With only a few weeks of the new school year complete, Cornell University is calling on students to battle bigotry after a racially charged incident landed one person in the hospital.
University president Martha Pollack in a statement said recent events at the Ithaca campus are “deeply painful; and, of course, the pain is magnified a thousandfold for those whose dignity and, indeed, very bodies have been attacked.
“I will not tell you ‘this is not who we are,’ as the events of the past few weeks belie that. But it is absolutely not who we want to be.”
Pollack’s comments are primarily in response to an attack that occurred on campus in the early hours of Friday morning.
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A black student, a junior at the Ivy League school, had returned home to find a group of students near his driveway, arguing with the people he lived with. When he asked them to leave they insulted him, calling him racial slurs, before four or five of them started punching him in the face, the New York Times reported.
He was left “bloodied” by the incident and was hospitalized.
Police said there were several witnesses to the attack, which took place in Collegetown.
The assault came on the heels of a separate incident earlier this month, when at least one student began chanting about building a wall near the Latino Living Center on campus.
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Ithaca Police charged one student — who they have not identified — with misdemeanor assault and said there were “no significant injuries” resulting from Friday’s altercation, Lt. John Joly said.
He told The Cornell Daily Sun the department was investigating whether there was “any racially biased motivations.”
Vice president for student and campus life Ryan Lombardi in a statement on Friday said other students “allegedly from a currently unaffiliated fraternity” were also involved in the attack.
Black Students United named Psi Upsilon as the group behind the assault, though the university has not specifically identified the fraternity or its members as the assailants in the violent incident, according to the newspaper.
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Just a day after the attack was reported, the phrase, “You Rasist F---s [sic]” was spray-painted on the outside wall of Psi Upsilon’s former fraternity house. It was covered with a board on Saturday, but became visible again not long after according to the Sun.
The school revoked Psi Upsilon’s charter in 2016 after they allegedly hosted a party while they were under suspension.
“Based on what we know, and pending final investigation, Cornell will not consider Psi Upsilon’s reinstatement as an affiliated fraternity,” Pollack said in the statement, in addition to detailing a series of other initiatives intended to prevent such incidents moving forward.
The president said she would also “convene a Presidential Task Force charged with examining and addressing persistent problems of bigotry and intolerance at Cornell” and it will also be tasked with assisting Greek councils in developing diversity education and training.
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