In October 2024, a young woman was gang raped at a Cornell fraternity. The University failed her. The local police and prosecutor failed her. And likely, the Greek system and student body at Cornell failed her. Because Cornell would not refund the significant tuition for the year, the young woman had to remain at Cornell for the rest of the academic year until she could transfer to another school. She then filed a civil lawsuit to bring her incident into the court of public opinion.
This is another example of how our institutions and the people in power have always failed women. There is never accountability for the harm done to women.
And similar to the #MeToo movement ten years ago, women are coming out on social media and sharing their stories. I would venture to say that most women know someone who was raped in college. Just like sexual harassment in the workplace, women generally don’t report these incidents. There’s too much negative personal impact to come forward and report. And harassers are typically people in power who make life hell for victims.
In my own college experience at UC Berkeley, I know of two young women who were raped. One came forward and reported it and one did not. The one who did not report had an experience at a fraternity house similar to what’s being reported happened to the Cornell student… multiple men at our “brother” fraternity house across the street from our sorority house. That young woman tried to forget the incident and move on. The other young woman came forward and reported the incident she experienced. It involved a popular handsome young man in a fraternity. I believe her life became hell after she reported. I recall being at Henry’s – a popular bar in Berkeley – as both the young woman and her alleged assailant were there. The students at the bar that night were generally not friendly or supportive of the young woman. As we see time and time again, people questioned her, judged her, were critical of her… “Why would she go to a fraternity house?” “Why would she be drunk at a fraternity house?” “She liked the young man and invited his attention.” “She started it and then felt embarrassed and that’s why she’s now making a claim against him.” Why do we always have this reaction? Because women suck up to men and men will always protect men. It goes on and on… and the way our society responds to these incidents is why women are still treated as objects; as second class citizens.
Social media over the last 15 years has just made this worse and Gen Z women are experiencing far worse toxicity and harm than my friends and I experienced as Gen Xers. We are going backwards.
Ideally, there should have been a young man at that Cornell fraternity who stopped the incident; called the police; walked the young woman home. We need both men and women to muster the courage to speak out and hold people accountable for depraved actions. And we need our institutions and the people who run them to get a backbone and stop tolerating harm against young women.
