I went through rush, the campaign to enlist new students into a fraternity/sorority, my first year at the University of Washington. They attempted to lure me in with alcohol, which I drank, and gambling, which I rejected as stupid, and with overly friendly women, which I was too addled by the aforementioned alcohol to have a coherent conversation with. I quickly concluded that fraternity life offered me absolutely nothing of interest, and would have just been a wasteful distraction. I’ve never liked the whole fraternity philosophy ever since — they are places for young men to gather and learn terrible lessons about the world.
I was not surprised by the news from Cornell. In short, a young underage woman was given alcohol at a bar. She drank it, and was probably not at all accustomed to it. She drunkenly staggered off to the Chi Phi fraternity, where “friends” gave her ketamine, and she stupidly consumed it. Then they took her to a back room, raped her repeatedly for 7 hours, and even got on snapchat and invited their fellow frat brothers to join in the gang rape. This was not something she chose, or could even choose, being zonked out of her mind on drugs and alcohol.
This was a crime, plain and simple. The 7 rapists should have been arrested and faced severe criminal sentences, greater than mere expulsion. They were not. When the reputable university of Cornell heard about this atrocious, outrageous criminal act, they held an internal investigation, and kicked two of the criminals out of the university, without passing them on to civil authorities. The others were told to write essays.
Essays. I had no idea that writing was such a dreadful punishment.
The university is not supposed to be a bubble where horrific crimes are diminished to the point where you can rape a woman and expiate your crime by writing words. Being a student shouldn’t be a state of privilege, but apparently in this time when being a student is associated with being a child of a rich family, it has become a mark of belonging to an elite who can be excused for criminal actions.
No. I reject that. They must face the consequences. The students should be arrested and tried for rape. The bar that willingly served alcohol to underage women should face severe criminal penalties, their liquor license should be at risk. The Chi Phi fraternity should be shuttered permanently. Or at least that’s what I thought until I read the national headquarters statement on the incident.
The sexual assault allegations involving parties at Cornell University are deeply concerning. Anyone who reports sexual violence deserves to be heard and treated with compassion, dignity, and respect.
Chi Phi unequivocally condemns sexual violence. Our founding principles of Truth, Honor, and Personal Integrity, and our mission of Building Better Men, call on every brother to demonstrate character through his actions and respect for the dignity and safety of others. Sexual violence is fundamentally incompatible with those expectations.
Oh god. Platitudes. How is the fraternity system at all about Truth, Honor, and Personal Integrity
? How does drunkenness and notoriously wild partying Build Better Men
? It’s all a lie. Burn every chapter to the ground.
And shame on Cornell. They’ve built a safe space for the rapist sons of wealthy donors. They (and many other universities) need to change the university culture, but they won’t. The system is built with layers of privilege maintained by fat cats on managing boards, and they don’t care.
Am I naive to believe a university should be a place of learning?
Don’t forget these names: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. They’re the ones who drugged and raped a helpless woman. That should be on their CVs, at the very least. I also hope their mothers know what their boys have been accused of.
It’s time for a new -ism: Humanrightsism (cf. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights).
Full stop.
I take it this is not the first time something like this has happened in an American university? I am only familiar with fictional TV events but I suspect they were inspired by reality.
And a certain Kavanaugh was allegedly close to SA a woman when he was a student but the (Trump) administration did not want an investigation (this was just 6-7 years ago so I trust my memory).
Suggestion: If they do not want to take the meds that suppress libido -a measure for some other sexual offenders- just confiscate their gonads and keep them in a frozen warehouse for 30- 40 years.
Yes, this is not all that unusual. Universities in the US are known for not taking sexual harrassment or worse seriously, and indeed, protecting the (male) perpetrators. If there’s one that has actually dealt seriously with rape or sexual assault, I haven’t heard of it. I went to a different Ivy League university, and while I never heard of a rape like that, I wasn’t the kind of person they would have boasted to about it. But the attitude was certainly present, and there have certainly been complaints that the University didn’t do anything about complaints of sexual assault and harassment and even tried to cover them up.
I don’t know if the fact that my University (like Cornell) was originally all-male has anything to do with this stuff — I don’t know about what the situation is with formerly all-female colleges that have gone co-ed. (For the non-USAans, “co-ed” means both men and women.)
