Revising downwards: why the Student Code needs reform, and why the proposals are not enough

What follows is an analysis of the Code and Procedures Review Committee’s (CPRC) recommended changes to the Student Code of Conduct, including calls for specific reforms to be added. We begin with a summary, before providing a more detailed analysis.

The report is currently open for public comment until April 20, after which the report will be finalized and delivered to the President who will make a final recommendation to the Trustees. We strongly encourage all members of the Cornell community to communicate the need for stronger protections along these lines.

Summary

The Code and Procedures Review Committee (CPRC) has recommended changes to the Student Code of Conduct, including reforms to the temporary suspension process. Reforms are needed, but the proposals of the CPRC will not correct the failures we have observed or provide adequate protection to students. We provide a brief summary here, and a fuller discussion on our website.

The current Student Code is clear that temporary suspensions, which are imposed before responsibility has been adjudicated, shall only be used when “immediate action is necessary to protect the Complainant or the University community.” This language has been insufficient to prevent administrative abuses. As a result, the Faculty Senate, University Assembly, the Student Assembly, and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, as well as the Cornell Committee on Expressive Activity (CCEA), have all recommended more structural changes to the procedures.

Such structural checks should include the following:

the imposition of extraordinary interim or emergency measures must truly be temporary, ending after a short and well-defined period unless replaced by any sanctions following a final determination of responsibility or renewed by a decision made by a body truly independent of that which issued them in the first place.
the use of extraordinary measures, whether interim or emergency, must be accompanied by heightened responsibility on those who are issuing them. In issuing interim measures or emergency suspensions, the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) must commit to prioritizing a speedy resolution of the case, including a fast appeal process, even if this means additional work or costs.
there must be a genuinely independent appeal of the decision to impose them. The appeal process for emergency suspensions must be altered by expanding the panel to include already-trained members of the Hearing Panels.

These checks would give the University the flexibility to respond to protect the campus community and persons, while also limiting their use to exceptional circumstances and protecting students against abuse. The CPRC’s proposed reforms do not currently include these elements, which were recommended by the assemblies and CCEA. We encourage community members to advocate for the following amendments:

The list of interim measures needs to be treated as exhaustive, rather than open-ended;
Among the interim measures listed, “changes in campus housing” needs to be clarified to exclude denial of housing; “no-contact orders” should only be issued when there is a request by one of the parties; and “restrictive orders” need to be dropped from the list, as they could amount to effective suspensions or persona non grata orders, for which the emergency suspension process should be used, or greatly narrowed in scope.
Interim measures must be limited to a defined time period, calibrated to the severity of the measure. The timeline can be set by the Director simultaneously with the imposition of interim measures, but must not exceed 30 days for restrictive measures.
When imposing interim measures, the Director must also be required to set a deadline for the convening of a Hearing Panel to determine responsibility. If the deadline is not met, the interim measures must be lifted at that time.
The timeline for the appeal process determined by VPSCL must be set within days upon receipt of an appeal, and must be shorter than the timeline established by the Director. We see no reason why the appeal could not be required to be decided within two weeks.
The considerations for use of emergency suspensions should be revised to exclude “multiple unresolved conduct referrals,” which treats as evidence of guilt previous referrals that have not been adjudicated on the merits; the category of “ongoing concern over possible impact on or university operations” needs to be revised to include only “essential operations” and to drop the word “impact,” which is far too vague and encompassing given the severity of the measures.
After a defined period, the burden for continuing an emergency suspension should be flipped: the suspension should be automatically lifted after 30 days, unless there has been a decision by an independent body that the suspension should remain in effect, either as part of a regular determination of responsibility or as a continuation of the temporary measure, with the same sunsetting requirements, by an appeals body.
The timeline for the appeals of emergency suspensions must be reduced and made binding. The CCEA suggested 2-3 days, given the severity of a suspension. The proposal should be revised to read “generally no later than three days, and in no case longer than two weeks.”
The composition of the appeal panel for emergency suspensions should be expanded to include people with genuine independence from central administration. Three members, including at least one non-administrative faculty, should be drawn from the existing and already trained Hearing Panels for inclusion on the appeal panel.
A denial of an appeal should not alter the timeline requirements we propose. If an appeal is denied, and if a suspension continues at the end of the 30 day period, and if the Director requests that an emergency suspension be reimposed, a panel with a similar composition as we proposed above should be convened to decide on that request.
For both interim measures and emergency suspensions, it must be explicitly stated that neither the “issuing official” nor a complainant can serve in an appellate role.

