Jane Doe’s story at Cornell University, as she bravely told it, is a 1 in 5 occurrence, a statistic American college women hardly need to be reminded of. A statistic burned inside every woman’s mind. A daily jingle of the pepper spray on our keys. I know someone, you know someone, they know someone. However, our statistics fall short, as we are only able to produce data for those who come forward. But as we know, women have a multitude of reasons for not filing claims of sexual assault and coming forward. For every Black woman who files a report, at least 15 Black women do not. There is a distrust in the systems of protection when the people running those systems are abusers themselves.
In 2024, a time when Donald Trump was the Republican nominee for the U.S. presidency despite the 2 sexual assault allegations and dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct, he was rewarded with the highest position of power. When 7 men at Cornell raped a woman and 57 bystanders in a Snapchat group chat observed, they were rewarded by evading a sentence. None of the seven men alleged to have been involved in the attack at Cornell University were arrested. None. Instead, as a disciplinary tool, they were asked to write an essay.
The customs of fraternity culture and the American political system are at work in alliance to create a reality of male supremacy that exists in our past and current government. Jane Doe of Cornell’s story does not exist in a vacuum- and never has. It exists when sexual abusers are elected, rewarded, run the Pentagon, and serve as Supreme Court Justices.
The Epstein Files and Trump’s involvement in them were what felt like the ultimate chance for our American consciousness to shift around accountability for survivors. The volume of survivors, the stacks of physical evidence, the videos, the news coverage, the pictures- what more evidence could anyone need? Yet, accountability has fallen short. A similar and familiar dissatisfaction to the plateau of the Me Too Movement. To say the least, political culture has sent a clear message: you will get away with it. And fraternities are watching. The freshman boy who feels the pressure to be accepted into the boys’ club is watching. The Cornell 7 were watching.
Our inability to successfully prosecute and provide justice for survivors at the national/ international stage not only sets an example of permissible male behavior, but creates a culture that emulates that which is replicated in the local fraternity meeting.
Since the courtroom and campus halls offer no justice, our generation has found alternative ways to fight these systems with the tools we all possess: the use of social media, community action, and mutual aid. Within seconds of this case becoming public knowledge, social media erupted with the cries of accountability. The case has enraged women and allies all over the country, creating public pressure to reopen the case for reconsideration. The Cornell Daily Sun student newspaper published an article about the college’s inaction and shining a light on Jane Doe’s story titled: “Cornell Won’t, We Will”.
Systems of power and domination will fail us. We will not fail us.
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