FWIW, it’s not just universities. There was a case at Stanford U, where a male athlete raped a woman, and was convicted (in a real courtroom), and was given essentially no sentence because the judge “didn’t want to ruin a fine young man’s life.”
Cf. Hannah Gadsby’s comments in Nanette about Picasso and the importance of famous men’s “reputation.”
After all, \begin{snark} isn’t that what God made female human beings for, to be sex victims for Real (=male) People?\end{snark}
We’ve been here before.
This happened in California, at De Anza college in 2007.
There never was a criminal conviction in this case either.
The victim pursued a civil case and some of the perpetrators settled out of court.
These scandals are nothing new and they parallel the sex abuse scandals at military academies a few years ago.. As usual they are met with high-minded, knee jerk condemnation but little if any action. The women are generally shuffled out of the way and fobbed off with “advice” that complaints are unlikely to succeed because they would founder on the “he said/she said” impasse. Female cadets were pressed to resign from the military or face severely curtailed careers.
What this implies is that these universities are run by men who have come up through this despicable system and who do their best to shield these scions of privilege. What it implies is that their are officers at the middle and senior levels pf command who have got away with rape, men who dishonor the flag and the uniform and who are protected by equally dishonorable officers.
That there are god men in these systems I do not doubt but, if this sort of behavior is to be stamped out then they need to come forward and take a stand for their female colleagues. I’m not optimistic this will happen, though.
My lawyer spouse points out that Cornell cannot bring criminal charges against students in a case such as this. The young woman who was raped should file charges with the police, who have the responsibility for arresting the rapists, etc. At the point at which it is established that students are guilty of rape and/or sexual assault, Cornell can take action against them, over and above actions that the judicial/criminal justice system may impose.
The fact that this was connected to a fraternity also raises the possibility that the fraternity can be banned from an association with Cornell, among other sanctions, but that would probably wait until the criminal justice system acts. Universities, apparently, have been exercising an over-abundance of caution since the Duke incident several years ago, and subsequent concerns about a college or university denying due process to students charged with crimes.
This sexual assault case is only becoming public because the victim filed a civil lawsuit.
To say that Cornell dropped the ball is an understatement.
They did nothing but cover it up and should be sanctioned for that.
They also AFAICT, did nothing to make sure crimes like this don’t happen again.
Which means they will happen again.
My old undergraduate university had a few frats and they occasionally caused problems.
One of them was throwing parties with large amounts of alcohol.
I do remember at least one rape accusation that went to trial and didn’t result in a conviction.
Every few years one of those kids would die from acute alcohol intoxication.
The university finally had enough and set up a new student orientation program for the fraternities.
It featured a comprehensive lesson on what acute alcohol intoxication death was, and how to avoid it and treat it.
It apparently worked since no one has died of an alcohol overdose since, that I know of anyway.
There is one hazard of these drunk and drugged rapes that isn’t mentioned enough.
They can end up being fatal, murders.
When you have someone who has taken enough alcohol and date rape drugs to end up unconscious, there is always the possibility that they overdose to the point of dying.
It happens.
Cornell and the other universities should be pointing out that turning a party into a homicide investigation isn’t a good idea.
“I also hope their mothers know what their boys have been accused of”
JUST WOW, PZ. YOU TOO?
Before we go looking for the mothers, perhaps we should ask why, when a man is accused of sexual violence, our instinct is STILL to locate a woman who can be held responsible. Parents influence their children. They do not control every choice their adult children make.
And notice how rarely anyone asks, “Let’s find his FATHER and ask him how this happened.” Turning to the mother as though she owes the world an explanation is an old reflex – not an explanation.
Do better, PZ!
Let’s face the abominable facts:
1) Universities are run by ‘business men’, males (and a few complicit women) who are primarily interested in financial success, not academic excellence or developing decent members of society.
2) As, I’ve said numerous times, there is no rule of law. From the top down, we live in a crime ridden society sponsored by tons of corrupt crapitallist money.
3) Misogyny is still a huge, powerful, immoral force in society. Magat ‘real men’ are pushing for high levels of testosterone, low levels of decency, trad-wives and no accountability.
I would love to find a way to cause honesty, decency and caring to prevail in human society. But, those of us that live by those values are ignored by those whose primary goal in life is to amass fortunes so they can control and twist society toward their own evil values system.
