Victor Davis Hanson: Who’s Actually Guilty in the Cornell 7 Case?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Welcome to the Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

Victor Davis Hanson (0:08)

There's been quite a controversy. It's sweeping the country, maybe the world. I think it's called the Cornell 7 There was a young woman in 2024 who went to a bar with some people underage, and she became intoxicated. At that point, the boy that was accompanying him, or maybe others, invited her to a frat party. She goes in there and is invited up to a room. And at that point, everything started to spiral downhill.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. There's been quite a controversy. It's sweeping the country, maybe the world, about Cornell University. And I think it's called the Cornell 7 I don't know if that implies sympathy or fury at them to make them the sinner. But there was a young woman in 2024, 20 years old, still unidentified, who went to a bar with some people underage. She was 20, drinking age was 21, and she became intoxicated. At that point, the boy that was accompanying him, or maybe others, invited her to a frat party. Well, that should have given a signal. Anybody in their right mind knows that young people at a frat party with a lot of frisky boys that feel entitled, you have to be very careful.

She goes in there and is invited up to a room.

At that point, she might have, if she had been sober, made a decision, am I going to be alone with this boy? And then that's a question of two consenting adults, whether to have sexual congress. But as soon as she got up there, he invited another person to partake in the sexuality. And apparently he did. And at that point, everything started to spiral downhill. There were five others that came and went. And I can't repeat exactly what ensued because I think this is a family-orientated video. But five more people either directly came into the room and had relations with her, or they videoed her or they sat and watched. It's hard to know exactly what each of the seven did. But when it was all over, she left. She was completely drunk, sick. She went back.

And then she felt that something had happened. She talked to friends. She had text exchanges with the boy who invited her. And let's just say that for the next six or seven or eight months, she didn't quite think that she had been raped. She felt pressures that people were not going to like her, they wouldn't invite her to another party, that they were calling her, I would call, I don't know what the bad words were, but we'll just say, sluddish. And her reputation was being damaged. And she really hadn't quite processed what was going on. After she left Cornell, almost a year later, she filed a complaint with authorities saying that she had been physically raped and named the boys who did it.

Outrage followed when they read exactly the details of what had happened on the part of the men. And then they wanted to know, in a legalistic sense, why Cornell or why the local DA hadn't gone before a grand jury and had them all undided. And of course, they had to follow New York law. In a legalistic, and I say istic, because I'm not sure it's really the right word, legal.

In a legalistic sense, if you are a person, an adult, usually over the age of consent or 18, and you see another adult, and you're able to answer, do you want to go up to my room? Yes, no. You can have, can, and people say you're functioning. And when you go up there and you have sexual relations, and later within a certain time period, you do not characterize it as rape. The DA usually says, I don't think I can win that case and doesn't prosecute. But as the months wore on and the details came out about these boys, some of them actually texted, I can't repeat it on the world, but basically there is free blank here, come on over.

She filed.

There is all of this anger now, a lot of, it's not male, female.

Brilliant women like Camilia Palli said, Palli said, we have to stop babying girls. These are women. They're not little girls. If they're of age and they choose to drink, even if they're breaking the law when they do, and they go into a den of frisky boys who are ill-mannered, and they go up to one room, at some point they have a lot of avenues before they're incoherent to stop it. And afterwards, if they do not immediately say they were raped or assaulted, then what do you expect? Other people say, well, it doesn't really matter when she realized that she was raped, maybe she was traumatized, et cetera. So that's where it is. But I have a different take on it, and I'll finish with that.