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 parking lot disturbance.
Kotlikoff, who has been president of Cornell since March 2025, insisted that the earlier debate series event was “vigorous and civil,” and was a prime example of the “open discourse that we prize in our academic community.”
“Speech only carries meaning when one can speak, and another can listen. In a community and in a democracy, any exercise of that freedom carries the responsibility to respect the same rights for others,” Kotlikoff said in a May 15 observation.
“That is why we have policies and guidelines around free expression at Cornell: to ensure that everyone’s rights are protected and that no one can shout down or silence other views. I will continue to defend those policies with every means at my disposal.”
Several students, including Vallecillo, alleged that Kotlikoff struck them with his car as he drove away.
Footage from a nearby security camera and cellphone video recorded by Vallecillo captured the students jumping behind Kotlikoff’s car as he attempted to leave the parking lot.
“Ah, you just ran over my f––king foot,” Vallecillo screamed as he pointed the camera at the ground.
The students who claimed to have been struck all declined medical attention and refused to provide sworn statements to police on several attempts, leading
No criminal charges were brought against either side after the incident.
Kotlikoff says he was unaware the students had placed themselves behind his car as he backed up.
The school official admitted he should’ve waited for the police to arrive instead of driving away.
“Only the following afternoon did I understand that my experience would look very different in the selected video clips posted on social media and be framed in ways that I found genuinely shocking. In the moment, my goal was extricating myself from the situation safely without escalating it. In retrospect, I certainly should have remained in my car, locked it, and called the police,” Kotlikoff said.