Thus, we are compelled to stipulate that human society is largely failure.
In the Stanford University case, first year student swimmer Brock Turner, was interrupted by a couple of Swedish grad students while he was raping an unconscious woman outside a frat house where both had been at a party serving alcohol (Turner was underage, the woman was not). One caught him when he attempted to run and while another checked the woman. The police were called. Turner withdrew from Stanford before the university could kick him out though the university did ban him from campus two days after and announced that the ban was permanent after he was sentenced. The sentence imposed was locally considered by many to be too lenient (6 months in jail, 3 years of probation) and the judge was recalled. Turner wasn’t a fraternity member since at Stanford frosh can’t join a fraternity until Spring Quarter of their first year and the rape took place in January; I don’t recall the fraternity hosting the party receiving any penalty. The victim, Chanel Miller, waived her right to remain anonymous after the trial and published a very powerful letter and later book.
Also, please note the corollary to this is when crimes against a spouse are dismissed as only ‘a family dispute’ by our ‘alleged’ legal system. WTF
Apparently there is some action in this case:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/09/28/cornell-rape-allegations-prompt-prosecutor-reopen-criminal-investigation/
I think I’m going to add “abolish fraternities” to my list of political demands.
To be fair the DA, apparently the allegations in the civil suit were not originally conveyed to the DA or the Ithaca police.. It seems the university police conducted the investigation and did not do so adequately.
“[DA] Van Houten said his office did not bring charges in 2024 because the woman’s statement to authorities did not allege she was drugged or that she did not consent to engage in sexual activities. . . .
Thomas P. Giuffra, attorney for Jane Doe, disputed Van Houten’s description of the woman’s initial statement to the Cornell University Police Department and faulted authorities for never following up with his client.
“In my experience, speaking with an abuse survivor requires delicacy, understanding and specialized training. An average University Police officer would not have these skills. It would be the role of a specially trained detective or district attorney. However, Ms. Doe was never contacted by anybody with those skills,” he said.”
So the story is a bit more complicated. Not saying that the university is anything like blameless — they should have assured that their police department was properly trained and equipped to deal with such cases. But it looks like they didn’t have an accurate set of facts at the time. We need to be scrupulous about the details.
I know it is not constructive to bring in Rorschach and other fictional vigilantes, but my revenge fantasies are getting more violent the more comments I read.
Never mind “building better men”, why is no-one thinking of building better alternatives instead of men?
Since the invention of the electric motor, we no longer need so many men around for their on-average greater muscle strength. And advances in cloning and other machine-assisted reproduction techniques probably will mean we eventually won’t need them around for that, either.
@#10 NancyHolst
Probably because the fathers are more likely to high-five their sons or be “merely disappointed”, and their mothers are more likely to be outraged.
Yes. Hasn’t academia shown its true institutional function, over and over again? These boys are our future ruling class, and they act as the ruling class is accustomed to.
Of course, that argument can be made just as easily for why women will soon no longer be needed. Genociding half the population may have unforeseen bad consequences, but who cares about that when the battle of the sexes is about to be decisively won once and for all?
[related]
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/28/university-of-arizona-fraternity-suspended-hazing
↓
A college fraternity at the University of Arizona has been suspended after new members were allegedly plied with alcohol and forced to swallow live goldfish.
College officials informed the university’s Sigma Tau Gamma chapter by letter earlier in September that it was under investigation for multiple alleged violations of the student code of conduct, including “endangering, threatening, or causing physical harm” to members of the campus community.
It is the latest in a series of recent campus hazing cases across the US, which have included the discovery of dozens of partly clothed young men locked in the basement of a fraternity house at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where they were covered in food as part of a pledging ritual.
—
beholder:
You are wrong and confused.
Whether or not there is an ulterior “true institutional function”, they are still places of learning.
And they are not all “boys”, and you imagine the “ruling class” is over 40% of the population!
cf. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/educational-attainment-data.html
Age: In 2024, 42.8% of the population ages 25 to 39, 41.5% ages 40 to 54, and 34.2% age 55 and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Sex: In 2024, 40.1% of women and 37.1% of men age 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree or higher.
@#12 Thank you for naming Brock Turner; I came to do the same.
