Kotlikoff Responds to Referenda
During finals exams in December 2025, undergraduate students passed two referenda questions. On February 2, President Michael Kotlikoff issued a formal response to those referenda as required by the Student Assembly charter.
The two referenda questions were framed by a group of students who sought to address the questions of whether the judicial system should be independent of the central administration and whether Cornell should replace the Student Code and Procedures with a combined system that applies to students, faculty, and staff.
Admir Cekic ‘26, First-Generation Student Representative on the Student Assembly, explained,
“It is not the President’s job to frame the referenda questions or scope. Stating that attention to the Code recently arose during a period of heightened protest activity, and that ‘some issues have already been addressed,’ is an attempted diversion from the fundamental fact that students want the Campus-wide code back. A group of undergraduates drafted the questions and got 536 students to sign a petition supporting those questions. The questions were subject to a vote of those in attendance at a Student Assembly (SA) meeting, and the vote was 93 to 2. The public comment period only drew a few negative comments, filling less than one page, compared with many favorable ones. Obviously, the questions captured prevalent student concerns because 93% and 91% of voters supported the questions.”
Aiden Vallecillo ‘26, one of the referenda organizers, noted that Kotlikoff did not address the substance of the referenda propositions:
“President Kotlikoff has blatantly disregarded the will of our students and his charter-mandated responsibilities. His response is not a response to the referendum; it is a communication with the Student Assembly president regarding Resolution 10. Despite Kotlikoff’s brief mention that he received the referendum questions, he does not address the questions in any way in his response. Instead, he continues to dodge the democratic demands of the Cornell student body while the Assembly does nothing to enforce students’ rights.”
Kotlikoff’s response was that, despite this clear expression of student views, he would press ahead with the narrow mission of the Standing Student Code and Procedure Review Committee (CPRC), to the exclusion of any more holistic examination of Cornell’s judicial system. Kotlikoff claims, “altering the review would violate the process embedded in the Code and delay the implementation of necessary changes.”
Prof. David A. Bateman, Government, and Chair of the Cornell Chapter of the AAUP said, “Cornell needs a holistic review of its judicial systems in order to restore community trust, and to reestablish core values of care and respect for students, faculty, and staff who are subject to its processes or turn to it for redress. After several years of seeing our systems abused by administrators looking to suppress unpopular speech, and weaponized by a federal government intent on doing the same, this trust and these values are frayed almost beyond repair. The overwhelming vote in the undergraduate referenda confirms this. The severe problems with the existing Student Code Procedures cannot be solved by the narrow review envisioned by the President’s ‘rejection’ statement.”
Prof. Randy O. Wayne, Plant Sciences, said, “I understand the difficult path that President Kotlikoff must navigate, but I am sure he knows that Cornell must provide fairness and due process to its students, faculty, and staff. A fair judicial system is a necessary condition for academic freedom and a climate of free expression at Cornell.”
Trump Administrative Pressure
Robert C. Gottlieb ‘72, who served as a Student Trustee when the original Campus Code of Conduct was adopted in the early 1970s, has been a leader of Cornell Courage. He told the Cornell Review:
“Following the Straight Takeover in 1969, significant reforms were adopted to ensure a more just and independent system of campus governance. Cornell’s reaction to the Student Assembly’s referenda reflects the administration’s intention to satisfy Trump’s commitment to minimize student activism and to play the ‘tough guy’ role in his attempt to control higher education.”
When asked about pressures on Day Hall, Gottlieb responded, “Until recently, I had no reason to believe that Cornell would ever succumb to the federal government’s interference in its affairs to satisfy any president’s political agenda. I, sadly, was wrong. There is no doubt that Day Hall feels enormous pressure to please Trump or at least not make him angry to avoid his wrath and retaliation. The settlement with the federal government reflects Cornell’s complete surrender to Trump. He convinced Cornell to pay extortion in the millions of dollars by withholding $250 million in research grants and threats to bankrupt Cornell by continuing to file frivolous lawsuits. To date, Cornell has never admitted that it did anything wrong or violated any laws, yet capitulated to Trump’s bluster and threats. *** I am a former prosecutor and am now a criminal defense attorney. If anyone other than the President engaged in his brazen, threatening conduct to extort money from an individual, he would be placed in handcuffs.”
