On August 26, Vice President for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi announced a “systematic evaluation” of the Student Code of Conduct and associated procedures during the 2025-26 academic year. Lombardi named a committee to conduct this review, which will be chaired by Marla Love, Dean of Students.
The committee will deliberate during the fall semester. “A draft of the revised Code and Procedures will be released for public comment at the start of the spring 2026 semester, ensuring transparency and broad community engagement before adoption” by the President with notice to the Board of Trustees.
Ongoing Concerns
From 1970 through 2021, a single code of conduct governed students, faculty, and staff. A campus judicial system processed violations of that Code and was independent of the central administration, yet was subject to oversight by the University Assembly (UA).
In 2020, the Student Assembly Office of the Student Advocate and Dean Love played a leading role in changing the independent campus-wide system and asked that it be replaced with one that considered the identity group of the complainant and “restorative justice.” This new system resolved cases through mediation rather than a consistently applied set of precedents and policies. In addition to this, the Student Code Procedures now mandate that all hearing panel members undergo annual DEI training.
The GPSA has adopted at least two resolutions critical of the current system, and the President’s task force revising the Expressive Activity Policy has criticised the long delays in OSCCS processing cases.
The enforcement structure allows for indefinite delays of disciplinary cases. Because there are no time limits on how much time the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) could delay scheduling hearings, most hearings were delayed until the accused gave up and agreed to settlements dictated by the OSCCS. Although the prior system issued annual reports to evaluate case loads and processing times, since 2021, no OSCCS annual reports have been made public, despite the policy orders that they be sent to the Student Assembly (SA) and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA). Additionally, the current procedures call for the SA and GPSA to participate in the Vice President’s annual performance review of the OSCCS director. This has not occurred.
Meanwhile, the Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU-UE) union has claimed jurisdiction over Student Code cases that affect the employment of graduate students. However, Cornell has contested the union’s jurisdiction.
Cornell’s conduct system is also facing greater scrutiny from the Trump Administration, which claims that Cornell has not done enough to address antisemitism. In cases involving Columbia and Harvard, the Trump Administration demanded that their long-standing judicial systems be modified by removing students from fact-finding panels that act as juries in conduct cases. As noted in Lombardi’s announcement, Cornell recently moved antisemitism cases from the Student Code to the new Office of Civil Rights, where fact-finding is made by a single administrator instead of a student-faculty-employee hearing panel.
Dispute Over How to Amend the Code and Procedures
The Student Code specifies the following procedures for amending it:
“Authority over and administration of the Code and associated Procedures are vested with the Vice President for Student and Campus Life (VP SCL), in ongoing collaborative consultation with the elected Assemblies of the University. The VP SCL or their designee will chair and convene a standing “Code and Procedures Review Committee” (“Committee”) that will include representatives from the Student Assembly (SA) and the Graduate Student and Professional Assembly (GPSA), to provide advisory input on proposed amendments to either the Code or the Procedures. Further, any Assembly of the University (UA, SA, GPSA, Faculty Senate, or Employee Assembly) may propose amendments to either the Code or the Procedures, which proposals shall be reviewed by the Committee.
“The VP SCL shall publicly post any proposed changes to the Code or Procedures prior to adoption and shall invite community comments at such time, as well as comments from the assemblies. Changes to the Code or Procedures must be formally adopted by the President, with notice to the Board of Trustees.”
Contrary to the above quote, which only provides for “notice” to the Trustees, the University Counsel has repeatedly advised that any amendment to the Rules for the Maintenance of Public Order (which overlaps with the Student Code) must be approved by the Board of Trustees. So, Dean Love’s committee can continue to blur the lines between which portions of the Code require Trustee approval and filing with the New York Department of Education, and which do not. The Rules for Maintenance of Public Order are automatically incorporated into the Bylaws of every student organization, but the other sections of the Student Code are not. This means student organizations will be subject to rules that may have been amended with an unclear oversight process.
The shared governance bodies expect a major role in evaluating changes because the Rules for the Maintenance of Public Order and the Expressive Activity Policy apply to students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Yet, Lombardi’s announcement assumes that the conduct process only concerns students. The UA Charter gives it jurisdiction over “common standards of conduct.” So, there is a tension between the fragmented approach of the Lombardi announcement and the more holistic approach expected by the community’s elected representatives.
RELATED: Committee on Expressive Activity Issues Final Report
Elected Shared Governance Bodies React
VP Lombardi’s announcement of the Student Code of Conduct overhaul was discussed at the August 26th UA meeting. UA members question how the composition of the committee was determined. The disproportionate number of administrators who were named voting members of the committee (6 out of 11) concerns UA members. Additionally, some UA members believe that each elected shared governance body should select its own members rather than having them picked by Day Hall. Many believe that a formal UA representative should be included. Others thought that because Dean Love is the direct supervisor of the OSCCS, it is a conflict of interest for her to chair the committee in charge of reviewing how well the OSCCS has performed.
Others read the above quote about amendments as requiring “the elected assemblies” to include the UA, and that any amendments must be affirmatively adopted by them, subject to a veto by the President. In other words, proposed changes generated by any review must be acceptable to the SA and GPSA and perhaps also the Faculty Senate and the UA.
At the same time, a group of Faculty Senators petitioned to have this issue added to the Faculty Senate meeting scheduled for September 10. On Sept 2, a draft resolution was posted on the Faculty Senate website, co-sponsored by 28 faculty members. The draft calls for a new committee to review the Code, composed of three “freely-elected” members from each of the shared governance bodies.
The resolution was presented for five minutes at the end of the Sept. 10 Faculty Senate meeting. Prof. Richard Bensel emphasized [at time stamp 1:17:38] the troubling interim suspensions that were imposed on graduate students for engaging in political demonstrations. Suspensions pending a hearing are authorized if necessary to “support and protect the safety and health of the Individual Complainant, the Respondent, the University’s educational environment, and the University community,” but are being misapplied over long periods of time without due process.
The conduct website asserts that the “conduct process focuses on principles of reflection and learning,“ but Bensel contends that the interim suspensions are punitive instead. “They instill fear, hypocrisy, and cynicism,” said Bensel.
The SA considered Resolution 10 at its September 18 meeting, which also challenged the composition of Dean Love’s committee. The resolution called for the conduct system and the OSCCS to be independent of the central administration. The SA will continue discussing the topic at its meeting next Thursday.
The CGSU-UE has yet to comment on Lombardi’s announcement.
