UA Codes and Judicial Committee

CJC Meeting Minutes, Thursday November 20th, 2008

Present

Kathleen Rourke, Nighthawk Evensen, Mary Beth Grant, Kevin Clermont, Ari Epstein, Kathy Zoner, Bob Kay, Kade Laden, Rachel Dorfman-Tandlich

• Note — members should provide their phone numbers for list of CJC members

1.Approval of Minutes of November 6th meeting

Rourke: Minutes Accepted?

All: Yes

2.Judicial Board interview selections: From Ari

Ari: We have 4 student vacancies in judicial boards, unlimited employee vacancies

Kay: when do employee hearings happen?

Grant: employee hearings held Tuesday and Wednesday night

Rourke: will hearings not take place until January after classes start?

Grant: No, we have 2 more hearings this semester

Ari: when do we want to do the interviews?

Rourke: what about the applicants we denied last time, should we accept them?

Kay: One of them was good, he wasn’t “unfit” to be on the board

Ari: Friday afternoons are good to do interviews, if we hold them the 5th of December, the UA can confirm them next semester

Kay: that’s hectic, it’s the last day of classes

Rourke: I’m inclined to hold interviews in January

Ari: lets pick a day to do this in January

Dorfman-Tandlich: what if we hold interviews over study week and just provide people with lots of options as to when they can come?

Ari: this makes scheduling too complicated

Rourke: Lets do student interviews, Friday January 23rd and interview employee applicants in the meantime

Grant: we need at least 9 more employees on the board

Rourke: would be nice to have at least 10 applicants

Nighthawk: is there a breakdown between undergrads and grads on the board?

Ari: not formally, but it works out to be even to population

Grant: are we doing JA background checks?

Ari: yes, you should tell us if they have some sort of horrific background

Interview process
i.Present interviewees with a situation, see their thought process, rank them and hand scores to Ari’s office, then committee as a whole comes up with rank and presents it to assembly
ii.We ask for CV from employees
iii.Aim for doing interviews on January 23rd and 26th — then meet on the 27th or 28th as a committee, UA meets the 29th, and can confirm selections then

3.Stephen Spilkowitz, student

Wanted “defamation, slander, and libel” to be added to the Code as violations. Never responded to our invitation to present to the committee.

Rourke: since he never responded to our invitation, do we want to discuss this or table it?

All: table

4.Jonathan Ochshorn, Associate Professor, Architecture

Concerned about the concept of “reputational interests of the University as one of the several interests and purposes that the University must protect”

Clermont- he seems to think that we can prosecute people under the general purposes, without an actual violation of the code

i.Also its true that the university has an interest in its reputation

Grant: he talks about this as a weapon against academic freedom, this is just not what it is meant to be

i.Should we vote on this?

Rourke: would we like to consider his proposal?

All: No

5.From Kathy Zoner, Police

Clermont: it is a violation of the Code “to enter any waters of Fall Creek, Cascadilla creek, or Beebe Lake that are on or adjacent to (changed to TRAVERSE) the campus (added IN THE CITY OF ITHACA) for the purpose of swimming, etc.

Grant: so “adjacent” makes this an off-campus violation, yet is this serious enough to bring charges?

Zoner: The issue is that we are dealing with lack of property rights in a creek. It is not on Cornell property, it runs through Cornell property

i.Water is the city property, high water mark and above is Cornell’s property

Laden: does this create a liability issue? Because Cornell doesn’t own this water you can’t get JA’d for swimming in it.

Zoner: we want this as a violation of the code so CUPD can keep people safe

Grant: sometimes people argue that they weren’t endangered- they’re good swimmers, so it wasn’t a “serious” enough violation to bring JA charges

Zoner: swimming violations for Cascadilla creek already exist but we would like to have violations for swimming in all creeks listed in one spot

Rourke: what about canoeing, etc.?

Zoner: this is allowed- it’s not swimming, bathing, etc.

Clermont: we need to make this “on” Cornell’s campus to make it so we don’t have to deal with the serious issue

i.Better to say traverse, to solve this problem

Rourke: the UA has several problems with this proposal

i.What if family is swimming in the gorge and dad is student- he gets JA’d, but what happens to the rest of them?

1.Zoner: they can be prosecuted under the city code

ii.Isn’t it enough to tell people to stay away from dangerous areas

1.Clermont: Apparently not

iii.What about filling in dangerous spots with rock?

1.Zoner, Rourke: we don’t actually own the water, so we can’t fill it in.

2.Also realistically can’t just go in filling in waterways- erosion, etc. would make that impossible to maintain.

Nighthawk: what about if someone is in Fall Creek way above university property, but the waterway traverses Cornell eventually?

Dorfman-Tandlich: does this include flat rock? Because it is safe to swim there and people should be allowed to do so.

Clermont: so lets add, on the campus “in the city of Ithaca”

Rourke: Lets go with this wording and send it to the councilsoffice. They can send it back to us if they don’t like it.

Vote: 4 ayes, 1 abstainer

Dorfman-Tandlich to attend UA meeting December 3rd to discuss this proposal

Clermont: Kathy was aiming to add this as Title 3, article 2, A 3k

6.Time, Date, Location for next meeting

Tuesday January 27th 3:30, in B16 Day Hall