Three protesters have been suspended from school for three years.
A doctor was one of the numerous climate protesters who, as a way to prevent Cornell University’s “fossil fuel complicity,” defaced the statue of one of its founders, Andrew Dickson White, during commencement.
The Cornell Daily Sun reports that the team Cornell on Fire, a” alliance of Cornellians and group members calling for a just and complete university-wide response to the climate emergency,” put a blindfold on White’s experience along with a banner protesting Cornell’s connection with the fossil fuel industry.
Scientist Rebellion Turtle Island, along with” collaborators” Fossil Free Cornell and TIAA-Divest, co-organized the protest, according to a press release from the group.
University police cited the activists for trespassing and “failure to present a permit to display posters on the statue” upon their arrival at the protest.
Three of the climate protesters were eventually declared “persona non grata,” meaning they were for three years barred from” Cornell properties.”
Cornell on Fire chose the graduation day for the protest “because they wanted to draw attention to the climate change crisis, which is” crucial” for the class of 2025’s future.”
Bethany ojalehto mays, a non-capitalization in the original, whose faculty page states that she was “on leave” in 2021-2022, but the Sun calls her a “former professor,” was one of the group’s participants.
Mays , who taught in the psychology department and examined “how people conceptualize agency and ecologies, with a focus on cultural variation in social cognition and human-environment relationships,” claimed that the group’s actions were only an “educational art installation” and therefore permissible.
The Sun notes that Cornell’s Expressive Activity Policy permits” art installations,” and that scheduling protests like this is “encouraged, but not required.”
However, it also states that protests are “limited to members of the Cornell campus community.” It’s unclear if mays qualifies as a former professor.
The Sun  does not specify whether Mays was a member of the list of persona non-grata. A fellow activist and @thestustustudio posted a video on X of Mays that outlined their activities.
Cornell on Fire noted in a statement that its previous, comparable protest against the statue took place “without repression, as one would expect given Cornell’s own stated values and policies.” However, this time “was an alarming sign that Cornell’s police crackdown on expressive activity is growing.”
MORE: A dozen protesters are arrested, and Cornell climate activists block traffic for hours.
Climate activists protest the Cornell statue of Andrew Dickson White, @thestustustudio/X, in an image capturing and edited by IMAGE CAPTURE. ORIGINAL IMAGE: Cornell U.
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