"Day Hall has a problem: over the past few years they have continually aimed to “improve” Cornell by “managing via press release;” trying to make Cornell look good instead of enacting substantive change. My campaign intends to stand up to Day Hall, and put an end to this short sighted behavior."
ON THE ISSUES
FINANCIAL STABILITY
Cornell is the only Ivy losing money on its endowment, and the endowment consistently underperforms the market. It’s time to take a serious look at the management of the Cornell endowment. It is vital that we fix our finances now, to allow students to learn here for generations, and to responsibly stop increasing tuition faster than inflation.
STUDENT EXPERIENCE
The heart of a university are its students and its faculty. To this end, all decisions the trustees make should start with the question: “How does this affect the student experience?”
IMPROVED RANKINGS
Cornell is continually aiming to improve its rankings both nationally and internationally, however, it has been doing so by trying to look good, rather than trying to make substantive improvements. As trustee, I aim to shift focus to earning the higher ratings Cornell wants, and to start, as mentioned earlier, by focusing on the student experience and concrete policies, rather than simply statements of support from the trustees.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
As Mayor Myrick has stated, Cornell could be doing more to engage with the Ithaca community. To this end, I would push the trustees to engage with the city council to allow for increased construction of apartments, to drive down prices, and force landlords currently practicing demolition by neglect, in the historic district, to improve their properties.
MINORITY REPRESENTATION
The trustees in the past released a statement saying that Cornell was serious about minority representation in its faculty, but provided no specifics as to how representation could be improved. As such, most schools ignored, or at most gave lip service to, the statement, and little changed. Taking inspiration from the only school that did something, the School of Hotel Administration, I aim to put in place a concrete, university-wide policy to start to address the problem of underrepresentation. Further, we must make sure to support our veterans, who live on campus as students with us, to ensure that their voices are heard.
ADMINISTRATION TRANSPARENCY
Deans, Associate Deans, and Deputy Deans are too often kept in the dark about major decisions affecting their schools until the last minute. This needs to change. As such, I aim to improve the transparency of the trustees, and bring in the deans earlier in decision making processes.