The following speech was read aloud by freshman Sarah Mitchell at Ithaca communities’ rally for Jane Doe on October 3, 2026.Â
As an Ithaca College student, I know some people might ask why I’m here speaking about a Cornell fraternity. But the invisible lines dividing our campuses do not stop rape culture. We share this town. We share these streets. And unfortunately, we share the exact same institutional betrayals.
We are standing here today because we are exhausted by the silence. We are exhausted by institutions that protect their reputations before they protect students. The numbers cannot be wished away: according to Cornell University’s own data, thirty-five percent of undergraduate women have reported non-consensual sexual contact since joining campus. One in three. That is not an anomaly. That is an epidemic.Â
Nationwide, 13% of all undergraduate students experience rape or sexual assault after enrolling in college. That is 1 in 4 undergraduate women, and 1 in 14 undergraduate men. Over a four-year college career, an estimated 1 in 5 students will experience sexual violence involving physical force or an inability to consent. Furthermore, 2 in 5 college students will experience sexual harassment. These aren’t just abstract statistics. These are our peers, our friends, our classmates, and ourselves.Â
Decades have been spent telling us how to protect ourselves – what to wear, where to walk, how to hold our keys, what bars to avoid, when to look over our shoulder. But rape culture is not an individual failing, and self-defense is not a systemic solution. You cannot out-navigate a culture that permits harm; you have to dismantle it altogether. That dismantling begins with collective action.
Rape culture thrives in isolation. It relies on silence, on survivors feeling entirely alone, and on bystanders looking the other way. When we organize, we strip that isolation of its power.
Lasting change requires intentional community building. We must build communities that actively unlearn complicity. That means creating environments where microaggressions, predatory jokes, and victim-blaming are interrupted on the spot – not out of hostility, but out of a shared commitment to dignity.
Before we go any further, I want us to take a moment to pause. Look around. There are many survivors standing among us right now. Speaking to the survivors here: whether you have shared your story or you hold it entirely in silence, we see you. We believe you. You are not alone, and you are not defined by what you have endured.
To everyone else: standing at a rally is only the first step. True support means checking in on your friends and peers today when the adrenaline fades. It means believing survivors without condition, and without hesitation. It means having the courage to interrupt the casual misogyny and sexualization of women in your dorms, your group chats, and your organizations. You cannot claim to support survivors if you are still protecting the social capital of abusers.Â
Because at the end of the day that is rape culture. It is the complicity of the fifty-seven. It is a system where perpetrators expect to be shielded by their brothers, and where an Ivy League institution tries to handle the fallout quietly through internal and secretive disciplinary processes. It took nearly two years, a civil lawsuit, and the absolute courage of student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun dragging this into the light for the criminal investigation to finally be reopened. Those student journalists published the names of the accused because, in their own words, “Cornell won’t, we will”. Â
And so I say, “Cornell won’t, Ithaca community will.” At Ithaca College, just like at Cornell, we know the grim reality of the Title IX process. We know the endless bureaucratic delays. We know the grueling investigations that force survivors to recount their trauma, only to have the institution prioritize liability over accountability. Title IX was designed to ensure equal access to education, but too often, our campus administrations use it as a shield to handle atrocities quietly behind closed doors. When perpetrators expect to be shielded by their brothers or their athletic teams, and when universities attempt to manage the fallout by letting them go free rather than seeking justice, the system isn’t broken – it is functioning exactly as it was built to.
Rape culture is not just a campus issue – it is a global political weapon. For too long, we have talked about sexual violence as if it is the tragic result of evil individuals. But look at the highest seats of government and the wealthiest men on the planet. Rape culture is an institutional strategy. It is the language of supremacy.Â
Look at the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, where the United Nations reports that gang rape and sexual slavery are being systematically deployed as weapons of war to terrorize and displace entire communities. Look at the IDF in Palestine, where UN human rights experts have repeatedly condemned the systemic sexual abuse, degrading strip searches, and torture of Palestinian women, men, and children in military detention camps. Look at the brutal tactics of M23 in Congo and Russian forces in Ukraine. We must recognize that the violence we fight on our college campuses is connected to a global system that treats human bodies – overwhelmingly the bodies of women and girls – as territory to be conquered, punished, and controlled.
When we look at our own political landscape, the message is undeniable. We watch immense political power be handed to Donald Trump, a man who built his brand on bragging about grabbing women without their consent. We watch a political system where being found civilly liable for sexual abuse is treated as a minor PR hurdle rather than a disqualifying moral failure. We watch states enact abortion bans without exceptions for rape or incest, legally compelling survivors to carry pregnancies resulting from assaults. We watch hundreds of thousands of rape kits sit untested in police backlogs for years. We watch our attorney general refuse to look Epstein victims in the face. When the most powerful men in the country wear their misogyny as a badge of honor, they signal to every fraternity, every workplace, and every locker room that bodies are property to be taken.Â
Which is why we refuse to let Cornell University and Ithaca College wait for the news cycle to move on. We require immediate and structural change. Here are my demands:Â
1. Immediate termination of Cornell administrators Michael Kotlikoff, Ryan Lombardi, Brian White, Robert Harrington, Kavita Bala, and Christina Liang.  Â
2. Expulsion and revocation of the degrees of all Chi Phi brothers involved in the gang rape of Jane Doe.  Â
3. Abolition of all Interfraternity Council (IFC) Greek Life at Cornell.  Â
4. Dissolution of the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS) and the creation of a new democratic Cornell judiciary system.
5. Increased resource allocation to Title IX and CAPS at Ithaca College.Â
6. An official statement from Ithaca College detailing the steps they will take to protect our student body, providing a list of resources available to survivors, and condemning Cornell’s systemic protection of rapists.  Â
They want us to be quiet. They want this to fade into the background of our college experience. But we are looking at the administration, we are looking at the fraternities, we are looking at the bystanders, and we are saying: No more. We will not be the collateral damage of your institutional complicity. We demand justice, accountability, and a campus where our safety is not negotiable.