On March 29, 2024, the Ithaca College Students for Palestine executive board sat down with President Cornish and Vice President Prunty to discuss our demands regarding the ongoing genocide in occupied Palestine. We demanded that the Ithaca College administration disclose our financial ties to the Israeli apartheid state and divest from any companies that have ties to Israel or provide them with funds or weapons.

Our demands were categorically rejected by the IC administration.

President Cornish insisted that we could not divest from Israel due to Executive Order 157 (2016) which prohibits "affected [New York] state entities" from severing ties with the Israeli government or Israeli companies. This Executive Order DOES NOT explicitly name universities as "affected state entities" and, therefore, does not apply to Ithaca College. 

Since this meeting with President Cornish, schools across New York state -- both public and private -- have voted to divest, passed divestment referendums, or begun the divestment process. 

President Cornish is willingly hiding behind legal jargon and red tape to avoid accountability to her constituents: the IC student body. We will not allow the IC administration to continue their "neutrality" and silence on genocide, and we will not allow President Cornish to continue avoiding her responsibility to Ithaca College students, alumni, and faculty. President Cornish is perpetuating an act of violence in her refusal to comply with these demands: violence against the Palestinian students at IC and violence against people suffering in Gaza at the hands of an apartheid government funded by our tuition.

We are asking you, as members of the IC community, to sign this petition and show President Cornish, Vice President Prunty, and all of Ithaca College's administration that IC students, alumni, and faculty emphatically support the call for divestment.