It started two years ago after a fraternity party at the esteemed Cornell University in Ithaca, NY when a sophomore, now known as Jane Doe, was surfing the internet and saw a post that read, “I hear that [the fraternity called Chi Phi] have been doing hell Gang Banging. They do drugs and gang raped a sophomore.”
Thus began a huge crisis for the university as the country was horrified and the news went viral, and drew international attention because Doe decided to reveal what happened to her two years ago. Cornell was faced with dealing with allegations that seven fraternity members had sexually assaulted a student and coerced her to take a powerful drug.
Doe had gone to the campus police who failed to take the case to the District Attorney. At that point New York Governor Kathy Hochul had had enough. “In what world would police not elevate allegations of a rape to the DA,” she demanded. Not long afterwards she appointed New York Attorney General Leticia James to conduct an independent investigation.
It wasn’t long before the district attorney in Tompkins County, NY, who had failed to seriously assess her complaint was forced to resign. By then Doe then had filed a complaint that prompted several hearings by Cornell’s Title IX committee, which is meant to ensure compliance with federal civil rights law.
Things escalated from there. Doe filed a lawsuit against the seven men, three of whom hired lawyers who declined to bring criminal charges. That’s when the situation got worse. Here was a district attorney refusing to investigate further, even when more evidence was showing up, and several lawyers were circling the wagons in solidarity.
Then the president of the university made a trivializing statement that was a travesty. “What happened to Jane Doe is ‘deeply disturbing,’ he said, and would “weigh heavily on our community for years to come. All that mattered to him was Cornell’s reputation and recruitment. “My heart aches when I think of what she experienced, he continued.” Really? How patronizing and paternalistic can you get? He also moaned about the “troubling issues about sexual assault and dehumanization.” But not a word about Doe’s dehumanization or the more than 50 frat boys that posted messages like this when Doe was being assaulted: “Free pussy,” Shop still open?”
Not a word of apology or responsibility to Jane Doe or the campus community. And not an ounce of reflection about the epidemic and endemic problem of what is happening on college campuses all over this country and how it is encouraged by the Greek system. Not a whisper of the sexism it fosters that allows frat boys to laugh about sexually abusing, drugging, and raping campus women.
According to a report in the Washington Post incidents at Cornell are more likely to be reported but less likely to result in serious discipline (than writing essays) when compared to NY state figures. Two of the 7 perpetrators are still attending classes and none has been charged with a crime.
Here’s the reality. The Greek system is a mafia of misogyny and a breeding ground for the brutality of women, as well as a training stop for bad boys who will live in solidarity with bad men. No squealing. The Brotherhood never outs a brother. Frat houses are nothing more than big locker rooms where guys get off on dreaming up ways to diminish, trivialize, fantasize, sexualize, objectify, and yes, treat women like crap. They should be abolished on every single college or university campus. Male students should come to university to study, learn, mature and learn to be good men. That should be the goal of administrators, faculty, and parents. Instead, if young men live in Greek fraternities, they will be unlikely to consider the gift of an education, the purpose of being there, and the contributions women make on campus and society.
Here’s a quote from a Cornell University student who is one of the good guys. “The case surrounding the Cornell 7 is as lurid at it gets. Whether these men face prosecution or not it won’t change the structural issue with Greek life…. This putrid treatment of women didn’t originate in this house. It is a culture created over years of ‘tradition’ and it is what fraternities are built to produce.”
Sexual abuse of women on college campuses is an urgent issue. Calls to the national sexual assault hotline run by the Rape, Abuse & Incest National (RAINN) have increased more than 80 percent since the news about Doe’s lawsuit.
Yet Cornell’s response to this crisis has left students, faculty, and some administrators feeling betrayed as frustration with the lack of accountability and action frustrates them to point of massive demonstrations and calls for the president to resign. According to the president of the Cornell chapter of the American Association of University Professor, David Bateman told CNN that “there’s been a real sense of frustration with university communications, that they are just being reactive and at no point has there been a palpable sense of concern for the students.
Despite Cornell hiring former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates who worked in the Obama
Administration to conduct an independent investigation, protests are growing at Cornell and elsewhere about sexual assaults against women. That should happen everywhere when one in five women have experienced rape, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Does Cornell have the guts to shut down their frat houses? Do other places of “higher learning” have the will to do that?
