Absurdity
Cornell Police Visited That Frat, Filed A Report And Technically Did Their Job
By Jeff Garstein, . BSN Network. Satire.
ITHACA, N.Y.: Cornell University police responded to a drug-related incident at a fraternity house on campus, made an arrest, completed the required documentation, and left. Twenty-two hours later, a former student alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted at the same address.
Cornell's Department of Public Safety has confirmed that the crime log entry from the prior visit is accurate, thorough, and entirely unrelated to anything that happened afterward, which is exactly what you would want a police department to say about a document they filed and then did not look at again.
The campus daily crime log, reviewed by NBC News, does not identify the specific drugs involved in the first incident. It does not need to, because the log's purpose is to record that something happened, not to wonder about it.
The log has a status column. The entry is marked resolved.
Cornell University issued a statement expressing its commitment to campus safety, student wellbeing, and a comprehensive review process it described as "ongoing," which is the institutional word for "please stop asking us about the log."
University spokesperson Patricia Dunmore-Hale told reporters that Cornell takes all allegations seriously and that the two incidents "cannot be assumed to be related based on proximity alone," a legal standard she applied with the confidence of someone who had just learned what a crime log was that morning.
"Our officers followed all established protocols," Dunmore-Hale said. "An arrest was made, paperwork was filed, and the situation was resolved through the appropriate channels." She did not specify what channel a 22-hour gap falls under.
The fraternity has not been identified by name in the NBC report. It is, however, the kind of organization that has a door, a crime log entry, and a policy about what constitutes two separate situations.
Legal advocates for the former student have argued that the prior arrest demonstrates the university had notice that the house presented a risk, and that doing nothing with that notice for less than a day is a choice that deserves a name. Cornell's attorneys have argued that notice and connection are different things, which is true, and also the funniest possible defense of a filing system.
Campus safety experts contacted for this story noted that drug arrests at Greek houses are not uncommon, and that acting on patterns of behavior at specific locations would require departments to read their own logs, which raises staffing questions.
NBC News correspondent Valerie Castro reported the story without once using the phrase "in a stunning development," which is the only restraint anyone involved in this situation has shown.
The log remains on file. The status column still says resolved.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/cornell-university-police-made-drug-arrest-hours-before-alleged-sexual-assault-270989893939