The UA meets several times per month on the fourth floor of the Physical Sciences Building.
On Tuesday, February 21, President Martha Pollack met with the University Assembly in Room 401 of the Physical Sciences Building.
Pollack began by speaking on faculty salary increases, a theme she has spoken on throughout the month. Despite meeting almost two thirds of her “To Do the Greatest Good” capital campaign of $500 million in donations, the university is unable to keep up with the rate of inflation for salaries.
Second on the UA’s Tuesday agenda was the “perennial”—as Pollack put it—challenge of transportation. Cornell’s acute parking shortage has made life difficult for students and employees alike. Pollack stated: “we know there are people who would prefer not to drive, they prefer to take the buses, but they have been discouraged because of ongoing service issues with TCAT.”
Pollack meanwhile praised Cornell’s symbiotic relationship with TCAT:
[TCAT is] important to the faculty and staff and students who use it. It also reduces our traffic on campus, it frees up parking spaces. And it’s key to our carbon neutrality goals. We contributed more than $4.3 million to TCAT operating expenses in the current fiscal year, plus an additional $152,000 for capital expenses. And all in all, Cornell provides 70% of the total funds paid to TCAT by its three partners.
Pollack is “cautiously optimistic” TCAT will stop cutting service due to a recently-signed labor agreement between the company and its drivers and mechanics.
Read more on TCAT’s troubles and Cornell’s refusal to increase assistance.
Pollack also spoke of the university’s habit of commenting on events beyond Ithaca.
[W]henever there is a catastrophe somewhere in the world … whether it’s the war in Ukraine, the protests and repression in Iran, the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey, the horrifying shootings just last week at Michigan State, wherever it is, almost inevitably, someone in our communities is affected.
Following Pollack’s comments, the University Assembly considered several resolutions.
Following the reform of the campus conduct system in 2020-2021, the UA-run Codes and Judicial Committee (CJC) no longer has a role in a campus judicial system not run by the UA. As such, the UA last week officially changed the charter of the CJC to reflect its new advisory role.
Additionally, the UA considered Resolution 5, the Plan B vending machine resolution. As my colleague reported, the Student Assembly passed the so-called “DISPENSE” resolution on February 9. After neither discussion nor debate, the UA rubber-stamped Resolution 5 in a 15-0-1 vote.
Read more about the Plan B vending machine proposal.
The UA concluded with confusion over the elimination of gendered language from its governing documents. In June 2021, the UA voted—and the President acceded—to remove gendered pronouns from its charter; however, whoever made the changes to the documents left some pronouns in the document. The memory-holing is now complete.
