Free Republic

Ithaca College President Thomas Rochon will step down next year over his failure to respond to racially sensitive issues in the appropriate manner. The decision came after much personal introspection, according to Rochon, after the faculty and students separately voted no confidence in his leadership in a vote that was inexplicably conducted via Survey Monkey, an unscientific method of deciphering opinion. Ithaca is a private college of around 7,000 students. According to news reports, faculty complained “he didn’t listen to anyone, he made decisions without input and he seemed to be following a business model rather than being concerned with...

ITHACA, NY -- Hundreds of Ithaca College students and supporters gathered at the center of campus Wednesday to demand the resignation of college president Tom Rochon and an overhaul of the structures at the campus that they said make students of color feel unsafe and excluded. The protest, which began around 1:30 p.m. and attracted at least 750 people, was in response to what organizers said were a series of incidents that demonstrated cultural insensitivity and exclusion of certain groups.

The chant: "Tom Rochon. No confidence" echoed across campus Wednesday, shouted by at least a thousand students who took part in a "Solidarity Walk Out" at Ithaca College. The demonstration was a response to ongoing concerns of racial injustice on campus. "We stand here in solidarity," a woman standing with POC at IC (People of Color at IC) said into a microphone Wednesday in front of hundreds. "Our hearts are heavy with the pain of Mizzou and Yale and Smith and every person of color on a college campus simply because of the color of their skin, the texture of...

According to Recckio [ed. president of Ithaca College’s Student Government Association], problems first surfaced during Residential Advisor training at the start of this year when RAs reported racial aggression by Public Safety officers. At the training session, Officer Terry O’Pray reportedly stated that racial profiling does not occur at Ithaca College. Officer Jon Elmore showed RAs various weapons, and when he showed a black BB gun, he said he would shoot anyone he saw with one on campus, according to The Ithacan, Ithaca College’s student newspaper. The second event involved two alumni who made racially insensitive remarks about another black...

The future of a media dominated by left-leaning professionals seems secure. At least, it is if my experience addressing an Ithaca College course today is any indication. Professor Wenmouth Williams, Jr. kindly me invited in to address two sections in his course on media and politics at Ithaca College's Park School of Communications. Prof. Williams—who identified himself as a registered Dem—couldn't have been nicer or more gracious, and gave me absolute free rein. After I spent a few minutes at the beginning of each section discussing NewsBusters and related subjects and offering my general take on the MSM and the...

While some might commend Maura Stephens for her willingness to join a peace mission to Iraq, it is inappropriate that Ithaca College ever considered funding her trip. The institution’s mission should be educating students, not furthering the political agendas of its staff members and administrators. Four different college offices initially agreed to contribute $500 each to help Stephens, editor of the Ithaca College Quarterly, make a trip to Iraq with a women’s peace delegation. It was only when an Ithacan Online story published Tuesday raised questions regarding the purpose and legality of the trip that the college began to question...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Maura Stephens, editor of the Ithaca College Quarterly, has withdrawn her request for $2,000 in funding from the college to pay for her trip to Iraq. Four college offices had committed last week to give $500 each for her humanitarian and activist mission with the women’s peace delegation Code Pink: Women’s Pre-Emptive Strike for Peace. "I withdrew my request for support," Stephens said Tuesday afternoon. "I don’t want the college to be under any kind of cloud over this. I will be funding it myself." The Ithacan Online published a story earlier Tuesday that raised questions about...

<p>ITHACA -- Several hundred students lugging backpacks swept in and out of a daylong teach-in Tuesday at Cornell University aimed at mobilizing the community against a war in Iraq.</p> <p>Professors of history, government, politics and media from both Cornell and Ithaca College were invited to the forum, sponsored by the student-led Cornell Anti-War Coalition.</p>

If a political drama in Ithaca was to get national attention, is it possible that some locals might not even notice? That's what happened when Ithaca College senior Shelley Facente faced off against Bay Buchanan on the editorial talk show The O'Reilly Factor, which aired last week on the Fox News Network. The dispute which sparked the televised point-counterpoint editorial arose a few weeks ago when Ithaca College Republicans put up advertisements for a college speech by Buchanan, a well-known conservative and sister of Pat Buchanan, reading, "Feminazis: Your Nuremburg Has Come." Following a public forum about the posters, the...

Bias concerns follow speechBy Joe Geraghty - Assistant News Editor April 11, 2002 The controversy surrounding conservative activist Bay Buchanan's speech last Thursday is beginning to die down. After her speech, in which she decried feminism as a cause of high divorce rates and one of the reasons for the legalization of abortion, more than 20 students approached Campus Safety officers in Emerson Suites to discuss reporting the speech as a bias-related incident. Those students were referred to the Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life. A number of students met with Rory Rothman, associate vice president for student affairs...