Similar pressure was placed on Columbia in March 2025. Columbia has rules (p. 136) that apply equally to students, faculty, and staff, and cases of alleged violations are heard by a University Judicial Board (UJB) that has panels with students, faculty, and staff. Columbia’s system was independent of its central administration. The Trump Administration sent a letter to Columbia demanding that they abolish their UJB. The Trump Administration claimed that the UJB was too lenient with Pro-Palestine protesters. In response, Columbia Trustees transferred conduct to the Provost’s Office and removed all student members of the UJB. This drew public criticism from FIRE and other free expression advocates.
“If a goal is to avoid the erosion of the sense of justice that Trump’s micromanagement of the U.S. Justice Department has created, then separating the Cornell judicial system from the Central Administration is an essential step,” said Vallencello.
Who Has the Final Say?
Since Andrew Dickson White’s original 1867 Plan of Organization, student conduct was delegated to the faculty rather than the central administration. Later in 1970, it was delegated to a student-faculty-staff University Senate, which later became the University Assembly. It was never delegated to just the central administration.
Resolutions critical of the CPRC were adopted by the Faculty Senate, the SA, the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA), and the Employee Assembly. The Student Code of Conduct, which was adopted by the Board of Trustees in December 2020 over the objections of the University Assembly (UA), delegated student conduct to the Vice President of Student and Campus Life “in ongoing collaborative consultation with the elected Assemblies of the University.” Instead of having half of the CPRC staffed by the SA and half by the GPSA, Lombardi hand-picked all of the members in August 2025 after leaving the CPRC vacant for four years.
Meetings between the CPRC and each of the elected shared governance bodies were scheduled. Instead of an interactive session where members of both groups could interact, each meeting included two representatives of the CPRC to take notes, and they refused to discuss ideas presented or to answer questions raised by the assemblies. The CPRC members in attendance explained that the CPRC was to be a “non-voting committee” that would sort through and catalog all submitted suggestions and then let Vice President Lombardi decide what to do. Although sessions were held at the SA and the UA, almost no non-voting students were present. Cekic noted, “In a robotic PR statement read before they began taking notes of our concerns, the members of the committee said they refuse to comment on the referendum or answer any questions regarding the Code. I was baffled at how this is considered a session with the community when all they were allowed to do was take notes on what Assembly members think needs to be changed with the code. We also recommended to them multiple times that they organize their own open town hall for faculty, staff, and students, given that the desire to return to a Campus Code was expressed in the referendum. We have yet to hear if any of our concerns were even taken to the CPRC or if they will pursue a campus-wide townhall.
Kotlikoff’s rejection statement now says “authority to revise the Code lies with the President” rather than Vice President Lombardi, “in ongoing collaborative consultation with the shared governance bodies”. “If that is the case, why does Kotlikoff insist on filtering assembly input through a committee largely staffed by the people who have misadministered the system for the past four years?” asked Cekic.
Student-Only Code of Conduct or Campus Judicial System?
Cekic explained, “The lynchpin of this unjust system was to shift to a student-only system in 2020 after decades of a judicial system that applied equally to students, faculty, and staff. Apparently, some in Day Hall believe they can steamroll students in a separate system when faculty and staff do not have their own due process rights at stake. It was a divide-and-conquer strategy. Ninety-three percent of undergraduates rejected that approach in the December referenda, and neither CPRC nor Kotlikoff is open to revising that mistake.”
“The 2020 name changes give away the goal. The old system was ‘the campus judicial system’ headed by a ‘Judicial Administrator’ who reported to the UA through its ‘Codes and Judiciary Committee.’ The goal was justice. The new system emphasizes conduct and misconduct rather than justice, and the office has been renamed ‘Student Conduct and Community Standards.’ So, justice as a goal was removed in the 2020 editing process,” said Cekic. “Due process for students was dropped as well.”
“The main reason used to sell the Student Code of Conduct to the Trustees over the objection of the UA was ‘the students want this.’ But the December referendum overwhelmingly proves that the students favor a return to a campus-wide judicial system,” said Cekic.
A major reason for a combined student-faculty-staff system is the Henderson Law, which was passed in 1970 to require all colleges in New York State to adopt rules for the maintenance of public order that apply to all three groups. Cornell labeled its Campus Code of Conduct as its Henderson Law rules. Since 2020, Cornell has not disclosed what Henderson rules apply to its faculty or staff.
Currently, Cornell has common procedures under Policy 6.4 for violations of Title VI and Title IX, but non-job-related misconduct, such as illegal protesting by faculty or staff, does not have a documented code or procedures.
