Rebecca McCabe '26 is a graduate of Cornell’s Ph.D. program in mechanical engineering. She can be reached at rgm222@cornell.edu.
Editor’s Note: This article references sexual assault and verbal harassment.
September’s lawsuit alleging that Chi Phi fraternity members gang-raped former student Jane Doe in 2024 has galvanized calls for change across campus and beyond. Examining the incident with a systems lens reveals its deeper roots in Cornell’s problematic power dynamics outside of contexts typically associated with sexual assault. The institutional inaction and campus culture that incited the alleged assault are part of a larger pattern in which Cornell prioritizes prestige and wealth over well-being. To achieve meaningful change, our community must reject these insidious values while maintaining our humanity.
In a capitalist world, tracing the flow of money reveals the incentive structures that explain the campus administration’s negligence. Cornell receives money from government grants, student tuition and alumni donations. The University sacrificed diversity to recover federal funding, censored criticism to beguile deep-pocketed admittees and supported weaponmakers to serve endowment profits and safeguard its standing among wealthy pro-Israel donors. These pervasive examples reveal the University’s willingness to act immorally to pad its wallet and reputation.
Moving to expenditures, if we graciously consider all ‘regular’ costs (i.e., academics, personnel, facilities) as justified, the remaining expense is lawsuits. As former president of three campus organizations and a committee chair for Cornell Graduate Students United, I’ve interacted with the Office of General Counsel, Office of Civil Rights, Student and Campus Life and Human Resources. Each encounter has confirmed my impression that Cornell’s fear of getting sued strongly drives its priorities. Lawsuits represent both direct financial costs and indirect income reductions by damaging public image.
In a tragic irony, Cornell’s insufficient response to discrimination and assault claims — the exact subject of Jane Doe’s lawsuit — arises in part from practices that seek to minimize the University’s liability for harming the perpetrators. When investigating reports that I have personally submitted, I find that Cornell’s fear of infringing the antagonizer’s free-speech rights prevented it from recognizing unequivocal harassment, even the repeated derogatory use of slurs. Similarly, in his public statement on the University’s behalf, Vice President for University Relations Kyle Kimball justifies withholding disciplinary outcomes of the Chi Phi individuals by citing “federal privacy law,” seemingly ignoring relevant legal exceptions and standardized privacy waivers. This antiquated patriarchal approach to risk management favors perpetrators and the powerful; hopefully Jane Doe has convinced Cornell to prioritize survivors and the marginalized to avoid legal, fiscal and reputational consequences, and more importantly to prevent human harm.
Students perpetuate the same evils. Opinion Columnist Adrian Belmonte ’28 reflects that a “male culture and male hierarchy” which “condon[es] and incentiviz[es] vile behavior” makes us all complicit in Jane Doe’s rape. I will go even further: independent of sexual culture, students’ aggregate hunger for wealth and prestige serves to empower the administration’s elevation of the same, tacitly legitimizing the very dehumanization we denounce. Cornellians justify the competitive culture of academics, Greek Life, business clubs and project teams under the pretense of merit, omitting the influence of institutionally-inherited elitism. Whether competing for grades or body count, the conquest objectifies others. Correcting this hypocrisy would maintain excellence, enhance inclusivity and strengthen the real and rhetorical power of student demands to the University.
Likewise, fraternities clearly play a role in campus sexual assault. They occupy a central position in campus structures of wealth and prestige. Their alumni donor networks disincentivize the University from strict discipline. Their ‘prototypical man-club’ status defines norms of masculinity. As one of the only undergraduate organizations allowed to host events with alcohol, they exert disproportionate social power. These competing forces must be systematically deconstructed to prevent attempted solutions from backfiring.
Academic literature supports the notion of interconnected systems. Intersectional scholar Audre Lorde declares, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” The master’s tools represent oppression. To disassemble the patriarchy, Lorde argues, feminists must address overlapping types of marginalization like racism and classism. Separately, the book Sexual Citizens proposes a social framework of assault that emphasizes systems over individuals: “sexual assault is a predictable consequence of how our society is organized, rather than solely a problem of individual bad actors.” Thus, assault is inseparable from superficially-unrelated campus practices.
Having established that the alleged 2024 rape and broader campus struggles share a root cause of unchecked emphasis on money and status, a strategy emerges from the pattern: solving any of these issues requires fundamentally reshaping the power structures of higher education. Topic-specific initiatives like improved consent training are necessary but insufficient. Along with pernicious cultural norms, the same forces that thwarted past advocacy attempts, including student assembly resolutions blocked by President Kotlikoff’s inaction and nonviolent protest stifled with fierce discipline, will limit the effectiveness of attempts to prevent sexual assault unless we address the deeper issue.
Reimagining the fabric of the University is a project for all to reflect, discuss and iterate on. How will we replace elitism-driven injustice with an egalitarian power structure and abundant community compassion? Last year’s referendum to expand Student Assembly's purview and restore independent disciplinary processes would have been progress, but Kotlikoff denied the measure despite its over 90% majority passage. The most successful step towards real student power, in my opinion, has been the graduate union, since it affords legally-equal negotiation status with the University. Analogues for fellows and undergraduates would be momentous. Until then, learning from campus protest culture, we demonstrate and organize; learning from Jane Doe, we litigate and publicize; and learning from those around us, we communicate and humanize.
This University has ignored students’ well-being and demands for too long. To repair the campus community, students and administrators alike must choose humanity over money and prestige. The deep interconnectivity of Cornell’s problems doesn’t detract from the urgency of implementing solutions specific to sexual assault, though it does show the necessity of a systems perspective when doing so.
Ultimately, since inequities are embedded in the power structure of higher education, solving them requires reworking that system. Borrowing scholar Nick Walker’s homage to Lorde, “We must throw away the master’s tools.”
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