The Ithaca College Student Governance Council held a town hall meeting Nov. 4 in IC Square, to hear from students and give updates to those in attendance. The SGC held the town hall to boost engagement with the student body. 

Jason Starkman ’22 and Sam Edelstein ’22 came to the town hall to talk about their civic education startup Poliquicks. Then, Junior Quincy Fireside, president of Ithaca College Students for a Free Palestine, spoke about the college divesting from Israel. The council also heard from sophomore Ben Epstein, president of Ithacans for Israel, about combating antisemitism on campus.

Civil education startup

Starkman and Edelstein are the creators of their startup Poliquicks. Edelstein said they created Poliquicks to raise voters’ awareness on who they are voting for. The app, which officially launched Sept. 9, compiles information from the three branches of government into a reader-friendly daily guide. The app is interactive, and gives daily updates for voters to stay educated about politicians and the policies they put in place. 

“Politicians [and] their decisions are impacting you and your community,” Edelstein said. “These are people who we are voting into office. And then we don’t always entirely know who these people are, what their stances are and if what they say they do aligns with what they’re actually doing.”

Starkman said the app is free and generates revenue from advertisements, working with political offices and working for schools. Starkman said the app does not sell user data to third parties and only collects user information needed to make the app functional like what state the user lives in. 

“I think that the most valuable piece of data that we might ask a user for is their home address,” Starkman said. “We don’t sell it to anybody. We’re just using that so that we can display your full [representatives].”

Edelstein said he found it important to have worked on the app with a team of people who came from diverse backgrounds and held different perspectives to remove personal biases from it. 

“When you’re creating an app [we] might have a vision of what we want it to look like,” Edelstein said. “But then we might add our own biases into it. It’s important to make sure you’re talking to people from different backgrounds and political views.”

Sam Edelstein was the web director for The Ithacan from 2019–22. 

ICSFP demands disclosure and divestment from Israel

Last spring, ICSFP’s demands for divestment were rejected by President La Jerne Cornish. The demands included: “a school-wide statement acknowledging the genocide of Palestinians, a statement of support for Palestinian students and an apology for not making the statement sooner; a Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) audit which would provide access to information about if the college receives funding from any Israeli or Zionist corporations; and for Birthright trips to stop being run through Hillel at Ithaca College.”

Fireside said during the town hall, that ICSFP published an online petition in April for disclosure and divestment regarding the college’s financial ties to Israel. They said the petition — which has gotten 784 signatures as of Nov. 5 — is representative of over 10% of the student body. They asked the council if there is a referendum process at the college they could use to encourage administration to disclose and divest from any financial ties to Israel.

“If you have been following Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine, they recently passed a referendum, which was a student vote to encourage [Cornell] administration to … disclose their divestment of financial ties to Israel,” Fireside said. “It’s something that we’re interested in doing at IC, and I wonder if there’s a process for that in place?”

Junior Rishabh Sen, president of the student body, said there is no formal process for a referendum in the SGC’s Constitution. He said students can create recommendation legislation — a piece of legislation or a bill written by students outside of SGC — to give a recommendation to the college administration.

“As SGC, our job is to lift [all of your] voices,” Sen said. “If you feel that the student body needs [referendum], we can help y’all get in touch with the right campus partner, the right administration person, or even work with us in order to host an event or a vote.”

The college is a tax-exempt not-for-profit institution, meaning it has to file IRS Form 990 annually which reports the college’s financial operations. Fireside said the college’s Form 990 is difficult to access and requires extensive knowledge of financial terminology to understand. They suggested SGC could work to make the information within the college’s Form 990 more accessible and digestible.

“Whether you’re here for IC Students for Palestine or not, I’m sure you’d love to know where that money’s going,” Fireside said.

Sen said SGC can work with Tim Downs, vice president for finance and administration and chief financial officer, as well as the Office of Information Technology and Analytics and the Office of Student Financial Services to make the financial information in the college’s Form 990’s more accessible to all. 

“We can definitely voice your concerns to Tim Downs,” Sen said. “But also IT and SFS to try and create some way of making this information a little easier to read.”

Combating antisemitism on campus

Epstein spoke at the town hall about antisemitism at college campuses over the past year. He read a quote from former Cornell University student Patrick Dai, who was sentenced to 21 months in prison for antisemitic threats made online against Jewish students at the university.

“Here in the United States, 6000 miles away from the horrors unfolding in the Middle East, Jewish students have been ruthlessly attacked just for being Jewish,” Epstein said.

Epstein said one way to combat antisemitism is for the college to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, which he said is based on 11 examples of antisemitism. The examples help institutions determine what languages and behaviors are antisemitic. He asked the council to denounce antisemitism.

“At this moment right now,” Epstein said. “Condemn any and all antisemitism on this campus.”

According to the SGC Constitution, no member is allowed to make a statement on behalf of the SGC. Junior Senate Chair Nikki Sutera said members of SGC can make personal statements but cannot make statements on behalf of their constituencies.

“We can make statements as people,” Sutera said. “So for example, I, and this is true, condemn hate crimes on campus, especially toward Jewish students, and that is on behalf of me.”