The drinking, drugging and sexual assault culture on American college campuses is once again attracting national attention.

A former Cornell University student filed a civil lawsuit in September 2026 alleging that seven Chi Phi fraternity members gang-raped her when she was a sophomore at the school two year earlier.

The apparent failure of institutions she reached out to for help has become an important part of the story.

As a researcher who studies domestic and sexual violence – and as a college professor who works with students every day – the unfolding narrative about the so-called “Cornell 7” has weighed on me.

Estimates of student sexual assault often understate the problem. Many students do not report an assault because they don’t know where to turn, have concerns about confidentiality, don’t trust the university to respond adequately or are unable to navigate the institution’s resources by themselves.

This parallels vast underreporting of sexual assault and abuse in general.

Sexual violence reporting on campus

The response by Cornell and Ithaca, N.Y., police underscores what many victims of sexual violence nationwide fear about reporting their assaults to authorities.

Only 37.5% of surveyed college students believed campus officials will take seriously sexual assault allegations when physical force or an inability to consent is involved – as was allegedly the case for Jane Doe. Only 7.1% of surveyed students who were assaulted contacted local police.

In Jane Doe’s case, she reported the assault to police three weeks after it took place. Despite telling police definitively that she had been raped, the report Ithaca police sent to the district attorney omitted this language.

The district attorney in the county where Cornell is located declined to press charges against any of the seven men who were accused of involvement in the assault – without ever conducting an interview with Jane Doe.

The school’s own internal investigation led to two of the alleged perpetrators being expelled, two more being suspended and a fifth who had already graduated being barred from campus. The other two students were........

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