“One of them fucking works at Wells Fargo,” a friend texted me. Another told me that her classmate from high school had known someone involved. I had read the messages from the Chi Phi group chat for the first time on the walk back to my dorm room after class — a blurry photo of Snapchat messages, taken on another phone, with an obtrusive thumb in the corner. The men had texted back as if they were responding to a yard sale. (“Shop still open?”)

Since then, like so many young women on college campuses across the country, I have been following the case in between lectures, meetings, and assignments. After the editorial board of the Cornell Daily Sun named the seven men — who, in a civil lawsuit, are accused of drugging and gang-raping a fellow student at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024 — Cornell has become an enduring conversation in group chats and over dinner in the dining hall. (“Horrifying,” “disgusting,” “truly shocking,” “I haven’t stopped thinking about it.”) Some people share infographics to “abolish frat culture” or simple posts, white text on a black background: “They’re not the Cornell 7. They’re rapists. Call them what they are.”

On the “Chi Phi Actives” chat, there were dozens of students with internships at banks and tech firms, midterms and presentations, plans with friends for the weekend. One of those future plans might reasonably include a sports game; Cornell is in a league with my college, Harvard. I remember tailgates with Brown and parties at Yale frats — the empty cans of........

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