Cornell bans radical student after university president was held hostage in car over Israel debate clash

A Cornell student activist who hounded the Ivy League school’s president Michael Kotlikoff in the parking lot following an Israel-Palestine debate has been banned from campus.Aiden Vallecillo is prohibited from attending any events at the Ithaca institution for one year after he was a part of a larger group of students who filmed and surrounded Kotlikoff, demanding to talk with the administrator as he walked to his car on April 30, according to WBNG.Vallecillo, who graduated from the elite upstate university in May, was issued a persona non grata by university police at his off-campus apartment, on May 28, five days after graduating from the school.“I think that they deliberately timed this to be at a point where students are off campus, where people are thinking about recent graduation, about post-grad plans and not about kind of how to support their fellow students,” Vallecillo claimed to the outlet.“They’ve done it at a time when national media attention has also died off.”Vallecillo complained that his freedom of speech was being denied because Kotlikoff didn’t answer his questions about campus speech policies.However, the university accused the group of harassing and intimidating Kotlikoff after the campus debate series hosted by the Cornell Political Union and co-sponsored by Cornell Progressives, Cornellians for Israel and Students for Justice in Palestine.“The Committee has found that the actions taken by these individuals on April 30th, which included following President Kotlikoff from an evening event into a parking lot and impeding his ability to leave, are inconsistent with university policies governing expressive activity and our standards for respectful conduct, safety, and the prohibition of intimidation,” Cornell’s Board of Trustees ruled after an investigation.The small squad of rabble-rousers had become notorious around the school community, spewing abuse toward Cornell staffers both online and in-person, leading to the parkin...