Cornell Alumnus Accuses School of Breaking Its Own Rules in Trustee Elections
“The administration has restricted and controlled which questions candidates may address, limiting meaningful dialogue about important university issues.”
These elections are important and alums are running because they want to save the school from itself. It’s not going well.
An Op-ed by a Cornell Alumnus at Real Clear Education reports:
Cornell Trustee Elections: University Breaks Its Own Election Rules
Cornell University touts its trustee elections as a cherished tradition that allows graduates to have a voice in the governance of their alma mater. However, recent disappointing actions by the university administration have raised serious concerns about the integrity of this democratic process.
In what appears to be a calculated effort to control the outcome of the 2025 alumni trustee election (it takes place electronically from February 1-28), Cornell has not only failed to live up to its own standards by establishing restrictive rules limiting candidate communication, but it has also selectively circumvented these very rules to benefit its preferred candidates.
First, Cornell established rules decades ago that explicitly prohibit any campaigning by alumni trustee candidates. This no-campaign rule effectively bars all discussion between alumni and candidates, placing control of election-related discourse firmly in the hands of the university administration.
However, Cornell’s actions during the current election cycle reveal a troubling pattern of selective rule enforcement:
- The administration has restricted and controlled which questions candidates may address, limiting meaningful dialogue about important university issues.
- Most egregiously, Cornell sent a “get-out-the-vote” email, labeled as a “volunteer toolkit,” to a carefully curated group of alumni who could be counted on to support administration-endorsed candidates.
- Meanwhile, other alumni and candidates remain bound by the strict no-campaigning rules, creating an uneven playing field that favors establishment candidates.
These events are particularly disheartening to me as an alumnus and as a member of the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, a group of alumni volunteers interested in protecting free speech and open inquiry at Cornell and upholding Cornell’s high academic standards. CFSA outlined our view of proposed reforms needed at Cornell in our August 2023 report Lifting The Fog – Restoring Academic Freedom & Free Expression at Cornell University.
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Comments
and they really can’t understand why, when we receive those little envelopes, we no longer donate
Class of ’62
be very very careful, Cornell. Your Little Sister Wells is – was – just up the road and if you make the wrong move, you will join us,
Our BOT and president killed her, and are now dancing on her corpse.
Happy to say I voted for the two “unendorsed “ candidates. I think I read somewhere that the Administration Trustee Election rules were modelled closely on those for the Reichstag in the 1936 elections, particularly the “single party list”.