Analysis and discussion of recommendations

Background: The proposed revisions include a number of small and uncontroversial changes. The most important, however, is a substantial reform to the temporary suspension process. This is as it should be. The major problems in the existing Code stemmed from the abuse of temporary suspensions. The Student Code clearly specifies that temporary suspensions shall only be used when “immediate action is necessary to protect the Complainant or the University community,” and stipulates that “since the underlying allegation of prohibited conduct has not yet been adjudicated on the merits, a Temporary Suspension may be imposed only when available less restrictive measures are reasonably deemed insufficient.”

Over the last few years, what had been an infrequently used provision became the Cornell administration’s go-to instrument for dealing with disruptive protests. This, combined with the severe costs associated with suspensions, led to perverse and abusive situations:

legal charges brought against student protestors would be rapidly dismissed in criminal court, and lawyers for students worried more about the consequences of our internal disciplinary processes than legal sanctions;
the cases dragged on for months, with the suspension imposing serious costs on student well-being (in one case the for nearly a year, after which the student was ultimately acquitted);
students were deemed unsafe to be on campus for course work or social events, even as graduate students were required to continue to come to campus to teach;
in some cases, the person who heard appeals of these suspensions was also the complainant in the underlying case;
most troubling, the severe costs – loss of equity in courses taken, loss of tuition, exclusion from campus housing, being cut off from friends and support networks – allowed the administration to exert considerable leverage over students, coercing them into alternative resolutions that limited their right to engage in free expression or associate with other students and friends, and made them liable for additional sanctions based on the actions of other.

In December 2024, a report of the Cornell Committee on Expressive Activity (CCEA) expressed its dismay over the length of time before temporary suspensions were resolved, the severity of the consequences being imposed before “a full investigation and finding of fact,” the punitive use of temporary suspensions, and their being issued to students for “non-violent conduct, without adequate due process.” The CCEA recommended, among other things, that reforms be adopted to ensure temporary suspensions “remain protective rather than punitive.”

The CPRC was convened largely with this purpose in mind.

Preventing abuse of the Student Code:

The fundamental problem revealed over the last few years was not the text of the Student Code, but the open violation of its letter and spirit. If the explicit language in the Student Code is not to be a “parchment barrier,” the structure of the procedures itself needs to be redesigned.

Structural protections work by changing the calculation of officials, by creating checks against abuse, and by limiting the duration of their actions until validated by independent agencies. In the case of the Student Code, these should include the following:

the use of extraordinary measures, whether interim or emergency, must impose some burden or additional responsibility on those who are issuing them – the most appropriate being a definite and quick timeline for a resolution. In issuing interim measures or emergency suspensions, OSCCS must commit to prioritizing a speedy resolution of the case, regardless of the administrative burden this imposes on the office.
there must be a genuinely independent appeal of the decision to impose them. The Director of Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) is a subordinate officer to the Vice President for Student and Campus Life (VPSCL). Any administration official is able to file complaints, including anonymously. Central administration actors have been shown to have collaborated with each other over code appeals. There is no real independent check. The proposal reforms modify this only slightly, by allowing the Dean from the student’s college or school to serve on an appeal panel (the Dean, however, might also be a complainant). We already have a competent and trained body, independent of central administration, available to serve on appeals: the existing pool of Hearing Panel members, who are ultimately responsible for making determinations of responsibility and imposing sanctions using the normal process. The appeals processes should give them a central role.
the imposition of extraordinary interim or emergency measures must truly be temporary, ending after a short and well-defined period unless replaced by any sanctions following a final determination of responsibility or unless they are renewed by a decision made by a body truly independent of that which issued them in the first place.

