1. United States
  2. Mich.
  3. Letter

Demand Accountability for Cornell's Failure to Protect Jane Doe

To: Rep. Walberg, Sen. Peters, Sen. Slotkin

From: A verified voter in Stevensville, MI

October 10

The Cornell Chi Phi case demands your attention and action. Seven men allegedly drugged and gang-raped a 20-year-old student, documented their assault in a Snapchat group chat with 50 witnesses, and faced zero criminal charges. Two were expelled. Others wrote essays. That is not accountability — that is a system protecting perpetrators. This case is a pattern, not an anomaly. From Emma Sulkowicz at Columbia in 2014 to Chanel Miller at Stanford in 2015, universities have consistently failed survivors. Cornell's internal investigation produced slap-on-the-wrist sanctions while the Tompkins County DA's office closed the case without ever conducting a trauma-informed interview with the survivor. It took a 101-page civil lawsuit and national outrage to get the DA to reopen it. That should never be the bar. I want you to act. Push for mandatory federal standards requiring trauma-informed investigative protocols at universities receiving federal funding. Demand oversight hearings on how Title IX complaints are handled at institutions like Cornell. Rape culture does not sustain itself — it is protected by institutional silence, and that silence has to end.

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