by Gray Trammel and Hannah Saunders
Fifty-seven men. Fifty-seven men complicit in a gang rape. Seven who carried out direct harm, as 50 sat idly by, letting Jane Doe get ravaged for seven hours by Cornell students in the Chi Phi fraternity. She was only 20-years-old when this took place almost two years ago, and her life has been forever changed.
Matthew Ingalls. Jonathan Newell. Winston Lee. Gillio Lopes. Diego Sarabia. Scott Norris. Scott Kretzschmar. Those are the names of the men who tortured Jane Doe. Yes, rape is a form of torture, as is forcing the victim to take drugs to incapacitate and rape her. And these seven rapists are roaming freely in our society. They simply moved on, some finishing up their studies and going on to launch their careers; two were expelled and Cornell “punished,” the other five by allowing them to write an essay. But Jane Doe’s life stopped. She was forced to drop out of school— an Ivy League University she worked hard to get into.
An essay is not accountability. It is homework. And there is something deeply wrong with a system where a woman who was subjected to horrific violence has to rebuild her life while the perpetrators can simply keep moving forward.
The importance of women receiving a college degree, particularly from what’s widely considered a prestigious institution, cannot be underestimated. Higher education has helped women gain their independence and pursue their dreams and aspirations. The Cornell 7 rapists ripped that opportunity out from under Jane Doe, leaving her to pick-up and try to piece back together the parts of herself that they broke.
Part of the SnapChat group chat with all 57 fraternity members was leaked, and a screenshot showed that Newell wrote, “free pussy.” That language matters. It shows how easily a woman can be reduced from a human being to an object within a social environment where other men are present. We cannot completely separate that culture from the violence itself.
Rape is such an extreme form of abuse with lasting physical, psychological, and emotional impacts, and trauma cannot be cured. In war-zones, it has been reported that women have chosen to commit suicide rather than to live with these lasting impacts.
“It’s not all men.” To women, all men are bad until proven otherwise. Every woman knows of at least one— if not more— women who have experienced sexual violence. But for some reason, men never seem to know rapists. In the U.S., 1 in 5 women are raped or experience attempted rape. And about 1 in 2 women have been forced into sexual violence like rape, unwanted contact, and coercion. Saying “Not all men” doesn’t address sexual violence, it changes the subject. Women are talking about being assaulted, ignored, and failed by institutions, and somehow the conversation becomes about whether men feel personally attacked. We’re more interested in what men actually do about the problem. Are they willing to speak up when their friend crosses a line? Are they willing to risk their social standing to protect someone who needs help? When women confide in them, do they provide meaningful support or indifference? Those questions matter more than announcing that you personally aren’t a rapist.
Masculinity does not equate to dominance, silence, or protecting other men in these horrid situations. Being a man is having courage and integrity in situations like this. It means using your male privilege to support women when they speak about what has happened to them, believing them, and standing next to them while refusing to let their voices be drowned out by anyone’s discomfort.
These predators are walking among us. They are our friends, family members, coworkers, acquaintances. And they hide in plain sight. Many men don’t understand what consent is; like how women have every right to say stop if she changes her mind. But the Cornell 7 rapists drugged Jane Doe with ketamine. The lawsuit states she attempted to push a hand away, but she was heavily sedated, and may have still been conscious yet unable to move or speak.
Rapists get away with their crimes, all the time. Law enforcement and the judicial system constantly fail victims, with only about 20-30% of rapes ever being reported. Blame falls on the victim; what were you wearing? Why didn’t you push him away? Why didn’t you scream for help? Oftentimes, women are just thinking about making it out alive. Of all rapes, including reported and non-reported, only 1-2% of rapists receive a felony conviction and serve jail time, according to RAINN. That is completely unacceptable.
And everything falls on the victim. The medical treatment and high costs, the loss of educational and work opportunities, which can easily spiral into homelessness if lacking support networks. The attorney fees, the search for therapists, and years of hard self-work just to feel better. Rapists get to walk away, wipe their hands clean, and commit these horrendous acts all over again.
Then there is Cornell— whose former professor coined the term “sexual harassment.” Institutions have enormous power over students’ futures. Cornell was supposed to be a place where Jane Doe could learn, build a career, and pursue whatever future she had imagined for herself. What does accountability mean if the person who was harmed is the one who has to leave, while everyone else gets to move forward?
Rape isn’t about sexual pleasure, but power and control. For the Chi Phi fraternity, that night was about control and boy’s club bonding. Men are too afraid of losing their social status among each other, and would gladly let a woman get gang-raped, if not worse. That’s the world we live in. That is how parents have raised their children.
The larger issue at hand is what we have normalized. We have become comfortable debating who is responsible, what the minimum punishment should be and how quickly everyone can move on. Meanwhile, the survivor doesn’t get to move on just because everyone else has decided the story is over.
We need to demand more from men, bystanders, fraternities, and universities. We need to stop treating intervention as some extraordinary act of heroism, instead of the basic responsibility of being a decent human being. We need to stop allowing “not all men” to derail conversations that are not about every man in the first place. And we need institutions to understand that protecting students means more than protecting their own reputation.
An essay can be written in a couple hours. Rebuilding a life after sexual violence, however, can last a lifetime.
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