Speak Up: What the Cornell 7 has shown us about accountability, healthy masculinity and campus culture

Editor’s Note: This article includes mentions of sexual assault.

If you want a full understanding of the “Cornell 7” case, we recommend listening to The Daily Episode from Friday, October 2, “The Firestorm Over a Rape Allegation at Cornell.”

Amid tense debates surrounding the statements and the legitimacy of the case, we want to address key takeaways that we hope will last long after the media quiets down and the lawsuit is over. 

We recognize that we are both women. We cannot fully access or understand what happens within all-male locker rooms or private group chats. We hope that the topic of rape and sexual violence gets brought up in these circles if they have not already. 

We also recognize that sexual assault does not solely affect women; however, in this piece, we want to place urgent and necessary emphasis on women’s experiences.

The silence of the 57 men in the Chi Phi group chat, alongside the messages exchanged about the alleged rape, stands in stark contrast to the fraternity’s public-facing values, including its bicentennial celebration of “200 years of building better men.” The messages read otherwise, including: “Shop still open?” “Yea;” “Free p—y upstairs;” “Like you can walk in and whip it out;” “I f—g love Chi Phi.”

Beyond the content of the messages, the language itself is revealing. Referring to Jane Doe in this explicit and grotesque manner strips her of her dignity and humanity, reducing her to a sexual object rather than a person deserving of respect. Language matters because it shapes culture and reinforces power dynamics. This kind of derogatory language isn't limited to Cornell — it happens at Middlebury every day. 

We have heard casual comments, in an academic setting, claiming that men are less emotional and more objective than women. And this is a mild example. If that is what a man feels comfortable saying in the classroom, you can imagine what he might say in private.

How men discuss women matters. Specifically, men have the responsibility to recognize sexist language in casual conversations and classrooms. While not every man is a rapist, every man has the responsibility to speak up against speech that demeans and oppresses women. There is a direct line between patronizing women, sexual assault on campus and reactions to survivors.

Men have the responsibility to move from a defensive space into a space of taking the statistics, stories and realities of sexual assault victims seriously — women take it seriously every day. 

Let’s go over a sliver of what women are up against when it comes to the culture surrounding sexual assault: one in five women in the United States have been raped. Half of the women who reported the assault were raped by an intimate partner and 40% were raped by an acquaintance. Only 26% of reported rapists are arrested. This means they were not charged nor convicted. 

On college campuses, one in four undergraduate women will experience sexual assault before graduation. Nine in 10 college women who were sexually assaulted knew their assailant.

75% of self-reported rapists used alcohol before assault. Incidents with alcohol are much more likely to include the attempt or completion of rape than incidents without. Only 1% of rape and sexual assault cases go to a jury trial. 8% of rape and sexual assault cases end in a conviction.

At Cornell specifically, 35% of undergraduate women reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual conduct in a 2025 survey of a 6,000 student sample size by the university’s Office of Institutional Research and Planning, a 15% increase from 2021.

Out of all survey respondents, only 38% stated that they knew how to file an official complaint of sexual assault; 33% were aware of the process that occurs after the student has filed a complaint.

“Only those who perpetrate sexual violence benefit from its concealment,” Michael Kotlikoff, Cornell’s then-interim president, wrote in a November 2024 press release after promptly encouraging all students to file Title IX reports should they ever witness or experience sexual misconduct. 

However, universities cannot rely on a system that has time and time again failed survivors of assault who chose to come forward. As easy as it may be to place the responsibility on students to know what resources are available to them, doing so overlooks the shortcomings of a system that too often fails to support the very students it is meant to help. Title IX fails to understand the nuances of sexual assault, including the immense trauma survivors endure. In its current role, it acts more like a “paper trail” for administrators to demonstrate a system is in place, without any consideration for how the survivor is impacted. Jane Doe herself was not even informed of the outcome of her Title IX report, and when it was closed after 23 months, no one had benefited.

We cannot fully capture the complexity of surviving sexual assault. Please refer to the National Library of Medicine’s report on Rape Trauma Syndrome, or RTS, which outlines how survivors often go through three phases of processing over weeks, months and years. Shame, guilt, confusion and anxiety complicate a process that many too readily oversimplify. And when we oversimplify, we blame women. 

Too often the burden of safety and the burden of proof are placed on women. We’re asking for the burden of safety and consent to be shared equally between men and women because it is exhausting for female survivors to bear the responsibility of proving that they were assaulted or raped.

Men also need to prove that they asked for consent and it was given in, as SPECS says, FRIES: freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific. 

So, what prevents this from happening? Communication. Young men need to understand how to intervene when they witness sexual misconduct — and it shouldn’t be that hard. No man at Middlebury should find telling other men to stop difficult. As we stated at the beginning of this article, this lawsuit will come to an end, but the suffering will not. Cases like Jane Doe’s happen often, and the data in this article only scratches the surface. As students, it is our responsibility to cultivate a campus culture that ensures every woman feels safe, whether it is at a party, in a common space or on her walk home. And that starts with speaking up.