- A mob of about 100 leftist students overtook the Student Assembly to read aloud their previously-tabled resolution calling for divestment from businesses operating in Israel.
- The mob also made other speeches and comments criticizing university policies and the Student Assembly as non-democratic and non-representative of the student body.
- A confrontation with President David Skorton resulted in the president and vice-president’s exiting of the room after being barred from their pre-scheduled discussion with the Student Assembly.
Mobocracy has come to Cornell. As soon as the Cornell Student Assembly (SA) convened its weekly meeting on April 17 at 4:45 pm, approximately 100 students representing a consortium of leftist and liberal causes overtook the SA. The mob’s show ran for two hours and included endless self-congratulations, outlandish leftist polemics, unplugging of the SA’s microphones, and disrespectful confrontations with President David Skorton.
Following the SA’s roll-call, one student rose and announced a motion to overtake the SA, which was followed by a second and then a vocal approval from most of those in attendance. The students, led by several unidentified undergraduate and graduate students, reorganized the room’s folding chairs in a semi-circle with a large open space for speakers to address the SA, fellow mob members, and other audience members, including several students from pro-Israel groups and on-looking faculty.
This move was in response to the SA’s vote to indefinitely table Resolution 72, a measure brought before the SA at last Thursday’s meeting by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The resolution called for a divestment from six specifically-identified companies, including Soda Stream and Hewlett Packard, and any other companies that “profit from Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip”. The SA vote to table was a procedural vote that did not actually reject the resolution’s content, but instead disallowed SJP from presenting it at the meeting; the status of Resolution 72 remains as is unless a majority of Assembly members vote to overturn the previous decision.
The rejection of Resolution 72 was a huge blow to SJP, and campus debate has erupted in response to the SA’s vote. Those supportive of the tabling measure argue that the SA is not the appropriate venue or medium to bring up issues concerning international politics; students are not elected to the SA based on their opinions on foreign policy or on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Those inflamed by the vote argue that their freedom of speech was impeded upon and that the SA does not truly represent the student body.
Claiming to represent a democratic movement, what occurred inside Willard Straight Memorial Hall was really an act of mobocracy. Students angered by what they perceived to be an illegitimate democratic process last week decided this week to enact mob rule, where a preponderance of numbers specially organized for the specific purpose of overpowering and usurping the democratically-elected SA did so. Despite numerous accusations indicting the SA of stifling freedom of speech, once the mob secured control they unplugged the SA’s microphone in an actual act of silencing.
After students already began reorganizing chairs, the SA quickly voted 19-2 to suspend itself in what was clearly an unwillingness to assert its legitimacy, but perhaps a decision made to prevent escalation of already high-flung tensions to physical altercations and shouting matches. The mobocratic students were visibly pleased with their completely unopposed initiative, cheering and smirking as students took turns standing up to read the opening statements of the “Ad Hoc Committee for Student Democracy”.
While students in the crowd clutched their cell phones and designer hand bags and clothes, speakers unleashed an unrelenting tirade of leftist and progressive rhetoric and propaganda. Though some of the topics on their agenda, such as discussion of tuition increases and TCAT bus passes, were seemingly legitimate, the speakers riddled their talking points with always inflammatory, usually untrue, and at times downright ridiculous claims.
Israel was called an “apartheid” state; Cornell a corporation that “puts profits first” (the greatest evil to any leftist, it seems); Cornell as a participatory organ in the “imperialist capitalist” system; and the SA’s Cornell Caring Community – an event organized to rally against on-campus sexual assault and rape – “disgraceful” because it involved donation solicitations. These and more wild claims were all preceded by the mob’s opening statements which called for an acknowledgement of Cornell’s “occupation” of former-Cayuga people’s land. This acknowledgement came in the form of finger snaps, grunts, and the sound of indifference (i.e., the sound of texting).
Aside from these issues, the major purpose of the mob’s takeover was for SJP to read aloud Resolution 72 to mostly everyone who had already wrote or read it, a feat which took three students nearly fifteen minutes to do. Fittingly, the mob failed to acknowledge Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel.
Just when things were relaxing into a predictable line of sheer, complete one-sidedness at this meeting’s public “debate”, tensions visibly and audibly rose when President David Skorton and Vice President Susan Murphy abruptly entered the room. Students of the Ad Hoc Committee excitedly placed seats in the middle of their ad hoc semicircle for them, but Skorton and Murphy disregarded the gesture and moved the chairs to a table for speakers normally placed in front of the SA. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so), Skorton and Murphy had been scheduled to have one of their regular meetings with the SA in which they answer questions from both SA members and those in the audience.
SA President Ulysses Smith, ’14, attempted to ask for permission from the mob to restore order and allow the SA to conduct its half-hour session with Skorton and Murphy, but agitated mobocrats refused. The SA once again capitulated, but Skorton took to the floor and tried reasoning with the students. His calls for a restoration of constructive, inclusive dialogue – which SJP believes the SA denied them the opportunity to engage in – were ignored. Instead, several students including Bailey Dineen, ’14, continuously interrupted Skorton, prompting the president to ask for permission from the mob to let him speak. Eventually, Skorton and Murphy left without having their scheduled conversation with the SA, and the mob proceeded.
Smith and Sarah Balik, ’15, current SA Executive Vice President and next year’s President, made comments towards the meeting’s close essentially congratulating the mob for overtaking the assembly they are supposed to lead. Smith, in veiled rhetoric, also apologized for the SA’s vote to table Resolution 72, distancing himself from the SA’s majority consensus.
Speakers from the mob frequently invoked the word “democracy” or “democratic” to describe their actions. Not so. The mob was an unelected body representing only a minority of students, and used their numbers and aggressiveness to overpower the SA and university’s own president and vice-president. One mob leader claimed the semi-circle elevated their collective power to that of and beyond the SA and the administration. However in a surprising and in perhaps the night’s only contradiction between mob speakers, another white female student argued that students could never approach Skorton about their grievances on equal standing because he is an “older, white male… with a cushy salary”.
This ordeal involving Resolution 72 is either over or far from it. It is difficult to gauge, especially when estimating what a roving mob of leftists inclined to usurping democratic institutions will do next. Furthermore, this very long article does not even cover three-fourths of what was said at this meeting, including one bizarre attack by Dineen on the “elitist” style of dress of SA members.
With these in mind, make sure to stay in tune for future articles and video clips of the event. You can also read a previous article below about what occurred at last Thursday’s SA meeting, which included a walkout after the vote to table Resolution 72 complete with shouting and cursing SJP students.
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