Campus sexual assault

after this incident occurred, but the rule is, here's the wonderful double standard, if an alleged survivor says she has not been raped, that's all the stronger proof that she has been raped because she's so traumatized.

So basically, the proposition of campus rape is non-falsifiable.

If you say you've been raped, you've been raped, and if you say you haven't been raped...

You've been

a hoax.

But you know what? Here's another thing, Steve.

Here's why I know that this whole campus rape hysteria is fake.

Here's what's been going on at the Cornell frats in the two years since this incident happened, which was October 2024.

I just added a link to this week's column.

I thought I'd done it already, but r- I don't know if you remember, Obama claims that, um, this is about campus rape generally, that, um-

One in three.

Yeah.

We see high rates of sexual violence among really anybody who isn't a cisgender man on a college campus.

And one of the things that's really striking about the research on campus sexual violence is that the rates of victimization haven't really changed since we started measuring them in the 1980s, which is really significant.

Because if you think back to what had happened around the '80s is right before that, a number of universities had gender integrated for the first time.

And so if you think about the environment that women were coming into on campuses at that time, it wasn't like schools were gender integrated, and then they had a 50/50 split of men and women on campus.

And so symbolic compliance is when there is a civil rights law that our institutions are not fulfilling their legal obligations, so they're violating our rights.

And when they get caught violating our rights, instead of making the necessary cultural and structural changes to bring about equality, instead they give us these symbols that make us think they changed things when they didn't change things all that much.

And so in the ca- in the context of campus sexual violence, there are a couple of examples that I like to point to from different eras of feminism.

So the version that universities in the '80s brought on of bystander intervention was rape whistles, was saying, "Okay, let's give all of our students these whistles at orientation.

When President Trump took office, the pendulum swung back hard.

Now campus sexual assault accusations can be held to a far higher standard of evidence, and people accused of sexual assault can, in some circumstances, cross-examine their accusers, a terrifying prospect for survivors of trauma.

Just this week, the Trump administration weakened the rules yet again, rescinding Biden-era protections for gender identity and sexual orientation.

The facts of the Cornell case are still coming into view.

Mm.

I mean, we're seeing on social media women of all ages sharing their stories, specifically of campus sexual assault.

Some were recent, but some happened many decades ago.

It's turned into a bit of a rallying cry online, "I am Jane Doe," right? Where people are, are identifying with this story.

But you can also see, I think, women responding to what feels like a recent change in the culture, where men seem to feel more licensed to claim sort of the usage of women's bodies, where you can, you can see women responding to what feels like a shift in terms of misogyny being expressed much more openly online.

Tell me more about that shift as you observe it, a- and how you think it- Plays into what we saw in the Cornell story.

I mean, it's been really fascinating going back and looking at the history of campus sexual assault really since the 1970s, which was when the term sexual harassment was first coined, actually, by a, a researcher at Cornell, which [laughs] is-

Hmm

And I'm Kevin McCory, in for Avi Wolfman-Arent.

We're talking about campus sexual assault this hour following the allegations by a Cornell University student that she was pressured into taking drugs and then gang raped by fraternity members at the school in 2024.

She's suing the seven men, their fraternity, her sorority, and the university.

Yes, none of the men have been criminally charged, and there's been fierce criticism of the local district attorney's decision not to prosecute.

The case has sparked nationwide outrage with many people asking why sexual assault on campuses remains so prevalent.

About one in four undergraduate women experience sexual violence at college, and that's a number that hasn't budged in almost four decades.

Yeah, so today we're looking at the larger problem of campus sexual assault and asking, after years of supposed reforms and Me Too, why does it seem like so little has changed? We'll talk about institutional failures, how issues of consent and intoxication can make these cases so difficult to prosecute, and if solutions are possible.

Let me introduce our guests this hour.

And so I think we are really missing that accountability piece.

It's a multifaceted problem, campus sexual violence is, and it requires a multifaceted solution.

And these trainings are only part of that.

I think, again, the Cornell response, as you ask, is unfortunately similar to what we see and have seen over the past decade.

And then, so, and then this is a... [laughs] This is the attached thing.

Um, it says subject line, "Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault Final Recommendation," um, "Recommendations." And this is, was an email that was sent out by Cornell leadership, the admin at Cornell.

Um, and it was sent out March 17th, 2026.

So again, just showing how much, you know, they knew and how internal this was w- this was kept.

Um, okay, so it says, "Dear Cornell Community." Again, this is from March 2026.

Uh, "Dear Cornell Community, in spring 2025, we established the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault, charging the group with developing a holistic public health framework for addressing sexual assault at Cornell, with a particular focus on supporting undergraduate students on the Ithaca campus.

Following months of rigorous study and community conversations, including student focus groups, faculty expertise, research reviews, peer benchmarking, and analysis of historical and recent Cornell survey data," what did they ask ChatGPT once? "The task force produced a comprehensive report with thoughtful, actionable recommendations which we encourage everyone to read." And it is clickable, and I do have access to it.

Fascinating.