Student Assembly

Hi President Skorton,

Thanks for your comments. I am including Noah Tulsky, who is the new VP of Diversity & Inclusion, on this email.

I just sent you a separate response regarding Resolution 45. It seems that we never responded last year, though many of the items you suggested were already incorporated or further clarified.

The committee survey and process is exactly as you describe. The SA worked very closely with Linda Howell in Workforce Diversity & Inclusion to think about and identify our goals, choose questions, and create an actual survey. The survey is completely optional and anonymous. Linda helped pull questions from Cornell’s exiting surveys (like the PULSE) in order to create our survey. We even asked more open-ended qualitative questions at the end of the survey that also discuss personal goals and such. Linda also helped to write the fantastic introduction to the survey that actually addresses every concern you mention. You can actually see the survey here.

We did discuss extensively how data would be used. We would not at all use this data to select members of our committees. We felt that we were not able to adequately get to many of the various communities around Cornell because we had no data about the composition of our committees. We were also very openly criticized last year because both of our funding arms (Appropriations Committee and the SAFC) were dominated by members of particular organizations and had never made any efforts to recruit from other areas of campus. We would also only see the aggregate data. To my understanding, we (the students) would not even see the raw data.

Lastly, we do intend to use existing training programs and hopefully get personalized training. We have been offered assistance by Renee Alexander, Vivan Relta from Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble and Organizational Development for Faculty & Staff, the Scheinman Institute, and other staff. The SA even partnered with COE, SLECA, and others to begin the series, Race: The Power of Illusion. The first showing was yesterday.

We will further clarify these items and resubmit the resolution.

Best,

Ulysses