On very short notice, Day Hall has adopted a new “universal recognition policy” seriously affecting the First Amendment freedom of association rights and free expression rights of members of the Cornell community.
Previously, student organizations could optionally “register” with the Campus Activities while fraternities and sororities were “recognized” under a Trustee-approved policy. Aside from certain funding guidelines adopted by the Student Assembly (SA) or the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA), student organizations were mostly unregulated.
Under the new policy, student organizations are reclassified into three categories, and all groups will be subject to annual “recognition” requirements. The three new categories are:
- General Student Organizations (GSO) are formed by students based on a shared interest or activity. GSOs are independent legal entities responsible for their own actions and meeting their own legal duties and obligations. For example, Students for Justice in Palestine and Network of Enlightened Women.
- University Student Organizations (USO) are affiliated with and sponsored by a university department or unit. USO activities fully relate to the educational, research, and/or community-service missions of the university and to the goals or objectives of the university department or unit with which they are affiliated. For example, the Glee Club, Big Red Band, or engineering project teams.
- Sorority and Fraternity Student Organizations (SFSO) are chapters of national Greek organizations. They may either be residential or non-residential and may be located on or off campus. For example, Delta Upsilon or Kappa Gamma.
There are also major entities that are clearly outside this classification structure such as: Telluride, Student Agencies, The Cornell Daily Sun, the Cornell Media Group (WVBR) and student entrepreneurial ventures.
The process, administered by the Campus Activities Office, raised a number of concerns:
Privacy of Membership Lists
The policy requires each organization to disclose at least ten non-officer members from their membership roster. Many groups cover sensitive issues and may not wish to have their club memberships made public. For example, the SA and GPSA have already passed a policy protecting the membership roster of LGBTQ groups. Similarly, UPenn and others successfully fought attempts by the Trump Administration to force colleges to disclose a list of their Jewish members.
Protecting Freedom of Expression
Cornell’s Expressive Activity Policy is not limited to “recognized” groups, but does require prior registration of certain protests. In contrast, the “universal recognition policy” lists the scheduling of events as one of the benefits of “recognition.” So, activists on campus fear that disfavored content will lead to the withdrawal of recognition by the Campus Activities Office. Although the Expressive Activity Policy requires a content-neutral approach toward regulation, there is no explicit content neutral requirement on the Campus Activities Office. Currently, recognition can be removed by any administrator without warning or due process, whereas before groups were protected by the Student Code Procedures as administered by the OSCCS, which is one step removed from line SCL staff.
The Cornell Expressive Activity Policy provides:
“Community members are required to comply with published campus space reservation policies. Existing event scheduling platforms for each campus should be used to reserve locations for speakers or other expressive activities using dedicated space, including tabling, installations, and camping.”
To the extent that the “universal recognition policy” removes certain groups from qualifying for the registration process and hence direct access to “event scheduling platforms” the scope of the protected expressive activity will be unintentionally narrowed. Hence, it is important for alternative means to reserve locations be provided for joint student-faculty-staff groups or groups created to conduct a single event such as Dragon Day, Hotel Ezra Cornell or “Community Slope Day.” If event scheduling is restricted to “recognized” groups, and recognition can be arbitrarily cancelled by the Campus Activities Office on something other than a content-neutral basis, then the expressive freedom sought to be protected by the Expressive Activity Policy vanishes.
The online registration forms require advisors to acknowledge that the “25Live” registration process has been changed including the timing windows allowed for reserving spaces in advance. Those “25Live” changes should be deferred pending widespread community discussion.
Discouraging Faculty Involvement and Membership Beyond Cornell Students
Historically, Cornell has sought to promote faculty-student interactions and linking like-minded Cornell students with others. For example, dating back to the mid-1970s, Cornell Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) was an integral part of a larger state-wide lobbying organization. Similarly, the College Republicans, College Democrats, Young Americans’ Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union allow Cornell students to be a key part of a larger organization. The new “recognition policy” requires the membership to be exclusively Cornell students, not Cornell students functioning as a part of a larger, state or national group.
As an example of a student-faculty group in the past was the Savoyards, a Gilbert and Sullivan opera group. Currently, there is the Cornell Chapter of the Heterodox Academy. The authors of the new policy take a dim view of such groups presumably because they are more difficult to control than a student-only group. The policy implies that the student-only rule is a function of SA funding from student activity fees, but student activities fees already cover groups that have more than just students, such as Athletics and New Student Orientation, and until recently, Cornell Cinema.
Instead of encouraging faculty to take a broad and helpful role in advising student groups, the new policy seeks to make the advisor a Cornell policy enforcer. Each advisor must click through a long survey as a prerequisite to the annual registration of each group that the faculty advises. Can clicking an online form obligate faculty advisors to “agree to report behaviors that violate university policies?”
Freedom of Association
The First Amendment protects the Freedom of Association.This means that like-minded people have the right to form groups. Similarly, if like-minded people want to operate as two or more separate groups, they should have the freedom to do that as well. The new policy unnecessarily infringes on these rights. First, the Campus Activities Office reserves the right to force groups to combine if in its sole discretion they cover similar themes. Second, new student groups want to form throughout the school year, but the Campus Activities Office will limit applications for “recognition” to limited time windows at the start of each semester. This prevents new groups being formed as new public policy issues emerge unexpectedly outside the limited time windows.
Cornell has historically sought to promote the free association among members of the community under its general policy of “freedom with responsibility.” Individuals should be held accountable for the misconduct for which they engage. Instead, the new policy seeks to impose on all “recognized” groups a new concept of guilt-by-association. The policy now states for all groups, “All student organizations are collectively responsible for the behavior of their members when acting as a group.” This is inconsistent with well-established legal concepts that have developed when under the criminal laws.
The new policy imposes the following constraint as subjectively applied by unspecified Cornell staff:
“The purpose(s) of a student organization may not conflict with the educational functions or established policies of the University and, generally, should not duplicate the purpose and/or functions of an existing student organization or operate solely to carry out a single activity or initiative, such as an event.”
This leaves organizations subject to the mercy of staff prejudice, and will have a chilling effect upon public policy advocacy organizations (who can be accused of being a “single activity.”) For example, Hotel Ezra Cornell would be a USO that violates this rule. Note that this rule is an artificial barrier to group existence, not just student activity fee funding.
To add a further chilling effect, the policy reserves the right for Cornell staff, of unspecified rank or seniority, to change or make up additional rules for “recognized” groups at any time. Further, SFSO members and advisors are required to review all applicable university policies, including the “2003 Board of Trustee Statement of Policy relating to Fraternity and Sorority Use of University Housing.” When we asked Vice President Ryan Lombardi for a copy of that policy, he replied that he had to check with the Secretary of the Board of Trustees to determine if the policy was public. A copy is still not available.
The above issues require a careful balancing of Cornell’s need to manage and fund a robust campus activity community while respecting Constitutionally protected rights. This is too important to draft and implement over a summer vacation. Day Hall, the University Assembly, Student Assembly and Faculty Senate should take a careful look at the exact wording of the new policy and its registration forms to mitigate the detrimental impact upon freedom of expression and freedom of association.
– Cornellians United for Free Speech
August 29, 2026