It’s October and a new academic year is underway. In Britain, students are taking diversity classes; in France, they are rioting. And in America, they are panicking about campus rape culture. Plus ça change…
The legacy of the almost decade-old Me Too movement is that we ‘believe all women’ but, as the Cornell case shows, sometimes reality is more complex
The case of the ‘Cornell Seven’ has been making headlines across the US this week after a female student, known only as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and raped by seven male students in the Chi Phi university fraternity house in October 2024.
At first glance, the facts are horrific. A woman, who was 20 years’ old at the time, claims she was coerced into taking drugs and abused, assaulted and raped by a group of young men. One of those present sent a crude Snapchat message advertising free sex and inviting others to join in. Traumatised, Doe reported her attack to the university police, who refused to prosecute. A campus disciplinary committee took up Doe’s case and, after a hearing, expelled two students, but others, according to her lawsuit, were ‘afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays’ (a claim the university denies). This weak response is, apparently, behind Doe’s latest attempt to secure justice.
Now outrage at details of the attack, and Cornell’s handling of the situation, has been fuelled by the university newspaper naming the accused men. The retrial may not have begun, but activists and celebrities have picked sides. This week, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to students and condemned a ‘culture of rape’ at elite institutions. Doe, she complained, ‘had to lose her education, and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward. Never again.’ Hollywood icon Florence Pugh told her 10.8 million Instagram followers that she felt ‘uneasy and sick and anxious’ about the ‘horrific act that happened at Cornell College in 2024.’ ‘This makes me feel enraged,’ she has added this week, ‘as it should every person on this earth.’
For feminists like Pugh and AOC, the Cornell case is straightforward: a traumatised young woman bravely fighting for justice against the men who raped her and an establishment that let them get away with it. But scratch the surface, and things are more complex.
Three weeks passed between the night of Doe’s alleged attack and her decision to inform campus police that she had been sexually assaulted and coerced into taking ketamine. Newly released files compiled as part of the university’s investigation reveal that during this time, Doe told her roommates what had happened, but did not describe herself as a rape victim. The next day, she told her sorority mentor that rumours were circulating that she was a ‘slut’ before adding with a laugh that ‘unfortunately they are true.’ When one of the men she would go on to accuse of assaulting her messaged to apologise for how the evening had panned out, she replied: ‘At the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly i really liked being w u and matt.’ The pair exchanged more friendly messages in the days that followed. Only as campus gossip grew did Doe begin to see herself as a rape victim.
Anger at the police for deciding not to prosecute may also be misguided. Papers now seen by UnHerd include Doe’s initial statement, in which she says that she agreed to have sex with two men, and consented to taking drugs, including snorting ketamine off the erect penis of one of the accused and allowing others to snort drugs off her naked body. By the end of the evening, Doe, now more intoxicated, claims she was aware of having sex with other men but could not ‘remember how it started’. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the police decided her behaviour met the legal standard for voluntary consent, and there were insufficient grounds for bringing a prosecution.
Neither is the subsequent disciplinary hearing, carried out by the university, a straightforward story of male privilege. All seven men faced very serious accusations in what has since been described as a ‘kangaroo court’. Two of the men, found guilty by the university, were eventually suspended from the university. Yet, in her initial statement, Doe describes one of the men involved as struggling to maintain an erection and needing a ‘nap’, and another as ‘dry-heaving’ during their encounter. It is hard not to conclude that Doe and these two men were intoxicated, yet only the woman was deemed unable to consent.
Another man, Scott Kretzschmar, stood accused of sexually assaulting Doe by snorting ketamine off her naked body. He protested his innocence and provided the results of a drug test, which proved negative for the drug. Yet, after being tried over a Zoom call, during which his lawyer noticed that one committee member was apparently in a car and driving during the proceedings, he was found guilty of attempted sexual exploitation, a charge he says he did not even know he was facing.
These new details cast doubt on the narrative now being promoted by Doe’s celebrity backers. The legacy of the almost decade-old Me Too movement is that we ‘believe all women’ but, as the Cornell case shows, sometimes reality is more complex, and we need to think critically. Rape is horrific and undoubtedly utterly devastating for the victim. But false allegations must also be taken seriously.
Rather than rushing to pass judgement on the Cornell Seven, we should ask why men and women are held to different standards on consent, and why university disciplinary committees should play any role at all in trying such serious accusations as rape.
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