Class of 2030 — welcome to your first day of class! You’ve just completed a week full of orientation events, but I bet none of them introduced you to the real Cornell.
I came to Cornell for the world-class School of Industrial and Labor Relations, bright-eyed and searching for my path to “do the greatest good” — this is probably where many of you find yourself today.
When I discovered my path at Cornell, it wasn’t in a particular class or your average club, it was in organizing. I realized that the institution I was paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, was turning around and investing that money into weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Elbit Systems. In turn, those companies were creating the missiles, planes, drones and guns being used to massacre Palestinians in Gaza.
Take Elbit Systems, whose CEO said in 2025, “Elbit Systems is proud to continue serving as a key partner of the Israel Ministry of Defense and the Israel Defense Forces in advancing their technological capabilities.” Elbit creates core components for the Merkava battle tank, used by the IDF. In a horrific story many of you might be familiar with, Israeli soldiers fired 335 bullets on a black Kia Picanto, in which six-year-old Hind Rajab was trapped with her family. They killed Rajab’s entire family and two paramedics sent to rescue them, with full knowledge of their victims’ civilian statuses.
My tuition money is funding genocide across the world? My school was complicit in the killing of Palestinians like Hind Rajab? I knew I couldn’t sit by and allow that to happen.
I joined Students for Justice in Palestine, and the broader movement for Palestine at Cornell, in fighting for divestment. As you may have seen, students at Cornell and at universities across the country have established encampments for Palestine on their campuses. Over the past three years, Cornell students have led a referendum, kicked weapons manufacturers off our campus, occupied Day Hall and protested Israeli war criminals, all of this in the face of intense University repression.
Pro-Israel zealots alongside their allies in the mainstream media want you to believe that the student movement is dead, either reveling in our defeat or condescendingly opining, “Where are all the campus protests?”
I’m here to tell you: the campus protests are here. The welcome I offer to you is to the student movement, where the fight for a more just Cornell has never stopped.
This fall, the student body is renewing our call to end our University’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Students for Justice in Palestine, Young Democratic Socialists of America and Jewish Voice for Peace are united in fighting for our shared demands.
We demand Cornell follow its own ethical investment guidelines and divest from weapons manufacturers complicit in “apartheid, genocide, human trafficking, slavery, and systemic cruelty to children.” We demand Cornell sever its ties to the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, end Career Services collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and weapons manufacturers and stop housing research into arms and surveillance technology. At the same time, Cornell must invest in affordability efforts for the Ithaca community and its own students.
Welcome to Cornell, Class of 2030. Join us.
Free Palestine.
Adriana Vink '27 is an Opinion Columnist and a student in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her fortnightly column One Day Longer takes aim at campus politics, international relations and labor exploitation. She can be reached at avink@cornellsun.com.
