Feature Image from BBC News
This week, Cornell University has been all over news headlines regarding an ‘alleged’ gang rape that took place in October 2024 at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house. Now, in 2026, almost two years later, the former Cornell student, publicly identified as Jane Doe, has filed a civil lawsuit and is proceeding with suing Cornell University and seven fraternity members over the University’s handling of her case and the members’ involvement in the assault. As of Monday, September 28th, New York state prosecutors reopened the investigation into the case.
As a woman at a University, I want to feel safe. Seeing incidents like this and also understanding how long it has taken for this case to be deeply investigated makes my stomach turn. Although I do not want to get into the absolutely gut-wrenching details of this case, I think it is important to point out how this incident began being portrayed in the media.
First of all, why am I mostly coming across articles and news media releases that only mention Jane Doe’s name and not the names of the seven fraternity members being investigated? Now they’re calling them the “Cornell 7”? Did they forget to include the ‘rapists’ part in that name? Their names are Matthew Ingalls, Diego Sarabia, Winston Lee, Scott Kretzschmar, Scott Norris, Gillio Lopes, and Jonathon Newell.
While all names are listed in some of the media releases, especially now as the week has unfolded, I have seen her name listed countless more times as Jane Doe. I understand the whole ‘innocent until proven guilty,’ but also finding out from the Cornell rape allegations prompt prosecutor to reopen criminal investigation article that the university had proceeded with a Title IX investigation for the case that resulted in suspensions and expulsions of certain members makes me wonder why the allegations did not lead to any criminal charges when the university itself had carried out such serious disciplinary acts.
Multiple media outlets have mentioned that the alleged victim did not originally report in 2024 that she had been drugged or unconsensually assaulted, but if she went to the police because she believed that she had potentially been “a victim of a crime,” and there was never any follow-up investigation from “investigators trained in interviewing rape survivors,” as stated in Details emerge in case of former Cornell student alleging gang rape by fraternity members, why is this such a prominent thing being mentioned?
This makes me feel a type of way because I have noticed that multiple media outlets seem to be framing this case in a way that makes it seem like the alleged victim could be simply making it up. Over the course of my life, I have seen many people frame women who speak out about their sexual assault as liars and rarely take those words back, even when the victims are proven to be telling the truth.
I genuinely cannot understand how this is a bigger point for the news outlets to be making when video evidence from a Chi Phi group chat of over 50 men shows that on the night of the assault, there was a message sent stating that a woman was available for sex upstairs. This message was celebrated and acted on by multiple men.
Why are we, as a society, still doubting and shaming women while paving the way for not only people like the men who assaulted her, but also the 50+ men in that group chat who did not even take a second to think about speaking up about this utterly evil act?
To me, this case has shown that despite how far we think society has come, we as women are still actively fighting not only to be taken seriously, but also to be protected. It is very clear that the men involved did something punishable, and yet not a single criminal charge has been filed against them nearly two years after the incident. Instead of telling women that they “shouldn’t have put themselves in that position,” why don’t we start telling men to stop being the ones to put those women in those situations?