By Jacquie Powers
The Cornell Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new residential housing policy as well as statutory college tuition rates at its regular meeting May 25.
The trustees approved an overall residential housing goal designed to unite undergraduates' residential and academic lives, and seven basic principles the administration believes will help to achieve that goal. These will guide the university's residential communities policy in the coming years. The full text of the document, "Cornell University Residential Communities Policy Statement," released May 2, is available electronically at http://www.sas.cornell.edu/rescomm/policy.html.
President Hunter Rawlings' vision for Cornell's residential community is set forth in the goal approved by the trustees and which garnered extensive support on campus: "Cornell University will provide supportive residential communities that contribute to an intellectually engaged and socially responsible campus environment."
Further, Rawlings has said, his aim is to create a residential policy for Cornell that "seeks to provide its undergraduates with a broad exposure to the university and particularly to the intellectual life of the campus.... that will be seen as a model for linking the academic and non-academic lives of students into a cohesive whole."
Rawlings did not ask the trustees to take any action or review any recommendations on the issue of Cornell's 10 program houses. As a result of recent discussions on campus between members of the administration and concerned students and faculty, any action on the matter of program houses in general, and on the option for freshmen to live in program houses, has been delayed until students return to the campus in the fall.
At that time the administration will begin a
full campuswide dialogue, involving students, faculty and
staff, on the subject. That discussion is expected to proceed
over
the next several years, with students, faculty and staff included on committees
involved in planning and implementing the new residential communities.
The trustees also approved 1996-97 tuition rates for the statutory colleges, which receive most of their funding from New York state, despite the fact that the state budget is almost two months overdue. The tentative rates include a $250 a year increase contemplated in the governor's executive budget recommendations for the State University of New York.
The trustees approved the following tuition rates with the stipulation that they will be reconsidered as necessary depending on the state's final higher education allocation:
· Undergraduate resident, $9,050, an increase of 6.6 percent.
· Undergraduate non-resident, $17,670, up 7.4 percent.
· Graduate non-veterinary, $10,660, up 6.6 percent.
· Doctor of veterinary medicine resident, $13,800, up 5.5 percent.
· Doctor of veterinary medicine non- resident, $18,600, up 5.6 percent.
· Graduate veterinary, $11,350, up 6.6 percent.
· Graduate reduced, $8,000, up 14.3 percent.