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Cornell Told Students Reporting Rape Culture To Please Use The Proper Channels
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University confirmed this week that it had received multiple warnings from students and former students about a rape culture within its fraternity system, and that those warnings had been handled through the university's standard process for concerns of this nature, which begins with a listening session and ends approximately where it started.
The Jane Doe case, in which a woman alleges she was sexually assaulted at a Cornell fraternity house, has renewed attention on what former students describe as years of documented, specific, repeatedly ignored complaints about the same houses, the same behaviors, and in some cases the same people.
Cornell released a statement calling the situation "deeply concerning" and pledging to review its processes, which is the institutional equivalent of a man who left the gas on for a decade promising to look into his relationship with the stove.
Former student Danielle Arquette, who says she submitted a formal complaint to the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs in 2019, told reporters she was invited to share her concerns at a roundtable discussion, which was followed by a follow-up email, which was followed by nothing for three years, which was followed by a second invitation to share her concerns.
"They were very receptive," Arquette said. "They took notes. Someone had a legal pad. It felt official."
Cornell President Martha Pollack issued a longer statement Thursday, calling the university's commitment to student safety "absolute" and "foundational" and "a core pillar of everything Cornell stands for," which, if accurate, suggests Cornell's pillars are doing something other than holding anything up.
The university noted that since 2018 it has launched two task forces, one working group, a campus climate survey, a bystander training module available online twenty-four hours a day, and a confidential reporting hotline that, according to three former students, rings to a voicemail box managed by a graduate assistant who left the program in 2021.
Administrators stress that the university cannot act on complaints that do not meet the evidentiary threshold required by its internal review process, a threshold that, former students say, was explained to them as "more than a feeling but less than a court case," which leaves a gap you could park a fraternity in.
Nicholas Hartwell, a fraternity alumni advisor whose name appears in two of the original complaints, called the situation "complex" in an interview with a local affiliate and said he looked forward to cooperating fully with any review, adding that he had always believed in the importance of process.
He has not been contacted by any review.
Cornell has announced the formation of a new committee to examine how the university responds to reports of campus sexual misconduct, with findings expected in the spring, which is also when graduation happens, which is also when the university stops having to think about the students in question.
The committee will be chaired by a dean who served on the 2019 task force that recommended the creation of a working group that recommended a listening session.
The brochure is still available upon request.
The story we are making fun of: https://gothamist.com/news/cornell-students-warned-of-fraternity-rape-culture-years-before-jane-doe-case