Content warning: This editorial discusses sexual assault.
On Sept. 21, The Cornell Daily Sun exposed a two-year-old sexual assault case to the public. A civil complaint alleged that seven members of Chi Phi, a campus fraternity, drugged and gang-raped a 20-year-old female student in October 2024.
The allegations are horrifying. But what is equally troubling is what happened after the allegations were reported — and what remained hidden from the public for nearly two years.
We make our position clear: The Daily Cardinal commends Jane Doe for the courage it took to come forward, first to her university and now to the world. We condemn the alleged actions of Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar. None of the seven men have been criminally charged, and at least one, through his attorney, has denied the allegations.
We also commend our peers at The Cornell Daily Sun. Their editorial board saw the university would not explain itself and wrote “Cornell Won’t, We Will.” Though incredibly important to a university ecosystem, student journalists should not have to be the last line of accountability on their campuses. Too often, they are.
Cornell did not ignore Doe's report. It temporarily suspended the chapter and several students in November 2024, opened a Title IX investigation in January 2025 and, according to the lawsuit, held at least 12 hearings that May. But what followed is still a fight over basic facts.
Doe's attorney said only two of the seven men were expelled and the rest received lesser sanctions, including an essay assignment. Cornell, now, said essays were never a “sole consequence” and confirmed it issued expulsions and suspensions, but it still won't say how many, citing federal privacy law. The Tompkins County district attorney said his office never received the Snapchat screenshot included in Doe’s report; Cornell's FAQ says it shared all investigatory information. The New York Times’s coverage alleged that a summarized report of Doe’s interview with the campus police department “omitted some of the more forceful and definitive language she used.” DA Van Houten also claimed details of the case have been “sensationalised.” Two years later, the public still cannot tell who is right.
Privacy law exists to protect students, including survivors. It should not become a wall a university hides behind until a lawsuit forces it to speak up. Nothing stops a school from publishing anonymized numbers: how many reports it received, how many it investigated, how many ended in findings and what range of sanctions followed. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called this case part of a "culture of rape" at elite institutions. A culture like that survives on exactly this kind of silence.
This case was never entirely secret. The Sun reported the Chi Phi suspensions in November 2024. What stayed hidden was the outcome about who was found responsible, what they faced and why no one was charged.
While Cornell did investigate the allegations, its response fell far short of meaningful accountability. Five of the seven alleged assailants were allowed to graduate with degrees despite being found responsible for lewd behavior. All of them have the privilege of actively pursuing their careers with degrees signed by one of the nation’s most elite universities, as Doe was all but driven out and forced to reckon with the aftermath of her attack.
Even after a university board deemed their actions punishable, the majority of them were still permitted to remain on campus. Fifty seven other students in the group chat were also aware of the situation and made no attempt to stop their brothers. While they may not have directly participated in Doe’s attack, their inaction makes them complicit in the atrocities that occurred that night at Chi Phi. This is not an isolated incident, it is a broader failure of accountability that extended well beyond the seven students directly involved.
Then the lawsuit made national news, and the pace changed overnight. In roughly two weeks, Ocasio-Cortez raised the case at an Ithaca town hall. The district attorney reopened the criminal investigation. Gov. Kathy Hochul requested an independent review of Cornell's response. Ithaca's mayor paused student event permits. Cornell, which a week earlier said privacy law kept it from discussing discipline, suddenly had a detailed account to share.
As the Sun's editor-in-chief put it, that account was owed to the community in 2024. Accountability that arrives on the news cycle's schedule is not accountability. It is damage control.
That should worry every student, because most cases never get here. Most survivors do not file a lawsuit. Most do not have a screenshot that shocks the country. If it takes all of that for an institution to answer, how many answers are we never getting?
Cornell is not unique. The same patterns — fraternity houses, drugs, reports that disappear into confidential processes — repeat on campuses across the country, including our own.
It’s tempting to read about Ithaca and feel far away, but we aren’t. The University of Wisconsin-Police Department (UWPD) received three reports of sexual assault on campus in the first two weeks of the semester, including an attack at the Goodspeed Family Pier that led to two arrests. On Sept. 27 the university reported two more incidents in which students reported possibly being drugged at off-campus fraternity houses. One case is closed because the victim chose not to pursue an investigation. The other, there is no active UWPD investigation.
These incidents are in the heat of the “red zone” — the stretch from move-in to Thanksgiving, when about half of campus sexual assaults occur. New students are especially at risk.
And yet most of us skim past the crime warnings. They arrive so often that they read like weather alerts. A WiscAlert tells us something happened. It rarely tells us what happened next. That is exactly the gap Cornell fell into, and one UW-Madison should work to avoid.
When a sexual assault is reported, students should be able to understand what happens next. How does the university respond? What resources are available? When does UWPD investigate? When does a case move through the university’s disciplinary process? What can the university publicly report about the outcomes of those processes without compromising survivor privacy?
Those questions matter even when there is no headline-grabbing lawsuit forcing the answers.
Universities cannot prevent every act of sexual violence. They can however be transparent about how they respond when it happens. Clearer communication would not undo the harm experienced by survivors, but it could help students understand where accountability exists, and where it does not. Students deserve to know that their time, effort and care they put into their university will be reciprocated when they need it most.
UW-Madison has an opportunity to do more now: communicate clearly, protect survivors’ privacy and make its processes understandable to the students those processes are designed to serve.
Universities cannot afford to respond only after a crisis makes headlines. They must be proactive about prevention, transparency and communicating what happens when a student reports sexual assault.
Students deserve to know that when they report sexual assault, their university will not simply issue a warning and move on. They deserve to know what accountability looks like after the alert fades from their phones.
Cornell’s failure should not become another campus’s warning that arrives too late.
We condemn the alleged actions of the seven men named in Jane Doe's lawsuit, and we condemn a university that let her wait nearly two years for a public answer. Above all, we commend her bravery. Cornell wouldn't speak until it had to. UW-Madison doesn't have to wait.
