I lost count of the number of women I knew who experienced sexual violence on my college campus and how many of those instances happened in fraternity houses.

But when I saw that a district attorney in New York had reopened a sexual assault case involving seven men in Chi Phi at Cornell University who allegedly raped a young woman in October 2024, it took me back to those stories.

Jane Doe’s story is horrifying. It is an extreme scenario that deserves a full investigation from the Ithaca Police Department and Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten. But as The Cornell Daily Sun’s editorial board said in the editorial that brought this story into the national conversation, this problem is not unique to a single instance.

It’s been more than a decade since I started college, yet somehow things have stayed the same. In 2015, when I was a freshman, 27.2% of female college seniors reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact. In 2020, that number still hovered around 1 in 4 women.

Cornell University failed Jane Doe, as colleges have failed the women who attend them since we were first allowed to become part of the campus community. Things aren’t getting better. That is why solutions must go beyond Cornell’s campus and come from within fraternity and sorority........

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