Cornell’s 64-member Board of Trustees descended upon campus this week for its annual series of meetings during the month of March, and, as they held a meeting in Statler Hotel conference room Thursday afternoon, about 75 student protesters organized by Save the Pass and Fight the Fee pounded on doors and walls demanding entrance to the closed meeting.
Security personnel, and later policemen, stood between the mob-like horde of students and the two doors to the conference room, occasionally bumping into and shoving students back when they attempted to reach the door handles. All the while, students yelled and chanted slogans like “fight the fee,” “let us in,” and “the students will never die, hella hella occupy.”
To conclude the hour-long demonstration inside the campus’s hotel, students chanted “We’ll be back” and “A-anti-anticapitalista.”
The demonstration inside Statler Hotel was the culmination of the “Welcome the Trustees” protest, which began at Willard Straight Hall about a half hour earlier. Approximately 150 students congregated inside the student union and marched across campus to the Statler Hotel blowing whistles, hitting pots and pans, and chanting slogans like “costs rise, so do we,” “fight the fee,” and “whose university, our university.” Protest leaders included Daniel Marshall ’15, Wyatt Nelson ’16, Keanu Stryker ’17, and Zakiya Wells ’17. The students seen above holding the banner were Wes Turner ’16 and Connor Hodges ’18.
The protesters entered the Statler Hotel and quickly organized themselves in a circle in the foyer outside the conference room where the Board of Trustees were holding a meeting concerning an unknown topic. For about 50 minutes they continued to chant more slogans berating the University’s administration and Board of Trustees’ financial decision-making and relations with students. Students also held shakers, thumped on tables, stomped their feet, and danced in the middle of the circle.
For a few minutes, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Robert Harrison appeared in the circle of protesters. It was unclear if he was trying to address the protesters or was merely there to observe.
“Curiously, when the Chairman of the Board of Trustees went out to talk to them, the protesters declined to have a discussion and ignored him,” Vice President of University Relations Joel Malina said to the Cornell Daily Sun.
After the 50 minutes of chanting subsided, Zakiya Wells delivered a speech accosting the University administration and Board of Trustees for making it “abundantly clear they don’t care about the students” while the Trustees’ “pockets overflow [by] exploiting from each and everyone of us.” Wells said students need not apologize for demanding answers about the University’s financial mismanagement or for students’ “frustration, ire, and rage.”
“This shit is no longer OK,” said Wells. “The [student health] fee is bullshit.”
Then Wyatt Nelson took the bullhorn and claimed the closed-door meeting was illegal. Nelson cited the 1981 court case Holden v. Cornell Univ., which affirmed that Board of Trustee meetings regarding the University’s four statutory colleges–College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Ecology, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and College of Veterinary Medicine–must be open to the public. This is because the Board, when administering any of these four colleges, is a representative of the State, which owns their titles, and is thus subject to the Open Meetings Law.
It appears Nelson’s analysis is correct, unless the Board can prove it was not deliberating about any of the four statutory colleges in that meeting. Regardless, after concluding Nelson encouraged the protesters to rush towards the conference doors and demand entry. Four security personnel stood back against the doors while some students managed to slap and pound the doors. One student tried taking a selfie with one of the stoic-faced guards.
Students momentarily ceased their attempt to infiltrate the Trustee meeting to listen to more remarks delivered by Nelson. According to Nelson, the Board voted earlier that day to sanction $500 million in construction projects and costs for fiscal year 2016, despite concerns regarding its affordability. This large construction budget also belies President David Skorton’s admission during the Financial Transparency Town Hall that the University erred in spending too much on construction during his time at Cornell.
An unidentified graduate student also claimed the University is currently using restricted endowment funds on normal departmental operating budgets, which Fight the Fee leaders claim is illegal.
A request for clarification on this matter was sent to Cornell’s Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Joanne DeStefano.
“There is a review process as dollars are spent to ensure that any expenses charged to a restricted endowment account meet the gift restrictions. In addition, as part of the annual external audit, PwC reviews expenses to test our internal controls to be sure they are adequate and that the expenses were for the purposes allowed on the gift account. We do NOT spend donor/endowment money in any inappropriate manner,” she responded.
Later, the protesters filed into the hallway adjacent to the foyer and banged on the wall, while some students blared air horns at the wall. It was at this point that uniformed policemen from Cornell University Police Department showed up to stand among students and other security personnel. As the students banged on walls for about 20 minutes, Wells at one point yelled out, “What are they trying to hide?”
All the while, University administrators and Statler Hotel employees looked on with facial expressions showing both concern and bemusement. Stater Hotel staff and hotel guests in the nearby lobby were overheard expressing confusion over the students’ commotion, and janitorial staff expressed dismay at the mess and possible damage the students were creating.
To conclude the protest, Daniel Marshall declared that the students had “heavily disrupted” the Trustees’ meeting and that the “Welcome the Trustees” protest would get “bigger every single year.” Students then crouched down and began whispering “we’ll be back,” slowly rising and chanting louder and louder until they returned to normal cacophony mode. They then chanted “A-anti-anticapitalista” for a bit and left.
The “Death 2 the Fee” coffin looks more like an electric guitar case.