SA R77 (2025-2026): Improving Communication from Housing & Residential Life to Students About Building-Wide Maintenance Issues
Returned by the President
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- Resolution:
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Day:
June 18, 2026
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Action:
Returned by the President
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Summary / Notes:
- File Attachments:
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Text Attachment:
Dear Eeshaan,
Thank you to Zora and the SA for conveying Resolution 77: Improving Communication from Housing & Residential Life to Students About Building-Wide Maintenance Issues.
I have asked Dan Sweeney, AVP Student and Campus Life, to address some of the concerns mentioned in the resolution, below, and encourage the Student Assembly to work with the Director of the Office of the Assemblies to arrange a meeting with AVP Sweeney to discuss these issues further.
Sincerely,
Michael Kotlikoff
We appreciate the Student Assembly’s thoughtful engagement on residential maintenance communications as well as the Assembly’s commitment to enhancing the student experience. Student and Campus Life, Housing and Residential Life (HRL), and SCL Facilities share the goal of ensuring residents receive timely, accurate, and actionable information about issues affecting their residential communities.
Many of the communication practices outlined as recommendations in Resolution 77 are actively in place through a combination of monthly and weekly community newsletters, direct email notifications, signage in affected areas, on-call staff communications, and automated maintenance request updates. We are committed to further strengthening these efforts and welcome the opportunity for direct conversation with members of the Student Assembly to explore impactful and feasible options.
We also recognize that communication methods must remain flexible and responsive to the nature of each issue. While we appreciate the intent behind proposals such as biweekly building status reports and building-specific maintenance webpages, many maintenance issues evolve rapidly, involve multiple campus partners or external vendors, and may be resolved before scheduled reporting cycles. In these cases, targeted communications delivered when information is actionable are often more effective than maintaining static reporting systems that risk becoming outdated or incomplete.
HRL and SCL Facilities strongly support ongoing student collaboration to evaluate and enhance communications methods, and we propose establishing regular semesterly meetings with Student Assembly representatives for this purpose.
We appreciate the Student Assembly's partnership and look forward to continuing to work together to ensure communication practices evolve in ways that best support Cornell students and their residential experience.
Sincerely,
Dan Sweeney
Associate Vice President, Student & Campus Life
Finance, Operations, and Enterprises