In 1989, I started graduate school at a university that I'll call The U because three decades have passed. Maybe things have changed. Anyway, there was a serial rapist working the campus, striking at night in certain parking lots and various locations around town where students and teachers lived.
And quite a few of the graduate level history classes took place at night, including one in a professor's home. In fact, once a rape occurred less than a block away from that house while we were in class. So that worked out quite well for the professor, but it made for disturbing walks to and from the car for the rest of us.
Yes, we female students including me always asked one of the guys in the class to escort us to our cars, and they always cooperated, so leaving class wasn't a problem. The tough part was parking at night, when you got out of the car with your books and notebooks, trying to breathe normally, keep walking, while looking around like your eyes were on swivels... One of the parking lots had had four assaults, and that's where I had to park for one class because it was the closest to the building, and anywhere else would have meant that I'd have to walk through two other parking lots which were just as dangerous, because the rapist struck randomly.
The administration never admitted that the rapes were going on. They did send out a "safety memo" that women should seek escorts at night, just as a matter of common safety. No mention of the rapist. And the campus police (more on them later) were never around at night. A huge number of students signed a petition asking for campus police to monitor the parking lots - but the university said there simply weren't the resources to do that. Just seek someone to escort you and stay out of dark spaces. Ignoring the night classes. The dark parking lots, where sometimes a light went out and wasn't replaced for a few weeks. The dark street where the professor lived. And back then, no cell phones…
Hell, I'm getting triggered just writing this. Because that was a long stretch to live under constant tension and fear, and even after two years on the streets of L.A. as a teenager. I guess I'd hoped life would get safer, especially at the posh university I'd been lucky enough to get accepted by. Wrong.
So I have a few comments about the Cornell 7 and the handling of Jane Doe's case.
“Shop still open?” is a kind of wordplay that requires a little brainpower, especially when made at 1:42 a.m. Your mind may be fuzzy with alcohol or ketamine, but not so fuzzy that you cannot dig out your phone and add a question mark.
The question mark is needed because you do not know whether the woman — a student, just like you — is still there. You are not there, after all. You are in a different room. You are making a premeditated inquiry as to whether you should bother traveling to another part of the house in order to have sex with a woman you have identified as a shop. You have to think about it. You have to press send.
You do not know whether she is conscious or consenting. You are not texting her to find out. She could probably be a better judge of whether she was conscious or consenting, but you have instead decided to group-text your fraternity brothers, entrusting them to be the judge of whether the shop should be open. If you text the shop, you might learn that maybe it never wanted to be open in the first place.
The presence of a group text is both gobsmacking and banal. It conveys that whatever was happening in that room — however drunk or drugged everyone was in that room — several people still thought to document the evening in real time. To make it a bonding experience. To make it a party. To make sure everyone got to the shop before the shop woke up or tried to hide under covers or started crying or wished to get out of that room or did whatever else it is that shops do.
“Shop still open?” wrote one young man, and another wrote back, “Yeah.” (LINK)
Now let's get to the Tompkins County DA, Matthew Van Houten, who said that his decision not to bring charges was based on the contents of Jane Doe's signed 2024 statement. But he told CBS News New York's Saeidi on Tuesday that he had never seen the transcript of what Jane Doe told campus police before his office decided not to bring charges.
NOTE: This transcript included the direct statements:
"I'm going to follow up on this because this is news to me," he said.
When told Jane Doe had said she was confident she was raped, Van Houten said, "That wasn't information that I had, first of all. Second of all, that is a legal conclusion."
"If she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more," Van Houten continued. "Like I said, that wasn't provided to me." (LINK)
Now the Cornell Police Department reports ONLY to the Cornell CFO (Chief Financial Officer). And the victim only talked to the Cornell Police Department (remember what I said about university "police departments"?), who condensed 100+ pages of interview to 6 pages that "omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used. And it was missing her unequivocal statement that she had been raped." (LINK) The Cornell Police Department sent the condensed version to the CFO of Cornell University, and then it was sent to DA Van Houten, who did what is the standard thing you do for the university that keeps the city in business. Bury it.
Anyway, the Ithaca Police Department NEVER SAW THE STATEMENT, NEVER WAS TOLD ABOUT THE CRIME, AND SO NEVER INVESTIGATED, even though Jane Doe and her family thought they were involved in the investigation.
The night before she was gangraped, a student had overdosed from ketamine at that very Cornell frat house.
A recent campus climate survey at Cornell University found that 35% of undergraduate women reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact.
OK. A couple of suggestions:
(1) Do not let universities and colleges handle their own sexual assault investigations ever again. Ever. Anywhere. Campus police are basically there to break up street fights and keep things quiet. They ignore the rich frat houses and mop up bad situations. Bury things. They may be called "police departments" but they're not qualified. They certainly weren't back at The U and they apparently weren't at Cornell.
(2) Ban fraternities. I don't care how much money they have, or how they're conduits to "good futures". There's too much bad shit that goes on, from hazings that end up killing students to alcohol and drug overdoses to sexual assaults. And even though I realize doing this is like closing the barn door after the cattle escape, I really am sick of rapists, alcoholics, and drug addicts reaching high levels of power and influence. At least the geyser might turn into a trickle.
"Records show that from 2018 through 2024, more than 1,200 incidents of sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking were reported to Cornell University’s Title IX office, USA TODAY has reported." Read more at: (LINK) I'm sure that NONE of them were publicized.
(3) Quit the rhetoric that it's the woman's fault. (I know, that's a dream...) Young men can do stupid things, commit crimes, brag about it online, and the general rap is still, "Do we really want to ruin a young man's life over 20 minutes of action?"
(Quote from the father of Brock Turner - at the time in a frat at Stanford - who violently raped an unconscious woman and got six months in jail.) BTW, fun fact - the two men who stopped Brock Turner in mid-rape, chased him down, and held him until the police arrived were Two Swedish graduate students, Peter Lars Jonsson and Carl-Fredrik Arndt, may praise be to their names forever. So immigrants saved her. None of the frat brothers.
ANSWER: Yes, we do want to destroy a young man's life over 20 minutes "of action". Because certain kinds "of action" destroy a young girl's life forever.
(4) Recognize that in an authoritarian world, the real definition of power - unprettied, unsoftened - is the ability to do whatever you want and get away with it. And one of the absolute proofs of power, to sociopaths, psychopaths, and pack mobs, is the ability to do anything you want to someone subordinate/inferior to you and get away with it. Especially sexual dominance. That's why rape is a standard weapon in war, gangs, prisons or anywhere else where someone has to prove they're the ones calling all the shots.
*BTW, when Jane Doe said “I can say with 100% percent confidence I was raped.” "And then, of course, I was being hit at the same time. Physically hit very, very hard."This is exactly what Andrew Tate & his scumbag brother, and every other pimp has been doing since the dawn of time: get the woman back to the pad; drug her; rape her; beat her; share her around; humiliate her; repeat.Drug, rape, beat, abuse, humiliate. That’s the pattern. Time for that shit to STOP.
