Cornell 7: Frat Brothers Accused of Campus Gang Rape & Sending "Free P***y" Snapchat

Stephanie Soo (0:02)

I can't think of many reasons that a person, a pedestrian, can be standing there and get hit by a car, and somehow that person, the pedestrian, ends up at fault. There's not really many scenarios in which I would immediately accept that conclusion without asking a ton of follow up questions. I mean, you really have to be kind of shit out of luck. You have to be in some sort of luck recession.

April 30th of this year, 2026, there is a college kid standing in a parking lot. He's got his little backpack on and he's filming with his phone. So he's got his phone out, he's got his backpack, and he appears to be standing in front of a black Cadillac that's just parked in a parking spot. And the student just very quickly says, am I allowed to stand here? He's got his phone up and we get the answer to his question sooner rather than later. I don't know if he's allowed to stand there, but maybe he shouldn't be standing there because the black Cadillac decides, I'm just going to hit the kid. The car backs into the student. It's a little more like a bonk, like a very hard bonk. I mean, the car does not perform a speed test trying to go to 60

The car just kind of anti-climactically bumps into the student behind it, continues reversing out of the parking spot. The student doesn't lose balance. He doesn't fall over. He doesn't get dragged. But it's not like a super soft tap either.

He just kind of walks backwards as the car is reversing back into him before the car puts itself in to drive and starts moving forward to get out of the parking spot. But as the car is moving forward, you can hear from the side of the car, someone else is screaming now, Ah! You just ran over my fucking foot! Oh my God! And that individual whose foot was potentially ran over by this car is banned from campus for the entire year. This is a student who got his foot allegedly run over and can no longer come back to campus.

SPEAKER_2 (1:59)

Wait, there's a lot of people?

Stephanie Soo (2:00)

Yeah, there's multiple students. One gets bumped, one allegedly gets his foot run over. There's different people and the entire parking lot fiasco is analyzed and discussed on many major news platforms because this isn't just any parking lot and a bunch of college students being irresponsible with vehicles, this is the parking lot at a very prestigious Ivy League institution, Cornell University.

And after a week-long investigation, it was decided that the students outside the car were the ones to blame. They were the ones at fault for getting bumped, boomed, for getting their foot run over. I mean, it kind of sounds bizarre because, like, sure, you probably shouldn't be standing in front of a car that's trying to get out of the parking lot, but also that person driving the car should probably just call campus police, try to do something so that they don't actually start moving the vehicle when there's people standing in the way.

SPEAKER_2 (2:57)

So there's a bunch of students blocking the car, is that what it is? Yes. Okay, so prevent it from leaving.

Stephanie Soo (3:02)

Yes, but it's not super aggressive either. It's kind of like a mixture of preventing it from leaving and kind of loitering.

SPEAKER_2 (3:09)

Right, and then the car, is it just...

Stephanie Soo (3:11)

It just starts slowly backing up.

SPEAKER_2 (3:14)

Like without... Yeah. Okay.

Stephanie Soo (3:15)

But there's gotta be a better way to get out of the parking spot, right? But the reason that this makes the news is because, well, like I said, it's Cornell University and it's such a strange, bizarre incident with a strange conclusion. But also, the person driving the vehicle is the president of Cornell who just backed up into a student and potentially ran over another student's foot. And a week later, after an investigation, it is decided that it was all the student's fault.

They were the ones responsible for this event. To give some context, right before this whole parking lot fiasco, Cornell's president Michael Kotlikoff had just introduced to Cornell students the Israel-Palestinian Debate Series, which this comes after a series of protests broke out on campus demanding justice for Palestine and some pretty big scandals of Ivy League schools punishing protesters, suspending them, expelling them, rescinding student visas. It was a fucking mess. So I guess this was Cornell's response to their other shit responses. Well, now we're going to have a debate series. Now nevertheless, as the president introduces the debate series, he's now leaving the atrium and a handful of students, they start questioning Michael Kotlikoff in the hallway and they end up following him to the parking lot to his car. Now from the footage that I saw that's been released, it doesn't look like the students are jumping up on his car. It doesn't look like they're banging on his windows. They're just kind of filming and loitering and preventing him from leaving. They're asking him follow up questions. He gets in the driver's side. And it's very clear, there's one student standing behind his car so that he can't back out of the parking spot. And it honestly, I mean, it's not that intense, all things considered. It's not like the students created some sort of scary human chain where they're just like threatening bodily harm. And you're also talking about an Israel-Palestinian debate series after Cornell students felt like they've been brutally punished for peacefully protesting. There's gonna be a lot of emotions involved. And from the footage I saw, it doesn't seem that volatile.