Has the “Cornell Seven” Case Proved Our Grandmothers Correct?

Unless you’ve been studiously avoiding TV, radio, and social media, you’ve likely heard details of the so-called “Cornell Seven” case, in which a young woman, “Jane Doe,” has filed a civil suit against several now-former Cornell students whom she claimed raped her at a fraternity house in October 2024.

The details in the case are murky. But the general narrative – with some of the more explicit particulars omitted – goes something like this: Late on October 19, Doe arrived at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house to meet a male friend. According to the district attorney’s account of her sworn police statement, she rated herself “5 out of 10” drunk when she arrived. After more heavy drinking and consumption of ketamine, Doe agreed to a “threesome” with two males who were present.

One of the young men eventually fell asleep. A third then entered, and another sexual encounter followed. At approximately 1:42 a.m., according to the lawsuit, one of the fraternity brothers sent a Snapchat message advertising Doe’s availability for sex. More men entered, and the sexual acts continued.

Subsequent text messages show that Doe initially seemed fine with the “group sex” incident, texting someone known in the statement as Male Number One that none “of the sexual stuff was illegal” and, in another exchange, “everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex… is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common… I’m also really open minded tho. I luv u king.”

In fact, Doe was angling to return to the fraternity house – the scene of her alleged rape – for a Halloween party later that month. The fraternity president, however, disinvited her “for her own good.”

It was only several days after the incident, as Doe faced backlash from her peers over the encounter, that she reported a rape to campus police. But the county district attorney declined to prosecute, citing Doe’s statement that the sex was consensual. Then, earlier this year, she filed the civil case.

Now, American culture has divided along familiar lines. The “#MeToo” and “Believe all Women” crowd are reflexively coalescing behind Jane Doe, even going so far as to suggest that explicit consent is no longer enough to make a sex act “ethical.” Apologists for Doe also claim that her repeated statements insisting that the sex acts were consensual are not reliable because she was “traumatized.”

Meanwhile, others are coming to the defense of the young men in the case, pointing out that Jane Doe seemingly consumed the drugs and alcohol willingly and consented to the sex. Others have pointed out that some of the young men were far more impaired than Doe, and thus were unable to themselves give consent. As Heather Mac Donald put it for The New York Post, the claims of Doe’s defenders are “unfalsifiable,” a case of, “Heads the campus rape complex wins, tails the truth loses.”

Ultimately, who – if anyone – was at fault should be decided in a court of law. The defendants are entitled to a fair trial by a jury of their peers, and Jane Doe is entitled to justice if a court rules in her favor.

While plenty of ink has already been spilled over which side makes the more compelling case, perhaps the more important takeaway here is how this sordid affair should serve as a warning to young men and young women about the dangers of casual sex and promiscuity.

If we are to take Jane Doe at her word, she was a “5 out of 10 drunk” when she made the decision to go – alone – to a fraternity house on a college campus. She also allegedly took more drugs and alcohol and agreed to sex with at least two of the young men. Had she exercised even an ounce of modesty she could have avoided the entire situation.

Doe’s defenders will shout that this is “victim-blaming,” but the young men in the case are hardly innocent from a moral perspective. The chivalrous thing to do would have been to escort Doe home and perhaps ask her out for coffee the next morning if one of the young men was really that interested in her. If even one of them had done the right thing instead of allowing his most base animalistic impulses to take over, the incident could also have been avoided.

Most college-aged boys will laugh at the suggestion that they should ever turn down sex, while most college-aged girls will be scandalized at the idea that they have a responsibility to not turn themselves into sexual objects. But that only further proves how completely casual sex and hookup culture have corrupted our society. Young people scoff at the notion that they should exercise sexual restraint as if there are no consequences for not doing so.

But there are consequences, and not just legal ones. Jane Doe found out that drug-fueled orgies result in confusion, shame, and social ostracization. The Cornell Seven found out that “consent” is a fluid term, and that young men are never really safe from rape accusations in a culture and media environment that are stacked against them. Despite never being convicted, these young men have been branded rapists and had their faces plastered all over the media.

Perhaps it’s time to reconsider whether our grandmothers were correct. Perhaps those traditional values they lectured us about were wiser than we thought. Perhaps the sexual mores we once derided as stuffy and prudish were really guardrails to protect men and women from the physical and emotional chaos of a sexual landscape unbounded by basic morality and decency.

Moreover, if there is one silver lining that emerges from this media circus, perhaps it will be that the young men and young women watching this unfold look at both Jane Doe and the Cornell Seven and say, “I don’t want that to happen to me.” Perhaps it will help them realize that restraint is a way of protecting ourselves and protecting one another. Perhaps it will remind them to consider that the freedom to say yes should not make them forget the wisdom of saying no.