When people argue with me against the death penalty, these rapists are my counter-argument. There is no question that they are guilty – they have admitted it in their chat – and the world would be a better place if they were legally removed. I would not have a problem with that, and I firmly believe that they have given up, through their actions, any right to attempt to reform themselves.
Chi Phi is men only, is it not? Such sloppy rhetoric, John. You’re worse at arguing than StevoR is, and that’s saying a lot.
Anyway, my point was this is not a failing of all men, but it is a ruling class feature. They hate us so much that they want to rape us and/or kill us, and they have children who want to do the same. It’s class warfare, and so far they’re winning.
The entire Greek system is corrupt and they need to be banned. Even banned they will hang around just off campus, as independent/unaffiliated groups. They are a blight on our institutes of education.
You do amuse, beholder, when you try to engage with me:
The specific OP issue is, but you were responding to what you quoted: “Am I naive to believe a university should be a place of learning?”
Therefore, you were supposedly responding to what a university should be, not to the fact that one particular university has one particular fraternity.
And you indisputably claimed it is naive to think universities are places of learning, which of course they are.
The irony is palpable.
You’re not even arguing, so that’s saying even more, O blusterer.
It is a remarkably stupid point, which is why I remarked on it.
What, universities? Fraternities?
That mysterious ‘they’ who want to rape you are the boys of Chi Phi?
What? You think people who attend tertiary institutions are all the same class, and warring?
(The 40%!)
How does the uni even get a say? Why aren’t the police and legal system automatically engaged?
DanDare @ 27
Yes!
When a security guard in an office building finds a victim of violence, the guard will automatically call the police.
In fact, if the guard failed to call the police I am pretty sure there would be some legal consequence.
It is as if Universities have the same internal ‘justice’ system as cults like Jehowah’s Witnesses, who don’t report sexual abuse of minors to the police.
I have a quibble with this post – the phrase “the reputable university of Cornell”.
It is not, and I personally think anyone applying for any position with Cornell credentials on their CV should be relegated to the round file on receipt of their application.
Good question.
A lot of universities have their own police departments.
If you read the articles about this case, they refer to the Cornell campus police.
And how the Cornell campus police didn’t do much of anything.
Here is what Google search has to say.
I don’t know, reading all that doesn’t make me feel safe. In fact, it makes me feel less safe.
There is something called the Cleary Act which governs how reporting for SA should be handled by Universities, though there seems to be some guidelines that apply only to public universities. Cornell is nominally a private Ivy League institution, but parts of it are public or a hybrid of the two.
It’s very possible that Cornell violated the law by not reporting a violent felony, but it’s also possible the victim could have opted to not report the crime.
That seems unlikely, and I’m glad that she is not only suing Cornell, but the actual law enforcement in Ithaca is (re) opening a criminal investigation into the crime.
I’m in favor of the Hmong solution to rapists/ pedophiles. They are considered rabid and are permanently removed from society before their sickness hurts more people.
I am a Greek. President of my chapter my senior year, in fact.
We were known for our academic standards and regularly won the Dean’s Award for Excellence boasting a chapter GPA of 3.2/4.0 back in the day. Fifty years ago.
We educated our pledges about the fraternity and never hazed. We were mostly nerd-ish but had our stories about Coors kegs and Jack-in-the-Box tacos. On the Hegseth Testosterone Scale of Manly Man fraternities we were a MEH.
However, all that cratered decades after I graduated when a couple of knuckleheads got some freshmen horribly drunk, one ending up in the hospital. Sadly, rather than own up to their foolishness, the knuckleheads convinced the chapter to stand behind them and it all went down the tubes. The knuckleheads were expelled and the Chapter dissolved.
Bad decisions all around.
The probation period was set until no members of the chapter were no longer associated with the university, about 5 years. After that the chapter petitioned to re-charter. That was granted and today the chapter is alive and well, still the academic leader and also known for its charitable work.
For the frat at Cornell, they have had problems before. The frat is off-campus so Cornell doesn’t have total control, but they could tell the frat to go away and expel any member, guilt by association.
[OT]
Doc Bill, you are a Greek, eh? Gotta love that coinage.
I remember, a decade or two ago here on this blog, discussing those ‘Greek’ thingies.
I did the research.
