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What Didn’t Happen at Cornell

Everything that Jane Doe went through could have been stopped, if someone had bothered to intervene. But no one did.

Thousands of Cornell University students and others from the Cornell community fill Ho Plaza for the Justice for Survivors protest hosted by 20 student organizations.

Where were the good guys? That’s my question about the Cornell frat rape case. Chivalry—that manly code of honor conservatives are always blaming feminism for destroying—is supposed to protect the defenseless from evildoers and dangers of all kinds. People who worry about a supposed crisis of masculinity—what does it mean to be a man now that male superiority is not automatically assumed in every area of life?—often propose a modern version of chivalry involving protection and service to others.

Fraternities do the same, appealing to the good works they perform, fundraising for charity, tutoring poor children, and so on, while forging strong bonds among members. The mission of Chi Phi, the Cornell frat in question, is “Building Better Men through lifelong friendships, leadership opportunities, and character development.” If gang-raping a drunk girl high on ketamine counts as building better men through lifelong friendships, I guess our future is in good hands.

Where were the good guys? Seven men have been identified as having been participants or in the room during the October 2024 gang rape, some of whom Jane Doe thought were her friends. Snapchat messages advertising “free pussy” went out to all 50-plus members of the chapter, prompting responses like “you can just walk in and whip it out” and the now infamous query “shop still open?” Any one of the seven could have shouted “ENOUGH”; he could have scooped Jane Doe up in his arms and carried her out. Any one of the men who received the Snapchat could have gone to the room and put a stop to it. If that was too much to ask, they could have called the campus police from the safety of their bedroom. No one did.

So often, men bond over the bodies of women, and protect each other if trouble arises. We saw that with Gisele Pelicot, drugged by her husband and raped for years by over 50 men who answered his invitation on a website for men interested in that sort of thing. The men claimed to believe Pelicot was just pretending to be unconscious, or had given permission beforehand, or that her husband’s permission was enough. They showed up in court laughing and smirking. In the Cornell case, fraternity brothers focused on coordinating their........

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