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I'm late to this response, but it seems weird that the question of adult agency and responsibility is raised with respect to the young woman, but not the young men in this case. Cornell's student code of conduct is extremely explicit that:
So as regarded the university, anyone piling onto a limp drug-addled girl had every reason to expect investigation and expulsion. Less explicitly, but still pretty clearly, these rules are also the conventional baseline in the social class from which all of these wealthy students were drawn, with conspicuous precedent for violations being punished with public censure up to and including temporary exclusion from middle-class employment. Their only hope was that the girl would help them keep the secret.
So if we're talking about people who play obviously stupid games, as @rayon memorably said upthread, but then hypo-agentically expect to dodge the predictable consequences of their actions... it seems to me this pattern-matches much better to the boys in this instance?
I'm actually impressed that it sounds like the girl was going to be a good sport, assume the (considerably)damages and not tell on them, until they broke good-faith by bragging about it on forums. Why should she be the bigger man, if they weren't going to be?
So, in a culture where men are expected to "make a move", every single man at Cornell who has ever done so after having a beer is a rapist?
Assumes facts not in evidence. Per her original statement to the police and the context of messages sent about the event afterwards, the only person who performed a sex act on a "limp, drug-addled" person was her, when she performed fellatio on a man who was unconcious. AIUI, he actually filed a claim against her and was roundly ignored by the university.
She also purportedly told the men she was sober. One of the men says that in one of the text messages, something like "You told me you hadn't been drinking", and she does not appear to dispute the statement. Relatedly, the bar she is sueing for allowing her to drink irresponsibly claims she was not served alcohol at all that night.
There are also texts from her talking about how some of the men were "out of it", and her statement of providing care at the end of the night when they were passing out and dry-heaving.
I have not seen anything suggesting that, but I did stop reading the articles a while ago. AIUI, the "damages" were social in nature and coming from her own sorority and the breaking incident was when the fraternity president banned her from the Halloween party at the instigation of her sorority leader. That was when she flipped from "Nothing that happened was illegal, everyone else is jealous, our body our choice, love you kings" to "90% of what happened that night was non-consensual".
Each man at Cornell who's "made a move" on a woman who might appear visibly intoxicated to an ordinary person was in clear violation of the student code of conduct, yes. Perhaps some folks here think it should have been written differently, but that's irrelevant, because as matters stand, those are the stated rules. And even if the lowest-level violations weren't consistently enforced, what we're discussing here is l"100mph in a school zone" level versus "68mph on the highway."
Deliberately and repeatedly violating clear posted rules, then whining about the predictable institutional consequences because your penis/ evolution made you do it and the authorities should understand that boys will be boys, looks pretty hypo-agentic to me.
(As an aside w/r/t the rule itself, I know the objection to consent policies is "but but what about the beery makeout sessions?!", but I would suggest that if there was ever a world where beery making out was a harmless on-ramp to wholesome family-oriented romance, that is clearly not the world we're in now. If the boys are moving from "you're a cool girl wanna Netflix at my place" to "try this ketamine, it's fun I promise, here have some more" and "hey bros come to the alumni room for free pussy, you can just whip your dick out and stick it in her fr just like in the videos" in the space of a single month, then we're dealing with a whole other breed and it's a pretty obvious case of This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.)
The details were very different in the sources I saw, but again, irrelevant: if the university failed to investigate the claim, then I'm not aware of anyone arguing that they were correct in that failure. AFAICT the whole point of the critique against the university is that the process was shitty and lax throughout. The woman left Cornell, so it's not clear what punishment could have been imposed; and I'd regard verbally exhorting someone to do something as clearly at least co-initiating the ensuing act. But yeah, I fully support a bright-line rule "ladies, no matter how many sweaty men are screaming at you to be cool and blow this guy, you should know that this is against the rules and that all of you could be punished."
Doesn't change the culpability or appropriate sanctions for what the men did, however.
Serious note, for a father: exploitative sexual experiences like this can seriously screw up someone of either gender for a very long time, leading to anxiety/ depression, substance abuse, sexual acting out and compulsion, suicidality and self-harm, etc. My unverified instinct is that Jane Doe's behavior pattern-matches to someone with some level of PTSD from some earlier incident, given the problem drinking before that evening and the fawning texts afterwards; but getting retraumatized like that would set you back quite a few years in recovery. Happy to suggest sources if you'd like to investigate farther.
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