Analysis of the proposed “Interim Measures and Emergency Suspensions” section:

The CPRC proposes separating temporary suspensions into “interim measures” and “emergency suspensions.” There is some merit to this proposal. Interim measures could allow quick and flexible responses where the situation merits it, while further reinforcing the current Code’s textual requirement that suspensions must be used only in truly extreme cases.

As written, however, the interim measures risk being extremely severe in their consequences and of indefinite duration; rather than correcting the problems we have seen, they risk institutionalizing the potential for abuse.

1. “Interim measures”

The key features of the proposed interim measures are: (1) they are imposed at the sole discretion of the University, acting through the Director of OSCCS; (2) with the guiding standard being a vague requirement that they be “reasonable and appropriate,” “time-limited,” and “calibrated to address a perceived risk but tailored to minimize to the extent possible the impact on the affected party or parties,” but without specifying what these should mean in practice; (3) they include a list of examples, which are explicitly non-exhaustive; (4) they are reviewable by the VPSCL, on a “reasonable timeline” determined by the VPSCL, with the VPSCL’s decision final and non-appealable; (5) but with the Director able to subsequently reimpose alternative measures on their own discretion.

The first risk of abuse stems from the non-exhaustive list of possible measures. The examples include (i) “assistance obtaining access to counseling, advocacy, or medical services; (ii) assistance obtaining access to academic support and requesting academic accommodations; (iii) assistance with changes in class schedule; (iv) assistance requesting changes in work schedules, job assignments, or other work accommodations; (v) changes in campus housing; (vi) restrictive orders (e.g. restrictions on utilization of University property and/or facilities, moratorium on organizational social activities); (vii) “No-contact” orders (curtailing or prohibiting contact or communications between or among individuals).”

The first four are unobjectionable, so long as the emphasis is on assistance (ie., voluntary). The last three are potentially quite expansive, and need to be much more narrowly tailored.

“Changes in campus housing,” even involuntary changes, might be appropriate; denial of campus housing, as has occurred over the last few years, is unacceptable. This merits clarification.
“Restrictive orders” is a potentially expansive category. As written, the proposed revisions imply that the University could effectively bar students from campus without any procedural safeguards. There are some cases where this might be appropriate, but these should be covered through the more demanding and protected category of “emergency suspensions.” This category should be removed from the list or very substantially narrowed.
“No-contact orders” might be warranted in some cases. The previous few years, however, have seen administrators use alternative resolutions to prevent free and voluntary association between students. This should be revised to clarify that it can only be used in cases where one of the parties to a no-contact order requests it, where there is a credible belief of harassment or similar injury, and where the no-contact is an list of specific persons.
Most important, the list needs to be made exhaustive, rather than a list of inclusive examples. As written, there is nothing in the language to prevent the Director from using suspensions or the restrictions associated with these as an interim measure.

The second source of potential abuse in the proposed interim measures concerns the failure to define a timeline for resolution. This failure applies to both the initial imposition of measures as well as the appeal process. The language of the proposal describes them as “time-limited” and “calibrated to address a perceived risk.” And yet there is no explicit requirement that the Director communicate what that time-limit shall be, or on what basis they shall decide upon a timeline. Given the exceptional nature of these measures, the timeline cannot be decided on the basis of administrative requirements but must be calibrated to a perception of risk explicitly specified by the Director.

This is closely related to a third source of potential abuse, the lack of any check by a body independent of the VPSCL and the Director (who is the subordinate officer of the VPSCL – the VPSCL or their officers have at times been complainants in these cases).