(No, not just watching Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds in the case of such academic puissance as yours, where you managed to get into the top two deciles ;)
So. You are claiming you applied the concept of pledgeship, no?
A probationary period for candidate members with some sort of requirements and final judgment.
(Technically, not initiation? ‘Cause it would be a true outlier for this sort of tribalism, and having requirements creates a nice power imbalance and expectation)
(I remember basically noting that those who join are perforce the joiners)
By Qasim Rashid seen today on facebook -long but reckon thsi is wellwortha read and contemplating here :
Source : https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0wCNBqdRDky3AS9pHdF8UKy4kksk2SySjg8Xq15co5s1Bnzf9M5Wj5n16NKL1ivDbl&id=100050455931255
A YouTube channel by a therapist man named Lex who has daily live streams unpacking and challenging misogyny in his guests. He’s doing the men are responsible for fixing the problem part and it feels good to watch.
https://youtube.com/@lex_therapy1
I do not see how abolishing the fraternities would achive anything. As I understand it Universities originally agreed to fraternities in order to outsource the regulation of the behaviour young men attending university from themselves to the fraternities. The failure has been with the universities then regulating the fraternities. It is unlikley that university administrators will grow a spine if responsibility returns to them. It is also unlikly that men who know their fees pay for those administrators will change their behaviour in any way when not in a fraternity. The administrators & the men are thebproblem not the places the offences happened.
The disgusting, rtwingnut, xtian terrorist movement shown below should be repulsive to everyone and it answers @10 nancyholst’s concerns when she points out, “our instinct is STILL to locate a woman who can be held responsible.”
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/amanda-marcotte/118220/wife-school-can-t-fix-maga-husbands
“Submission isn’t earned, it is given through the covenant of marriage,” Stone argued in one video. If a husband makes bad decisions, she said, it’s his wife’s fault because she isn’t submitting enough to give him the “confidence” to “take on the masculine role.”. . .
Amanda Marcotte studied the warped biblical roles being pushed today. And asks, “Why is there “wife school” but no apparent equivalent “husband school”? Men in this situation are perfectly fine; they are benefitting from a system set up to serve them at a woman’s expense.”
I’m sort of indifferent to abolishing fraternities. They can cause problems but they also can be regulated and reformed by the universities to the point of being more or less neutral.
I never heard that.
What I did hear from a sociologist long ago is that the purpose of fraternities is to promote endogamy. The sons of the ruling class date and marry the daughters of the ruling class, who of course, are members of the sororities.
This is why up until recently, the fraternities were selective in their membership and usually all white males.
To be sure, they probably serve other functions as well, as mundane as campus housing for students who do have to live somewhere.
It doesn’t look like you know anything about American universities.
In fact, the universities do regulate the fraternities associated with them and have a huge amount of power over them. And when they take their responsibilities seriously, the fraternities don’t cause as many problems.
At my old university, one of the fraternities kept causing problems. The university stepped in and shut them down. They never came back. Some of the alumni threatened the university and that didn’t do any good either.
It is both.
In this case, the fraternity failed completely.
The administration at Cornell and their campus police also spent more time covering up a felony crime than doing anything to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Oddly enough, the Google AI almost agrees with me.
Universities sanction and shut down fraternities all the time for violating their rules.
Here is one outrageous example from the University of Oregon at Eugene.
Looks like U. of Oregon still has a serious problem with their fraternities.
There are recent reports of 6 women being given drinks with date rape drugs at fraternity parties.
Looks like they are trying to compete with Cornell in crimes against women.
PBS Newshour has this report FWIW :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-york-prosecutors-reopen-investigation-into-alleged-rape-at-cornell-university
.***
@ 24. Dishonest Trump troll beholder : “You’re worse at arguing than StevoR is, and that’s saying a lot.”
LOL. Says the slippery troll who runs from serious questions and whom I’ve caught out lying here many times including just there.
Oh and, frex, corrected on worst USA states for education here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/10/06/the-future-looks-bleak/#comment-2280113
.***
@9. Raven :
Very true. This nearly happened to Christine Blasaey Ford :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Blasey_Ford#Sexual_assault_allegation_against_Brett_Kavanaugh
Thanks to Trump -& obvs those who enabled him – we have a man on SCOTUS who could well have been guilty of at least manslaughter if not murder as well as rape.