seats exist to provide “advisory input” on revisions that are already written. With no clearly defined policy on what this input looks like, we are left to wonder whether this committee is truly democratic.
With no public viewing of the committee, there is no way for the rest of us to see what happens behind those closed doors. This is not genuine student voice, but the appearance of it, a stamp of legitimacy on an inherently illegitimate process. Ask yourself: Did you elect Zora de Rham ’27, Quinn Rinkus ’26, or Jennica Yoo ’27 to speak on your behalf about a Code of Conduct that has the power to take away where you live, eat and belong? Neither did we. The issue is not with them, but with a system that substitutes a few appointed students for the democratic representation we deserve.
Prof. Richard Bensel, government, drawing on over a decade of work across the Faculty Senate and the University Assembly, warned that this structure is like “letting the fox design the chicken coop.” Though Vice President Lombardi retorted that the Faculty Senate is represented on the committee when asked during The Sun’s Monday interview, he seems to be mistaken: The 2025-2026 Code and Procedures Review Committee does not include any member of the Faculty Senate.
This is deliberate. Tenured faculty are essential — they are the very people whose independence can insulate them from retaliation, unlike the six administrators on the committee. According to Bensel, faculty members already whisper that criticizing the administration could cost them their programs. If that is the environment in which rules are being drafted, how can students trust them?
We do not have to imagine where this trajectory leads — the changes already made show us plainly. The Office of Institutional Equity and Title IX was not simply renamed the Office of Civil Rights. The shift was intentional. Formerly adjudicated under the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, reports of harassment and hate speech are now sent to the Office of Civil Rights, no longer judged by the University Hearing and Review Panel, a panel of peers, faculty and staff, under a “clear and convincing” standard of evidence, but by a single administrator under the far lower bar of “preponderance of the evidence.” Former President Martha Pollack defended the higher standard, but that safeguard is gone. Now, “preponderance of evidence” — a term simply meaning “more likely than not” — gives a lone administrator enough to upend a student’s life.
And when students and faculty have tried to intervene, their voices have been dismissed. The University Assembly once had legislative authority over the Code; its charter explicitly charged it with oversight of judicial appointments and review boards. Today, that role has been erased.
When asked why the University Assembly was not directly involved in the revision process, Dean Marla Love told The Sun that there was not an “absence of engagement with the assemblies” and that there would be a process of “collaborative consultation” with the groups during the public review process.
And what does this “consultation” mean in practice? The administration once again seeks to cloak a unilateral overhaul in the appearance of legitimacy by offering a so-called “public comment process.” Yet public comments carry no action items, require no votes and impose no obligation to amend the draft. They are not amendments — indeed, amendments cannot even be introduced by assemblies during the public review period. The precedent of the May 2020 Code “public forum” should dispel any illusion about what a public comment process provides. Consultation without amendment is choreography, not democracy.
Pressed further on whether that consultation would be a publicly advertised and formal process — one that avoids the pitfalls of past forums — Dean Love conceded that if assemblies truly wanted engagement, they would need to pass a resolution demanding it. In other words, unless students organize, the administration will not listen.
The Student Assembly’s Resolution 10 is that demand. The resolution condemns the administration’s exclusion of shared governance bodies and requests information about the selection of review committee members.
It will be voted on one last time this Thursday, beginning at 4:45 p.m., after being tabled in the last meeting for reading “like one long complaint,” according to Student Assembly President de Rham during last week’s Assembly meeting. However, the very purpose of the Student Assembly is to keep the administration in line. Politeness is not the goal here, though the Assembly seems convinced otherwise.
The next meeting takes place in an unusual location, Appel Commons Room 303, instead of Willard Straight Hall. Do not let the inconvenience of the room keep you away. This vote matters.
We have seen what happens when students and faculty speak with one voice. When the Interim Expression Activity Policy was first imposed, the Student Assembly, University Assembly and Faculty Senate all passed resolutions against it. The administration was forced to respond. A committee led by Colleen Barry, dean of the Brooks School of Public Policy, rewrote the policy. Though the result was imperfect, it proved something critical: when the Cornell community insists on its role, it wins it. That is democracy in action.
Two generations ago, students rebuilt Cornell to prevent this exact situation from happening to us. Students in 1969 demanded independence from unilateral administrative control over discipline, and they knew that once rights are won, they must be vigilantly defended. Today, we are watching those rights slip away.
We should be angry.
We should be afraid.
But above all, we should be moved to act.
The Code is not just background paperwork. It is the architecture of our lives here. If we cannot defend our rights in the place where they most directly govern us, why should we believe we will defend them anywhere else? And why should we believe we deserve them in the first place?
Correction to the correction, Sept. 26 10:53 p.m.: This article has been corrected to return back to its original stance, there is only a single appeal round going to Vice President of Student Campus Life on "all Temporary Suspension actions that continue to enable the Respondent to maintain core instructional activities and there is no further right of appeal" according to Student Code of Conduct Procedures.
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The Cornell Daily Sun’s Editorial Board is a collaborative team composed of Editor-in-Chief Julia Senzon ’26, Associate Editor Eric Han ’26 and Opinion Editor Sophia Dasser ’28. The Editorial Board’s opinions are informed by expertise, research and debate to represent The Sun’s long-standing values. The Sun’s editorials are independent of its news coverage, other columnists and advertisers.
