Editor’s note: this article references sexual assault.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) spoke at a town hall titled “Students vs. Billionaires” to over 1,000 attendees on Sunday at the Ithaca Downtown Convention Center, addressing on-campus student activism and dissatisfaction with the widening wealth gap.
More Perfect University hosted the representative in collaboration with Cornell Graduate Students United Union, Cornell Young Democratic Socialists of America and Students for a Democratic Cornell. The talk came as part of Ocasio-Cortez’s tour of upstate New York to “boost voter turnout.” The representative met with community members and local officials while in Ithaca, including an appearance at the Kitchen Theatre and Applefest on Saturday.
The congresswoman has debated a run for the presidency or for New York’s Senate seat in 2028.
Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the “duality” of organizing in Ithaca, where the Democratic Socialists of America hold a majority on the council, and a “larger mandate of organizing the working class” in more conservative rural areas of upstate New York — all in the context of an upcoming competitive Congressional race.
Ocasio-Cortez began the event by discussing the ongoing lawsuit filed by a former Cornell student against Cornell and the Chi Phi fraternity, in which the plaintiff alleged that she was drugged and gang raped in Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024.
Then, the floor opened to an audience Q&A where attendees asked questions regarding on-campus free speech, artificial intelligence, surveillance and the rising cost of higher education.
Ocasio-Cortez said the turnout exceeded her expectations, noting the event drew roughly 2,000 attendees: 1,100 in the main room, 200 in overflow rooms and the rest trying to get in.
“I am stunned at this turnout,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “When we first started planning a trip to Ithaca, we were hoping for maybe 350 people here today.”
Student Free Speech
When asked by SDC member Saya Taylor ’29 about free speech and university repression, Ocasio-Cortez said institutions “rely on our silence” and urged students to continue demonstrating.
She referenced Cornell’s Board of Trustees, which is “vested with ‘supreme control’ over the university, including all of its colleges and other units,” according to its website.
“The way that you become a trustee to a university is, for the most part, not academic achievements or research or participation in your institution,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It’s money.”
Ocasio-Cortez also discussed the suspensions of pro-Palestinian activists on campus. 15 Cornell students were temporarily suspended in Fall 2024 after a protest that shut down a career fair hosting defense manufacturers with Israeli ties. Others were suspended after demonstrating at a “Pathways to Peace” panel on the Israel-Palestine conflict in March 2025, and former international Ph.D. students Momodou Taal and Amandla Thomas-Johnson were suspended and left the country after Taal’s visa was revoked and Thomas-Johnson’s was effectively revoked.
“We have an institution that issues a suspension on track for deportation,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “but we make rapists write an essay in private.”
The Sept. 14 lawsuit against Chi Phi and the University states that Cornell allowed defendants accused of sexual assault to “mitigate their conduct” with essays, though the University has since denied that essays were the “sole consequence” offered.
Privacy, Surveillance and Artificial Intelligence
Several community members asked questions regarding data privacy and surveillance, particularly in regard to Flock Safety cameras and artificial intelligence.
Flock is a security company that uses cameras to track license plate data for police investigations. While it maintains that it does not have an official contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Immigration Policy Tracking Report found that its license-plate reader cameras have been used for immigration tracking purposes.
The City of Ithaca voted unanimously on March 4 to remove 22 city-owned license plate reader cameras owned by Flock Safety. Seven Flock cameras remain present on Cornell’s campus.
“Your data should belong to you,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We need to understand these systems. AI, data, all of this are founded on theft. They are stealing what is yours: your face, your behaviors, your privacy. We have a right to privacy in the United States of America, and they are violating it.”
Ocasio-Cortez also criticized AI systems beyond Flock, including education technology that has increasingly relied on AI.
“AI systems want us to be dependent and outsource our cognition to a machine … so that they can sell intelligence back to us,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Attendee Andrew Rafael ’29 said Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on AI resonated with him because of how often students rely on models like ChatGPT.
“I remember her calling out how AI seeks to commodify intellectualism,” Raphael explained. “If you outsource this, then where does that lead people and their ability to think critically?”
Cost of Living
Affordability was another topic brought up by the audience. One student mentioned that Cornell’s estimated cost of attendance for the 2025-26 school year surpassed $100,000 and asked whether the congresswoman deemed the number acceptable.
Ocasio-Cortez responded that the tuition price is “far more than what many households make in a year in this country.”
She criticized universities for spending heavily on “luxury” facilities and administrative overhead while failing to invest in education.
She advocated for expanding tuition-free public colleges and universities.
“To anyone who wants to say that’s pie in the sky and unrealistic and just another expensive progressive wishlist, this is literally what baby boomers gave themselves,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Public colleges in America were tuition-free” until “they started to get racially integrated.”
Outside the front door of the event, several pro-Palestinian protesters carried flags and signs, objecting to Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance alongside Rep. Josh Riley (D-N.Y.) at Applefest on Saturday, criticizing Riley’s vote for the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act, which would withhold federal aid from universities that boycott Israel.
Local activist Mary Anne Grady-Flores spoke to attendees waiting in line outside the center, saying that Riley “voted with Republicans to criminalize any student that speaks up for Palestine on any campus”.
Grady-Flores also criticized Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance, pointing to reports that she donated $300,000 to a statewide Democratic campaign fund. This was not a direct contribution to Riley, however she suggested that the donations could benefit Democrats like him.
“AOC is coming here to give him money. I mean, there’s a little pocketbook of $300,000 that’s going to be divvied up among Democrats.”
Although Riley’s vote on the legislation wasn’t discussed during the town hall, Ocasio-Cortez said she "[knows] him to be a listener."
Prior to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks, Cornell students affiliated with SDC, YDSA, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace spoke to the crowd.
The co-chairs of YDSA, Mina Petrova ’29 and Zoe Reisman ’29, spoke about the “Student not Bombs” campaign, which demands that Cornell divest from Israel and weapons manufacturers, and led the crowd in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Spencer Krenk ’29, a member of SDC, also advocated for student activism on campus and criticized the 2021 shift from independent oversight of campus conduct to a student code overseen by Cornell administrators, which he said “eliminate[d] due process.”
“What they fail to realize, those trustees, those billionaires, is that student movements have always been on the right side of history,” Krenk said.
Throughout the town hall, Ocasio-Cortez stressed the importance of in-person organization and committed demonstrations from community members.
"We’ve got a lot of neighbors out here that are of a very different persuasion, and so how we engage in that — it can be a matter of an individual and the votes they take," Ocasio-Cortez said. "But also that individual is trying to navigate a district."
Ocasio-Cortez ended her talk on an optimistic note: “the way we win people over is in person; it is very, very hard to hate up close.”
Francesca Wesley is a member of the Class of 2029 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a contributor for the news department and can be reached at fjw48@cornell.edu.
