The Cornell case exposes a dark reality about college culture

Shumita Basu (0:00)

Hey there, a quick warning before we get into today's show, this episode includes descriptions of sexual assault and rape. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, why sexual assault is still a fixture on college campuses.

For the past few weeks, news has been circulating across the country about an alleged rape that took place in 2024 at a Cornell University fraternity house. Student journalists at the Cornell Daily Sun broke the story and covered the university's and law enforcement's handling of it. And just last week, the local district attorney's office announced that it was reopening an investigation, and New York's Attorney General Letitia James was appointed special prosecutor. While all of that's been going on, there's been an outpouring of people sharing their own stories of campus assault, some dating back decades, and their anger at the inadequacy of the systems in place to prevent them.

Sophie Gilbert (1:06)

I really can't remember since me too, this level of debate and discourse and this level of passion.

Shumita Basu (1:12)

That's Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is such a prolific thinker and writer about culture, the internet and gender. And in a recent piece, she explores why reports of sexual assaults on college campuses have continued to go up despite more awareness of the issue. So I wanted to sit down with Sophie to talk about why this case has become such a flashpoint, how online spaces are fueling threats against women in new ways and what meaningful change could look like.

Can I just ask you to lay out what we know so far about what happened at Cornell in October of 2024? What is alleged to have happened?

Sophie Gilbert (1:53)

I mean, obviously, it's fast moving and new details seem to be coming out hourly at this point. But what we know right now is that a lawsuit was filed in September by a woman referred to as Jane Doe against Cornell University and seven men, which charges that she was a victim of a mass sexual assault late in 2024 when she was attending a fraternity party at the Kaifi Threat House at Cornell. She named seven men in her lawsuit and she says basically that over a period of seven hours she was pressured to take drugs, including ketamine and that she was sexually assaulted by these men for a period where she was not able to consent. And so that is where the lawsuit stands. We know as well that Cornell did conduct a Title IX investigation in January 2025 and two of the men were subsequently expelled.

We know that the district attorney declined to file criminal charges against the men because of various reasons, including a loophole under New York state law that if someone was intoxicated because they took substances by choice, that they cannot then claim that they were too intoxicated to concern to sexual activity.

Shumita Basu (2:58)

A law which exists, I should say, in more than a dozen states, right?

Sophie Gilbert (3:01)

Yes, that's true. So that's where things stand at the moment. Basically, in the weeks since the lawsuit became public, more information has been feeding out. Like recently, CBS News and NBC News have managed to gain access to the Snapchat group that the Cornell group used.

One of them, using fairly profane and misogynistic language that night, is alleged to have said that the woman was sexually available for the group of men to share. And so these messages have sort of eeked out and also phone calls that Jane Doe recorded in which she talked to some of the men involved about what happened.

Shumita Basu (3:36)

What have the men said publicly, if anything?

Sophie Gilbert (3:38)

Three of them have responded via lawyers, two of them claiming that they did not have any sexual activity involving Jane Doe, and a third saying that there was sexual activity, but it was consensual. The other four men, to my knowledge, have not issued any statements regarding any matters.

Shumita Basu (3:55)

What do we know about what happened between October of 2024 and a few weeks ago when this lawsuit was filed? Why did it take this time for it to become more of a national story and more known about?

Sophie Gilbert (4:09)

It really only became a national story after the lawsuit was filed. We know, as I said, that there was a Title IX investigation conducted by Cornell and that the district attorney declined to press charges against the men. It has been fascinating to see it develop into such a flashpoint in our culture and such a topic of conversation.

Certainly among women online, sharing things that have happened to them, expressing real just vehemence and disgust that this is the culture that we live in where something like this could happen to a woman and seemingly no criminal charges could be filed against the men allegedly involved. So it has become this very hot topic in this moment.