Interim measures must be explicitly limited to a defined time period, calibrated to the severity of the measure (with assistance and housing relocation being of longer duration). The timeline can be set by the Director, but must not exceed 30 days for restrictive measures.
When imposing interim measures, the Director must be required to set a deadline for convening of a regular Hearing Panel to determine responsibility and impose penalties. If the deadline is not met, the interim measures are lifted. The Director’s ability to reimpose interim measures should be allowed only if a meeting for a Hearing Panel has been scheduled for within the next two weeks.
The timeline for the appeal process must be set immediately upon receipt of an appeal, and must be shorter than the timeline established by the Director. We see no reason why the appeal could not be required to be decided within two weeks.
It must be explicitly stated that a complainant cannot serve in an appellate role. If the VPSCL or one of their subordinate officers is the complainant, an alternative official in a separate office should be designated to hear the appeal.

Ultimately, the interim measures as written greatly enhance administrator discretion and authority, going well-beyond what federal or state law requires and including almost no structural safeguards beyond the good-will of the Director and VPSCL. Given the manifest abuses of the past few years, we see little reason to rely on goodwill alone.

Unless such safeguards as we propose above are included, the interim measures threaten to recreate the worst of the “temporary suspensions” while removing the clear language about “immediate action is necessary to protect the Complainant or the University community.”

2. “Emergency Suspensions”

This language is now carried over to the proposed category of “emergency suspensions.” Here we see slightly more concern with procedural safeguards. As with the current temporary suspension process, the proposed emergency suspensions would require the Director or other presidential delegate to consult with unspecified “appropriate University officials” and be limited to cases where “where immediate action is necessary to protect the Complainant or the University community.” (We appreciate that this is now described as limited to “extraordinary circumstances,” though note that this was the clear implication of the existing Code.)

Considerations for use: The proposed emergency suspensions would be broadly similar to temporary suspensions. The latter allowed flexibility in deciding what University privileges and services could be withdrawn. Much of it has now been transferred to the “interim measures” described above.

Emergency suspensions are “the withdrawal of any or all University privileges and services, including class attendance, participation in examinations, utilization of University premises and facilities.” Emergency suspension of student organizations “requires it cease all activities.”

The text of the proposed revisions makes clear that the CPRC envisions “emergency resolutions” as covering a much greater range of issues, with a much more expansive definition of harm to the University. A table at the end of this document compares those factors that should be considered in making an assessment about whether to impose a temporary or emergency suspension. The significant changes include:

expanding the category of “repeat offender” – which would require a holding of responsibility – to “multiple unresolved conduct referrals.” This treats as evidence of guilt previous referrals that have not been adjudicated on the merits, a major source of abuse over the last few years. This should be dropped.
The expansive category of “ongoing concern over possible impact on or disruption to university operations” is now considered a harm to the University requiring an extraordinary and immediate punishment. This is much more expansive than the current definition or than needed, ballooning disruptions to essential operations to “impact” on any “operation.” This should be revised to read “essential operations,” and the word “impact” should be deleted.

Appeal process: The primary area in which the CPRC revisions are responsive to the recommendations from the CCEA report is in having a revised appeal process. The proposed revisions do not impose a speedy timeline for appeals or resolution, nor is the appeal board independent of central administration.

Timeline for appeal:

“emergency suspensions” now explicitly remain in effect through the end of the semester. Absent any action, they remain in effect indefinitely.
At the beginning of a new semester (and not at the conclusion of the existing one), the Director must reassess whether the emergency suspension is still required. That is, the person most likely responsible for issuing the suspension in the first place is tasked with deciding whether it is still necessary.
The appeal process is given a vague timeline:“it will [consider the appeal] generally no later than three weeks from the date the emergency suspension was issued.” The “generally” 3 week timeline applies for both individuals and organizations.

