Heard at Cornell is a column that regularly quotes important statements made by Cornellians.
At the April 13 Student Assembly meeting, Rep. Claire Ting ‘25, President Pollack and Vice-President Ryan Lombardi went back and forth on the viability of a resolution proposing mandatory trigger warnings in class. After President Pollack explained in great detail why she did and must reject the proposal, Ting asked how it could be modified to be acceptable. VP Lombardi responded:
“I may add one thing here. And it’s not necessarily focused on the free expression resolution, just resolutions in general. I think in my time at Cornell, and I remember talking about this when I first got here, where I see more successes were some of the conversations around the different options or what’s happening, what’s not happening, or what could happen, the hypotheticals. Those [conversations] taking place before the resolution, to get a little more homework, or something like that on it, can be really helpful to make sure that the resolution has the greatest chance for success.
Ryan Lombardi, Vice President of Student & Campus Life
And I get that sometimes there’s time pressure. Like there’s an expediency issue that probably you want to get a resolution out and kind of in front of this body or in front of the larger body. But when it’s possible, I think when some of that work can happen ahead of time, I think that can be really helpful. I do think a recent example was the vending machine [resolution]. I think the group that put that together did an outstanding job of working with a number of different campus stakeholders. When it came through a lot of that had already gotten done and taken care of, and then boom, it was, let’s move it forward.
And so I think that can be an example for that collaboration. And I hope that you would get receptivity for most of my colleagues, and I’d be happy to make introductions or pave the way or anything like that. But I can be helpful in these conversations.“
