Cornell University’s Faculty Senate met Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 28, in Schwartz Auditorium to take up a single sentence, and both sides had spent weeks arguing about it. Senators voted 76 to 48 against a motion to put off the question until the trustees’ independent review is finished, The Cornell Daily Sun reported, and the resolution went to an anonymous electronic ballot that opened Friday, Oct. 30, and runs through Nov. 6.
“Resolved,” it reads, “That the Faculty Senate has no confidence in the ability of the central administration to effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault at Cornell University.”
The resolution is nonbinding and needs a simple majority. Its lead sponsor is Paul Ortiz, a professor in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations; co-sponsors include Risa Lieberwitz, also of ILR, and Richard Bensel of the government department, along with Professors Packman, Brady and Colt. Under the agenda posted by the Dean of Faculty, Mr. Ortiz had 40 minutes to present it, followed by alternating two-minute speeches for and against. The meeting ran from 3:30 to 5 p.m. and was open to members of the Cornell community with ID; recording was prohibited.
How it got here
The resolution grew out of a civil lawsuit alleging that a student was sexually assaulted at a fraternity house in 2024, and out of the university’s response to her report. The people accused in the suit deny the allegations, and no one has been criminally charged. The City Politic does not identify people who report sexual assault and is not naming the people accused in the civil case.
On Oct. 6 the Board of Trustees announced that a special committee had retained Sally Yates, the former deputy U.S. attorney general now at King & Spalding, to conduct what it called a comprehensive independent review. That review covers the university’s handling of the October 2024 report and, more broadly, how its policies compare with Title IX, the Clery Act, the Campus SaVE Act and New York law. The results are to be shared with the Cornell community.
“It is imperative that Cornell be willing to examine itself with the same rigor we expect of others,” said Anne Meinig Smalling, chair of the committee.
A tense October meeting
President Michael Kotlikoff came to the Senate’s Oct. 14 meeting to answer questions. More than 300 people attended, about 100 in person and nearly 200 on Zoom, according to Ariana Kim, a faculty member who was there, CBS News reported.
Mr. Kotlikoff said he heard the call to close fraternities. “I really appreciate the sentiment of a lot of faculty and a lot of leadership of the university that have said to me it’s time for Greek life to go,” he said. But he argued for evidence first: “If at the end of the day, fraternities cannot exist in a safe environment and we can’t be convinced that they can be safe, then we should make that decision,” he said, “based on data and study and expertise, not on emotion.”
He pushed back on the claim that he had been indifferent. “I really reject the idea that I had no interest in it or was not concerned about it,” he said. He also argued that student social life moved into private houses after Collegetown bars closed following the pandemic. All fraternity parties are suspended through the end of the academic year.
Ms. Lieberwitz was unpersuaded. “He really did not answer questions, and he really didn’t take responsibility or accountability,” she told CBS. “People were talking about the lack of effective democratic governance on campus.”
Mr. Ortiz said he thought he had the votes. “If it were to be put to a vote today,” he said, “the resolution would pass.”
The case against
Opposition to the resolution is real and is not limited to defenders of the administration. CBS reported that a smaller group of faculty, many from mathematics and physics, said they wanted “more information or data” before voting on anything.
Professor Coates, one of the most outspoken critics, has called the resolution “vague” and “premature,” arguing that “the independent review initiated by the trustees should be allowed to proceed.” He likened the vote to pulling a capable pilot from the cockpit. Another critic, Professor Prasad, wrote that the Senate was being asked to consider “poorly-constructed, ill-timed, and performative resolutions.”
Supporters reply that the trustees’ review measures the administration against the law, while the Senate is being asked a different question: whether faculty trust the administration to handle the problem. The resolution does not name Mr. Kotlikoff.
A second, quieter resolution
The same agenda includes a second item that has drawn less attention. A resolution titled “A Sustained Faculty Commitment to Preventing Sexual Violence,” presented by Adam T. Smith, Suzanne Charles and Dan Buckley of the University Faculty Committee, asks faculty to commit to prevention work instead of passing judgment on the administration.
The meeting was run by Sam Nelson, the Senate’s speaker, and Chris B. Schaffer, the dean of faculty.
What a vote would mean
A no-confidence vote has no legal force. Cornell’s trustees, not its faculty, hire and fire presidents. But such votes matter: at other universities, including Harvard in 2005 and Columbia in 2024, faculty votes of no confidence came before a president’s departure, though in neither case did the vote alone decide it.
Whatever the outcome, the trustees’ review remains the formal process. Until it reports, the dispute at Cornell is less about what happened in 2024 than about who the faculty trust to find out.
Featured image: Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff at the university's New Student Convocation, August 2026. Photo by John4Numbers via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
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