Our proposed revisions:

The burden should be flipped: the suspension must be automatically lifted after a definite period, ideally 30 days and in no case beyond the beginning of the next semester, unless there has been a decision by an independent body that the suspension should remain in effect, either as part of a regular determination of responsibility or as a continuation of the temporary measure with the same sunsetting requirements.
The CCEA recommended an appeal timeline of 2-3 days from receipt of the appeal. Given that this is not a decision on the merits, and will include mostly the same information that the issuing officer used in the decision to impose the emergency suspension, there is no reason for such an extended period. The proposal should be revised to read “generally no later than three days, and in no case longer than two weeks.”

Appeal panel composition:

The appeal for individuals will now be heard by the VPSCL, the Provost, and the Dean of the Academic College of the Respondent, or their designees. This is a slight improvement, and the inclusion of the Dean provides a marginal separation from central administration. The last few years, however, have shown that administration officials will work in close collaboration to sustain each others’ decisions.

Our proposed revisions:

What is required is the inclusion of actors with genuine separation from administration. The appeal panel should be expanded to include faculty, students, and staff, the persons who are normally the key deciders in disciplinary proceedings. The VPSCL, Provost, and Dean can remain on the panel.
A denial of an appeal should not alter the timeline requirements discussed above. If an appeal is denied, and if a suspension continues to the end of the semester or 30 days, and if the Director requests that an emergency suspension be reimposed, a similarly composed panel should be convened to decide on that request.
It must be explicitly stated that neither the “issuing official” nor a complainant can serve in an appellate role.

***

The Student Code of Conduct is in desperate need of reform. The CPRC proposals regarding “interim measures” and “emergency suspensions,” however, are insufficient to correct the problems we have seen. In some ways, they only further institutionalize administrative discretion and abuses.

What is needed are structural checks that would recognize the potential severity of interim measures and the huge gravity of emergency suspensions. The checks we have proposed here – requiring a short and definite timeline for resolutions, a genuinely independent appeals process, and sunset mechanisms – would allow the University to respond flexibly to genuine emergencies or threats to campus well-being, while providing students with the protections that they deserve.

Appendix

The following table compares the considerations involved in the existing Code for imposing temporary suspensions with the proposed revisions.

Existing Code	Proposed Code
In determining whether a Temporary Suspension is appropriate, the following factors, among others, should be considered:	In determining whether an emergency suspension of a registered or recognized student organization Respondent is appropriate, a comprehensive assessment must be conducted, including but not limited to a review of the impact of the Respondent organization’s behavior on individual, organizational, and public safety, the impact of the Respondent organization’s behavior on university operations (including teaching and learning), and the Respondent organization’s conduct history. While no one factor is determinative or necessary, the following factors, among others, should be considered in this assessment:
a. Whether the Respondent has a history of violent behavior or is a repeat offender;	a. Whether the reported information or incident posed an objective threat to the physical safety of others;
b. Whether the incident represents escalation in unlawful conduct;	b. Whether the Respondent’s behavior involved the use of force or the threat or actual use of a weapon;
c. Whether there are facts indicating a risk that the Respondent will commit additional acts of interpersonal misconduct or violence;	c. Whether there exists a reasonable basis for concern over possible harm to the health or safety of others involved or the campus community generally, including whether the Respondent has a history of similar behavior and/or whether the incident represents escalation in unlawful conduct;
d. Whether there represents reasonable basis of concern for retaliatory acts;	d. Whether there exists reasonable basis for ongoing concern over possible impact on or disruption to university operations, including teaching and learning
e. Whether there exists reasonable basis for concern over possible harm to the health or safety of others involved or the campus community generally;	e. The Respondent’s conduct history, including whether the Respondent has multiple unresolved conduct referrals;
f. Whether the respondent used a weapon or force;	f. Whether there represents reasonable basis of concern for retaliatory acts;

Summary

Analysis and discussion of recommendations

Preventing abuse of the Student Code:

Analysis of the proposed “Interim Measures and Emergency Suspensions” section:

Appendix

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