The Student Assembly (SA) held its first meeting of the 2015-16 year on Thursday with a bustling and curious student audience of about seven.
There is no need to bore readers with the parliamentary minutiae that dominated most of the discussion. The most striking aspect of the meeting was in fact what was not discussed: the student-run grocery store (SRGS), which dominated campus debate late last spring semester.
The Cornell Review was the only student group to rise in opposition to the enormous initiative the SA was attempting to undertake: namely, the construction of a student-run discount grocery store in Anabel Taylor Hall using money from a financial aid fund. Opposition to the proposal was centered on a number of points, some of which include questions about the financial sustainability of its business model, concern that future student fees might be levied to shore up the store, criticism of its initial funding source (an emergency financial aid fund), and vocalized concern from a Cornell administrator that students receiving store discounts might have their financial aid lowered.
More detailed objections to the proposal as well as coverage of the fateful SA meeting where the measure passed can be read here and here.
The SRGS resolution was the SA’s single-largest action last legislative session, one whose ultimate fate was left unknown to the Cornell public after then-President David Skorton rejected the proposal as one of his last acts as sitting president.
It is thus rather surprising that such a huge issue, one that was also an important SA presidential campaign issue, received not a single mention at yesterday’s meeting. A resolution which was jammed through on the penultimate meeting last spring with so many lingering questions and Skorton’s subsequent lack of approval–one would have expected–would have been the burning issue for the new SA to tackle.
