Last Thursday, Assembly members introduced a $5,000 special projects funding proposal for the Spring Festival Gala hosted by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.
The resolution, sponsored by International Students Liaison JohnJohn Jiang (‘22), Assembly Vice President of Internal Operations Joseph Mullen (‘24), Arts and Sciences representative Everest Yan (‘22), and freshman representative Luna Lu (‘25), asks the Student Assembly to approve $5,000 of Special Projects Funding to the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.
The association purports to be “the ONLY Chinese student organization officially supported by [the] Embassy of [the] People’s Republic of China at Cornell University.” The Cornell chapter has previously circulated a petition demanding that the university move forward with its dual-degree program with Peking University. The academic proposal received significant pushback from the Faculty Senate and the Student Assembly.
The nearly $10,000 of event expenses outlined in the report include “prizes worth $1900 will be given to six winners” of games and “a camera and lens for the aforementioned special needs costing $3998.99.” The resolution’s sponsors explained in their proposal that:
…due to the COVID situation and health concerns related to the pandemic, CSSA will record the shows on the gala if not send the live stream to Youtube for those students and faculties who are interested in Chinese culture but have health concerns to come to an in-person event.
The resolution’s sponsors also claim that due to the “pandemic in the past two years, the Asian community had suffered significantly due to racism and anti-science misjudgments.” The Review reached out to one of the sponsors to ask what the resolution specifically meant by “anti-science misjudgments,” but said sponsor declined to comment.
The resolution’s authors reiterated that the Office of the International Student Liaison and the CSSA are “dedicated to promoting internationalism, cultural diversity, and inclusion at Cornell.” At last Thursday’s Assembly meeting, the resolution was tabled.
The allocation of funds for giveaways could be seen as unusual, given other funding groups’ restrictions on prizes. In its Spring 2022 funding guidelines, Student Activities Funding Commission explicitly stated that giveaways “Cannot be a prize” and “Must be given to a majority of participants (goodie bags, etc.).”
This is not the first time the Student Assembly has entertained massive expenditures of student funds. As the Review reported in 2020, Resolution 45 amended the 2020 Budget to allocate $5,000 for a Student Assembly gala. The Assembly also previously allocated $10,000 for “‘lobbying trips’ to Albany and Washington D.C. for the president and executive vice president of the Student Assembly.”
This is a developing story and will be updated as more details come in.
