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An old staple of the culture war has resurfaced: District attorney reopens case of alleged Cornell University 'gang rape'. The core allegation is that the girl went to a frat house, got pressured to snort ketamine, passed out, and was raped by multiple people while unconscious.
I first heard about this case from someone at Cornell a bit after it happened. She was adamant that the frat boys were guilty and that there was conclusive proof (though she didn't personally know what the proof was), but the administration went easy* on them because of misogyny. Obviously, this set off alarm bells in my head because it pattern-matched well with Duke Lacrosse, Mattress Girl, etc. I said that it sounded like there wasn't enough evidence to tell, while in the back of my mind thinking that the accusation was probably false.
I was somewhat surprised when I read today that this conclusive proof does sort of exist, in the form of a Snapchat screenshot wherein someone in the fraternity's group chat posted that there was "free pussy upstairs". It's not quite conclusive proof, but it's much better proof than I expected. At this point my assessment is that the accusation is probably basically real.
This got me to thinking about whether it was time to update my model of the world, and whether the discourse around campus rape has changed over the past 10+ years. In a media environment where Jezebel is dead and Rolling Stone irrelevant, should we still expect the mainstream media to be biased to the point of uselessness? What about the power dynamics? Who is Cornell more afraid of, feminists or Republican OCRs?
There're also the evergreen questions, like what the responsibility of a university should be in cases like this, or what the police department or justice system should do. Seasoned culture warriors will point out that wanting to be hard on this kind of crime correlates with wanting to be soft on other kinds of crime.
Another thing that came to mind was the question of how grievous a crime we should consider rape to be. In my lifetime, rape has generally been considered equivalent to murder in severity ("rape and murder" usually being used to indicate the category of "super serious crime"), and the question of whether that's a good thing has been debated to death. However, Zoomers are famously more prudish than Millennials. Does it follow that Zoomers also regard rape as a greater crime, relatively speaking, than Millennials do?
*I see people claiming on Reddit and other places that the alleged rapists' only punishment was that they had to write apologetic essays, but this is not true -- at least two members of the fraternity were expelled. Whether this is a light punishment is up for debate.
Proof of what exactly? It proves that there was train happening upstairs - which no one has disputed I think. Whether it was rape depends on whether she was capable of consent and if she gave it. That exact quote doesn't swing in any direction.
Points against that being rape is that during the woke era in a woke institution administered and ruled by woke people trough and trough - that this was covered up is strange.
For is that she did drugs.
I hadn't been paying close attention to the details of the story and I was under the impression that her being unconscious (and therefore incapable of consent) was an agreed-upon fact. Upon closer reading it does seem like the unconscious part is under contention, with the DA saying that when the incident was originally reported, she did not report being unconscious, which seems like the classic story-changing pattern.
Maybe I was too quick to update.
I've seen a bunch of posting on social media indicating that a recording of the sex act exists and shows her conscious and enthusiastically participating, though might just be garbled twitter stuff.
While that could be true, I would hope her attorneys would've determined what evidence was floating around first before filing suit as they are presumably working on contingency. It's bad for business to get 1/3 of $0.
What are the odds Cornell settles anyway, for the sake of ideology and bad press?
Assume it’s free money. But it’s a weird place for colleges now and it would be easier to get the payout a few years ago.
Schools do want to capture some of the southern school rise of not be dominated by wokism/me-too ism. But parents also don’t want their daughters going to schools where their daughter is having consented ketamine-booze gangbangs. Except for a few EA types.
So Cornell probably doesn’t want to look like activist can just bully policy. Internally Cornell’s ideal social experience is being seen as fun on the weekends but sex is monogamous.
Yeah but consider some of the absolutely insane frivolous culture war cases lately. Karmelo Anthony's family suing and leading to a bunch of evidence entering the record that made him look worse, or whatever the hell is going on with the Nolan Wells situation. All you need is one desperate/aggressive enough lawfirm.
Actually I’m loving this case. Because based on the police report that she consented to everything there really isn’t a coherent liberal moral framework that they can apply to this case.
Their not allowed to say girls don’t have agency or academia should restrict the sex life of adults or people shouldn’t do ketamine.
But what do I know I just went to a school that made it illegal to have premarital sex so we have a framework that makes this bad.
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There were almost certainly actual crimes involved in the Nolan wells situation. Hes not an innocent victim, but transportation provided by an intoxicated teen is one of those things that isn’t an innocent explanation.
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Yeah. Big enough target and sensitive enough topic you don't need a ton of merit to have a decent chance at getting a settlement off somebody to shut up and go away
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