President and provost kick off new West Campus residential council

Taking part in the West Campus Living-Learning Council's first meeting Oct. 4 in Day Hall are, from left, junior Joel Silfies, President Hunter Rawlings, Provost Biddy Martin and Susan Murphy, vice president for student and academic services. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Jacquie Powers

The West Campus Living-Learning Council is charged with mapping out concrete plans to turn the university's broad vision for the West Campus Residential Initiative for upper-class students into reality, President Hunter Rawlings told the council at its inaugural meeting last week.

The council, made up of faculty, students and staff and chaired by Isaac Kramnick, the R.J. Schwartz Professor of Government and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, met for the first time Oct. 4. Rawlings said the council will build on the vision created by earlier committees working on the broad issue of residential life at Cornell.

He said the new living-learning residences on both campuses would do exactly that.

"Our North and West Campus programs will help provide a stronger, more integrated intellectual atmosphere on campus that goes well beyond what students experience inside the classroom," Rawlings said. "They will present an opportunity to have students and faculty interact in informal intellectual exchanges outside the classroom. We will not emulate other campuses, but we will borrow good ideas where we find them."

Moreover, Rawlings said, both the trustees and the administration are committed to ensuring that the resources are available not only to complete the project, but to complete it well.

Provost Biddy Martin told council members, "I endorse 100 percent the effort you are making." She added that in addition to emphasizing the importance of the enhanced living-learning environment to students, she wanted to stress its importance to faculty members.

"I think faculty morale will be enhanced, not only by much-needed increases in faculty salaries, but by an increased sense of intellectual community," Martin said. "This is a chance to change the campus as a whole, to improve the overall intellectual atmosphere."

Susan Murphy, vice president for student and academic services, stressed that the council would be a working committee. She said that Cornell is not just building dorms. Rather, the earlier vision committee determined that Cornell needed an undergraduate residential community "that was supportive, to help ease the transition for freshmen, but also intellectually engaged and socially responsible. Not just comfortable, but challenging, and offering a broad range of housing options."

Michael Brown, chair of the University Assembly and a student member of the council, asked whether there would be a problem with too few beds on West Campus during the transition and reconstruction.

Murphy answered that while there would be fewer beds on West Campus, the movement of all freshmen to North Campus next fall would open up more beds for upper-class students on West Campus.