Cornell's Real Crisis Is Irrationalism & Victimhood, Not Rape
The problem isn't just fraternities or toxic masculinity. It's a culture that celebrates women's independence while increasingly refusing to hold them accountable for their own choices, and demanding that institutions make those choices for them.
Finally, an article that addresses a much bigger issue facing Cornell and other college campuses. Heather Mac Donald's
@CityJournal piece challenges the protests, demands for leadership changes, accusations of institutional rape culture, and the increasingly popular narrative that female college students are helpless victims who need institutions to protect them from their own decisions.
I added victimhood to her title because I think the two go hand in hand. And before the predictable accusations of victim-blaming and rape apologism start flying, let's examine a few things.
Where was this outrage two years ago?
Jane Doe's allegations weren't national news in 2024, but campus social circles and group chats were already discussing the incident. Where were the widespread protests then? Why did female students continue attending Chi Phi and other fraternity parties?
And this wasn't Cornell's first controversy involving fraternities and sexual assault allegations. In 2022, Cornell temporarily suspended fraternity social events following reports of sexual assault and drugging. Yet students continued attending fraternity parties after restrictions were lifted.
So what changed? Did the risks suddenly become more serious? Or did national media attention, social media outrage, and political pressure transform longstanding issues (student intoxication, questionable decisions, disputed consent, and sexual assault) into a campus-wide crisis?
Let's talk about personal responsibility.
Female students choose to attend Cornell. They compete for admission and pay extraordinary amounts of money for an Ivy League education and the opportunities it may provide.
Partying is an added bonus. It's also a choice. Women choose whether to attend fraternity parties, whether to drink alcohol or use recreational drugs, and how intoxicated they're willing to become. Men make those choices too.
And those choices can have consequences. Alcohol and drugs lower inhibitions, impair judgment, and can lead to sexual encounters people later regret. They can also make someone more vulnerable to people willing to exploit that impairment.
That doesn't excuse sexual assault. Someone who commits sexual assault is responsible for that crime. But when did encouraging adults to make decisions that reduce their vulnerability become an attack on women?
Why is acknowledging the relationship between intoxication, impaired judgment, and sexual risk treated as victim-blaming? We can hold perpetrators accountable while acknowledging that personal responsibility is an essential part of personal safety. Those ideas aren't mutually exclusive.
More institutional control will not solve the problem.
Ban fraternity parties. Remove administrators. Rewrite policies. Expand bureaucracies. Change laws. And then what?
Students will still drink, use drugs, have sex, and sometimes make terrible decisions. The parties will simply move somewhere else. Treating every fraternity member as a potential rapist won't solve the problem. Neither will treating every regretted sexual encounter as sexual assault.
There are important distinctions between consensual sex, impaired judgment, unwanted sexual contact, and criminal sexual assault. We should be able to discuss those distinctions without being accused of defending predators.
Female students don't need to surrender their independence to protect themselves.
They can make choices that reduce their exposure to risk. Go out with friends. Have a sober person in the group. Limit alcohol consumption. Avoid recreational drugs. Recognize environments where intoxication and impaired judgment are less safe.
These are basic precautions we encourage in countless other situations. Yet somehow, when the conversation turns to sexual assault, discussing personal safety becomes controversial.
Activism Over Accountability
We tell women they're independent, empowered adults capable of making their own decisions. Then, when discussing sex and drinking, we increasingly portray them as powerless to manage those decisions. Which is it?
You cannot meaningfully promote equality and independence while treating responsibility as something that belongs exclusively to everyone else. And you cannot create a safety by focusing on one aspect while ignoring the behaviors and circumstances that contribute to risk.
If Cornell students genuinely want to improve campus safety, why not demand better education about alcohol and drugs, meaningful consent education, stronger bystander intervention, appropriate cameras in common areas, accountability for actual misconduct, and an honest evaluation of existing policies?
Why is the loudest demand so often to ban, punish, remove, or regulate rather than educate, prevent, and empower?
Not every allegation establishes a campus-wide culture of sexual violence. Not every fraternity member is a predator. And not every criticism of an allegation is an attack on women.
At what point did empowering women stop meaning teaching them to exercise their own power?
We can do better.