In the last few weeks, a lawsuit alleging a gang rape committed by members of a Cornell University fraternity has gained significant media attention. The anonymous victim, going by the alias “Jane Doe,” alleges she was coerced into taking drugs and assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity.
One of the various pieces of evidence backing these allegations is an image of a Snapchat message thread, in which fraternity brother Matthew Ingalls messaged a group chat of 57 brothers, writing that there was “free p*ssy,” and inviting them to join him in violating Jane Doe, who was far too intoxicated to give consent. Multiple brothers responded to this invitation with excitement.
The seven men named in the lawsuit are Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabi, Scott Kretzschmar, and Scott Norris.
One thing apparent in this case was the lack of support for the victim from Cornell University and its police department, as well as the leniency of the punishments handed out to the perpetrators. Of the seven men, only two of them, Ingalls and Newell, were expelled. Lee was given a two year suspension and Lopes was given a three semester suspension. Sarabi had already graduated, but was barred from campus for three years. And the final two men, Kretzschmar and Norris, simply had to take a sexual harassment course and write “reflection papers.” Both are still attending Cornell.
None of the men were arrested.
This problem is not specific to Cornell, but rather is one small part of a system that glorifies, encourages, and protects sexual violence.
The indoctrination begins with hazing; a barbaric, humiliating practice that breaks young men down, teaches them compliance, conditions them to accept physical abuse, and to then turn it onto others. Acts of hazing can range in severity, but it is not uncommon for fraternity hazing rituals to involve acts of sexual violence themselves.
It has been found by at least three separate studies that men who join fraternities are three times as likely to commit rape compared to other college men. One of these is a 2007 study conducted by John Foubert, Jerry Tatum and J.T. Newberry. They concluded that it was in fact the fraternity experience that increased men’s likelihood to rape.
“Before they got to college, fraternity men were no different from other male students. They committed the same number of incidents of sexual assaults before college. But here’s the difference. Guys who joined a fraternity then committed three times as many sexual assaults as those who didn’t join. It is reasonable to conclude that fraternities turn men into guys more likely to rape. Our study confirmed that fraternities provide the culture of male peer support for violence against women that permits bad attitudes to become treacherous behavior. And that should concern everyone.” (Foubert, 2013)
The evidence is there. Study after study has shown that fraternities directly raise sexual violence rates. So why is nothing done about it?
The sexual violence doesn’t end with their college experience. The culture that glorifies violence and encourages silence and compliance, moves with these men into the corporate and political world. If we look at the demographics that make up most fraternity brothers (financially well-off, white men), we see that it is the same demographic that holds most of the power in our society.
When we ask ourselves how Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplices could have gotten away with their crimes for so long, or how an adjudicated rapist could be our president, the answer is right in front of us, and it starts in our universities.
Since Jane Doe’s case was made public, the Tompkins County District Attorney has decided to reopen her case, but no arrests have been made yet at the time of this article’s publishing.
Jane Doe deserves justice. But she is only one out of millions of Jane Does. Nothing will change if we continue allowing fraternities to breed abusive, violent, complicit men. Justice goes far beyond arresting the perpetrators, we must dismantle the system that created them.