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Chancellor Kent Syverud has broached the Board of Trustees on whether to rescind Rudy Giuliani’s honorary degree, he announced Monday at Syracuse University Student Association’s first meeting of the semester.

In April, SA sent a resolution to the ​​University Senate calling on the university to rescind the former New York City mayor’s honorary doctorate from SU’s college of law. Shortly after, the senate passed a resolution calling on the Board of Trustees to revoke the degree.

Some universities that awarded Giuliani an honorary degree rescinded it in the wake of his campaign to overturn the 2020 election results, but SU is among five colleges and universities that have not rescinded them.

Syverud said the board debated whether to rescind the degree, and required the chancellor to research how peer institutions revoke honorary degrees over the summer and recommend a standard procedure.

Following his research, Syverud said he plans to present his draft recommendation for standard practices to the board at the executive committee meeting in September. Following the meeting, he said he hopes the full board will vote on the matter in November.

This would be the first time in university history that SU revokes an honorary degree, Syverud added.

SA President David Bruen and SA Vice President Adia Santos also addressed President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, announced on Aug. 24. Bruen said he worked with 110 other student body presidents to call on Biden to cancel student debt, and expressed his support of the action.

“(This is) major news, a very, very important thing for students, students today and borrowers of all ages,” Bruen said.

“I’m very happy that it happened, but that doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t need to continue because while it is a little bit it’s not enough,” Santos said.

The organization will vote on whether to provide funding for grocery trolleys at the next meeting. SA confirmed the continued funding will cost $3,276.

“We created this to bridge (the) gap for a lot of new students, students who don’t have cars, students who don’t have the money to get there,” Treloar said. “(It’s an) absolutely phenomenal program. This is just the money that’s required to keep it going.”

SA also voted to suspend rules to approve revisions to its tiered system for funding registered student organizations. Under the old system, SA divided RSOs into four tiers corresponding to the amount of funding they were eligible to receive. Higher tiers, which were determined in part by expected attendance, could request larger amounts of funding.

With the previous laws, RSOs had to wait a longer period of time to achieve higher levels of funding and become well-established, Treloar said.

“The crucial issue of this is that courts can request funding, yet these rules don’t make sense in the context of our bylaws,” Treloar said. “We need these to be approved for (organizations) to start requesting money and the board’s already hitting the ground running. We don’t want to act as a barrier to them.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this story, a quote from Adia Santos was misattributed to David Bruen. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on August 30, 2022 at 2:21 am

Contact Sarah: sswells@syr.edu