This article contains discussions of sexual assault.
Molly Martin (she/her) is a history and Hispanic studies double major from Chicago, Illinois. She is also a member of the Innocence Club, which advocates for criminal justice reform. In her free time, she enjoys reading, attending workout classes and spending time with friends.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
“I’m so relieved you did not go to Cornell,” my mom told me over the phone this past weekend.
Cornell University was my dream school. In the past few weeks, after all the coverage and conversation regarding the “Cornell Seven” case, I too have been thankful that I did not end up at Cornell. I found myself thinking that I could have been Jane Doe.
But, what I am naively now realizing is that I did not have to be a student at Cornell for something like this to happen to one of my friends or me. Sexual assault is all too common, frequently overlooked and inadequately addressed on college campuses; Jane Doe’s story has forced me to reconsider how I feel about my own safety at the College of William and Mary.
Back in September, Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against Cornell, the Chi Phi fraternity and seven men from Chi Phi: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. While all events described in the lawsuit are allegations pending a legal conclusion, Jane Doe names these seven men as the ones who forcibly drugged and raped her in October 2024.
Out of these seven men, only two were expelled from Cornell. The remaining five were tasked with writing essays addressing their misconduct. No criminal charges were ever filed against the perpetrators in 2024.
Now, with national pressure and outrage regarding this situation, the Tompkins District Attorney’s Office has decided to reopen the case to deliberate if the evidence Jane Doe presented warrants criminal charges to be brought against these men.
I have almost always felt safe on this campus. I can’t count how many times I have walked myself home after going to a party or let my friends do the same. This is Williamsburg. Nothing bad happens here, right?
This Cornell case has made me realize how naive I was. Just because this feels like a safe community does not mean it always is or will be. Jane Doe surely thought Cornell was her safe space — until it wasn’t.
In the past few weeks, seeing the William and Mary Division of Public of Safety’s emails regarding sexual harassment and assault reports on campus has only emphasized that Jane Doe’s situation has the tragic potential to happen anywhere, even here.
But what makes Jane Doe’s case especially troubling is how Cornell decided to handle the case back in 2024. Requiring five of these men to write simple essays when they were accused of such a serious crime raises an important question: Did Cornell’s disciplinary response adequately reflect the severity of the harm Jane Doe experienced?
It certainly did not. These five men were allowed to remain on Cornell’s campus, where Jane Doe often had to see them, forcing her to relive her traumatic rape over and over and over again. Some of these men went on to have successful careers at prominent companies, like Wells Fargo, while Jane Doe dropped out of school due to the severe impact her attack had on her mental health.
How is it that these men went on to live their lives as though nothing happened, while Jane Doe has to continue to grapple with the aftermath of their violent actions two years later? Cornell’s disciplinary response raises serious concerns about the consequences given to perpetrators of sexual assault and the messages these “punishments” send to survivors. When those accused of causing such serious harm face negligible consequences and are even given nicknames like “Cornell Seven,” we drastically minimize who they are and what they did. They are a group of rapists who assaulted a severely intoxicated woman, and the way we treat them must reflect this.
Jane Doe also reported that she had been friends with one of the men who assaulted her. This detail is particularly difficult for me to reconcile with the assumptions I had about sexual violence. We tend to imagine danger as something that comes from strangers, from unfamiliar places. Yet, 70-80% of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. Even the people we think we can trust most have the capacity to hurt us. We can take every appropriate precaution, surround ourselves with friends and do everything “right” and still be at risk.
What makes this case even more disturbing is the inaction of the men who witnessed messages in their fraternity group chat, offering Jane Doe to other members. More than 50 men were in this group chat, and none of them came forward to stop what was going on. As far as we know, not one of them went into the room to check on Jane Doe or question the actions of their friends. These bystanders had a clear opportunity to intervene and potentially prevent further harm, yet no one appears to have done so. It is deeply concerning and frankly appalling that so many men were made aware of what was occurring under their own roof and chose to make jokes about the situation instead of stepping up. Their failure to respond and choice to remain silent underscores how crucial it is to not let loyalty to friends or fears of uncomfortable social interactions take precedence over another person’s well-being.
As women, we have become so accustomed to looking out for ourselves and one another when we go out. We watch each other’s drinks, share locations and always text when we get home. These precautions are such a normalized part of the college party scene that we maybe sometimes forget why they are necessary in the first place. In a perfect world, we should be able to go to parties without constantly worrying about our safety.
But this isn’t a perfect world. And until it is, we must continue to look out for one another. There is nothing wrong with taking precautions or caring for our friends’ safety. The problem is that currently, the responsibility for preventing sexual assault so often falls on the very people most vulnerable to experience it, rather than on those who commit these acts, those who witness them and the institutions we trust to hold people accountable.
We should not have to spend our college years worrying about whether we will make it home safely from a party, whether someone we know will violate our trust or whether our school will adequately protect us if something happens to us. Until our communities become better at preventing sexual assault, responding to survivors and holding those responsible accountable, the burden of navigating these risks will continue to fall disproportionately on women and others vulnerable to sexual assault.
