The Cornell rape case is a direct consequence of the fraternity system

Over the next seven hours, she alleges she was assaulted by Ingalls and six other men, and forced to take ketamine and more alcohol until she became “completely incapacitated.” 

This isn’t X. I won’t speculate on why the Tompkins County District Attorney said his original decision not to press charges was based on Doe’s statement to the police, then told CBS News on Tuesday that he’d never seen the interview transcript in which she stated, unequivocally, that she was raped. 

I can’t spin a snappy paragraph about the fact that Cornell’s response to the incident was to expel two of the male students involved and set the others essays. I can’t make sense of why men who violate women are routinely forgiven, their assumed potential given precedence over the futures they shattered.

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Taken at face value, Doe’s account is one of someone who was failed too many times to count, too many times for any of us to bear. But of all those missed opportunities, one keeps resurfacing as the most wrenching example of her dehumanisation.

At around 1:42 am on that night in 2024, defendant Johnathan Newell sent a message to a Snapchat group entitled “Chi Phi Actives” advertising “free pussy” upstairs. Several men responded. Ingalls wrote, “I fucking love chi phi,” and “Like you can walk in and whip it out.” One member later replied, “Shop still open?” to which another responded: “Yea.”

There were 57 men in that chat. Not all of those men participated in the alleged assault, but not one protested while it was happening. Faced with a choice between a woman’s safety and the approval of the brotherhood, they favoured the latter. 

Just for context, the Chi Phi motto is “Truth, Honor and Personal Integrity.” Its mission statement is “building better men through lifelong friendships, leadership opportunities, and character development.”

This is why “not all men” rings hollow. It doesn’t take all men to endanger all women. It just takes every man who could interrupt a friend, colleague, or even a stranger, choosing not to. And while there are so many environments where misogyny and rape culture flourish, few are designed with so little friction and so much institutional support as fraternities. 

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Numerous studies have found that men who belong to fraternities are three times more likely to rape than other college men. One in four US undergraduate women experiences rape or sexual assault after enrolling in college. Cornell’s own 2026 task-force report says 35% of undergraduate women surveyed reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at Cornell, compared with 8% of undergraduate men.

Fraternities initiate young men into the narrative that they are the future of the country, and that initiation is often violent. The Indiana University chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity was placed on a cease-and-desist for hazing last year. Every year over the last six decades, at least one student has died or suffered life-altering injuries during hazing rituals, the majority of which were instigated by fraternities. 

Is it any wonder, when this is how the male elite defines itself, that stories like Doe’s are so often disregarded? A reported 72% of young women feel that young men don’t understand the problems they face. If you’ve spent any time online since the Cornell story broke, that feels like a bitter understatement. Social media is screaming that women are sick of giving credit to men for the violence they didn’t commit, rather than the violence they refuse to tolerate. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that no men in the Snapchat group interceded that night. To gain access to the chat in the first place, they had to pledge their allegiance to a “brotherhood” defined by its brutality, entry to which is gained via torture. 

We shouldn’t be surprised that segregating young men and women in the four years before they’re launched into adulthood, then telling those men again and again that they are the leaders of tomorrow, with all the superiority and exceptionalism that implies, leads to a warped relationship with the rest of the world, and women in particular. 

Jane Doe’s story is not an aberration. It is a routine, predictable consequence of a system that reinforces the ugliest expressions of masculinity, and casts women as playthings whose humanity is subordinate to the whims of the pack.