ITHACA (NY)
Boston Globe
September 30, 2026
By Brooke Hauser and Michaela Towfighi
The lawsuit over an alleged brutal gang rape at Cornell University has sparked collective fury — and a recognition that, despite the #MeToo movement, decades of protest, and pledges from college administrators to do better, not enough has changed when it comes to addressing campus sexual assault.
“The problem doesn’t go away,” said Amanda Walsh, deputy director of external affairs at the Boston-based Victim Rights Law Center, “but the conversation does.”
Now, it’s back.
At many college campuses around the state, students, professors, and administrators are talking about the Cornell case. But while some conversations are out in the open, others are unfolding privately.
“Generally in classes, people are more hesitant to bring up things that are politically sensitive,” said Stella Lei, 22, a Harvard University senior in her last semester who cofounded Take Back Harvard, a digital archive that documents reports of sexual violence and gender discrimination at Harvard over the decades.
Earlier this month, a former student identified as Jane Doe sued Cornell University, saying she was sexually assaulted by seven students at a fraternity house in 2024 after being plied with alcohol and drugs, and that the Ivy League school both failed to protect her and to properly sanction the perpetrators. On Monday, a New York prosecutor said he would reopen a criminal investigation into the case. Cornell said the university completed a Title IX investigation, expelled two of the students and penalized the others involved, but is unable to comment on further disciplinary measures publicly.
Almost simultaneously, President Trump’s Department of Education announced it would toss out Biden-era Title IX rules governing how schools must handle accounts of sexual misconduct, reverting to a version that sets a stricter definition for what constitutes sexual harassment and gives more due process rights to those accused.
The Trump administration also has been dismantling and gutting the Education Department, transferring its civil rights office to the Justice Department, and “leaving pending sexual violence complaints to languish with no transparency about what they plan to do with those complaints,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
The Cornell case is legally unusual — and notable — because Jane Doe is not suing under the federal Title IX, said Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a retired federal judge. It suggests Jane Doe’s lawyers don’t trust the federal system to protect survivors, as they’ve gone to state court to sue under New York law instead, she added.
“The bigger picture is that the 800-pound gorilla in sexual harassment investigations — which was the federal government — has been silenced here.”
Diane Rosenfeld, founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, agreed that the responsibility now falls harder on states to hold universities accountable for their responses. She pointed to legislation in Illinois and California as examples of states that have passed local laws mirroring federal legislation to strengthen sexual violence advocacy and resources on campuses.
In recent years, gender-based violence hasn’t had the same visibility on campuses as other student movements, from Black Lives Matter to protests for a Free Palestine. But now, the conversation is “starting to shift back to the people whoperpetrate sexual assault,” with people asking, “Why is this happening?” Walsh said — and the answers range from male loneliness to online misogyny in the manosphere.
At Boston University, Reyes Almeida, a junior, has led sexual assault prevention trainings through the BU campus chapter of “It’s On Us.” She was appalled by the news from Cornell, she said, but not surprised in today’s culture where she sees people make jokes about high-profile rape cases, from Jeffrey Epstein to rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.
“Making fun of these things actually has effects on rape culture,” Almeida said. “People don’t really understand that.”
In Massachusetts, a state known for its high concentration of colleges, universities, and students, both public and independent institutions are required to conduct a sexual misconduct climate survey of all students no less than once every four years.
Schools also have Title IX coordinators, but their role “implicitly is to protect the university,” said Liz Speakman, executive director of Boston Area Rape Crisis Center.
In Boston, many universities coordinate with the independent Boston Area Rape Crisis Center to offer a resource off-campus if students want to understand their options, seek counseling, or pursue charges.
“We will support students in those situations and help them navigate the Title IX process as best we can,” Speakman said, “and also let them know that this may not be the place where they get justice.”
While rates of reporting campus sexual assaults to universities and law enforcement are “really low,” climate survey results, which measure how much students know about resources and how they perceive campus safety,have stayed consistent, said Walsh, of the Victim Rights Law Center, which represents student survivors in colleges and universities across Massachusetts.
“A lot has changed. A lot of colleges are really trying to get this right. . . . There’s more expertise and more competence and more investment in the response to sexual violence now,” she added, and still, “it’s not enough.”
With the Cornell case, many women on social media say that they’ve time-traveled back to their own college days, sharing posts nodding to previous movements — like when a Columbia University student carried a 50-pound mattress everywhere she went on campus to call attention to sexual assault in 2014 or to candlelit Take Back the Night marches decades before that.
“We have to hold these systems to a higher standard,” Speakman said. “The next coming generations believe that they should be able to do that.”
The weight never lifted, and the parade of famous and powerful men accused of abusing women marches on: Epstein, Bill Cosby, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, even the president of the United States.
Rosenfeld said college presidents could make a “huge difference” by holding office hours or a town hall for students to talk about their own campus cultures. Amherst College set an example in 2012, she said, when then-president Carolyn “Biddy” Martin canceled classes and closed offices for a day to talk as a community after a public rape allegation.
“Schools should be much more afraid of their students being harmed than negative consequences and publicity,” Rosenfeld said.
Meanwhile, commentary about the Cornell complaint has flooded social media. Many commenters are still blasting both Cornell and the district attorney’s office, with some posting photos of the so-called Cornell Seven — who are named in the complaint for perpetrating “heinous criminal sexual acts.”
For some, the case has brought up age-old questions about fraternities and skewed power dynamics. “You give a group of 18- to 22-year-old men a mansion, and they tend to wield a great deal of social capital and power,” said Adam McCready, an associate professor-in-residence at the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education who studies Greek life and masculinity.
In addition to graphic details of the alleged assaults, the lawsuit includes a screenshot of a Snapchat message it claims was sent by one fraternity brother to others saying there was “free [expletive]” upstairs, referring to the plaintiff.
“To change the culture, we have to live in a world in which there are consequences for the types of conversations we see, in private, in this Snapchat,” said Walsh, of the Victim Rights Law Center. “Why do students feel like they can openly discuss this in writing with a group of people — and not be fearful of any sort of accountability from their peers or their friends?”
Brooke Hauser can be reached at brooke.hauser@globe.com. Follow her @brookehauser. Michaela Towfighi can be reached at michaela.towfighi@globe.com. Follow her on X @michaelatowfghi.