The story of the Cornell 7 has taken over like a terrible wildfire. Seven Cornell frat boys allegedly gang-raped a 20 year-old girl in 2024 in a case that was dismissed. But, wait…

…The boys were asked to “write essays”. The female student’s original claims were that sex and drug use at the Chi Phi fraternity house just off of Cornell’s campus was consensual, but now, the story, perceived to be pushed under the table for two years, has risen back to the surface. And now, Jane Doe is telling a different story.

The young woman’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, is considering asking for a special prosecutor in the case that has since been reopened by District Attorney, Matthew Van Houten, who was seemingly unaware of the plaintiff’s claims. Giuffra feels as though the case was bungled. Van Houten feels differently:

There’s no good faith basis for him to say that. He’s filed a lawsuit seeking money, and everything he is doing is seeking attention and social media attention in order to capitalize on that.”-DA, Matthew Van Houten

Thomas Giuffra also had this to say about the Cornell Police and their “investigation”:

Cornell Police do not handle serious crimes and are better equipped to break parties and do crowd control at football games, not conduct a major criminal investigation. The fact that they did not follow up on the group chat and interview witnesses indicates that the department was in over its head. The chat he was referring to was a SnapChat between active members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell, discussing Jane Doe as being upstairs and ready to go for sex, to put things bluntly.

From Cornell University:

We take sexual violence extremely seriously. The Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault was launched shortly after this incident and issued a REPORT in March 2026. Several of the recommendations have already been implemented, while others are in development with oversight by a university implementation committee.”-Kyle Kimball, Vice President for University Relations 

They take this stuff extremely seriously. Except that this kind of stuff happens every weekend on any given university campus-this is one time that it is actually hitting the news. More on that in a moment.

This case is not just a case of them versus her. This case, and the behavior that surrounds it, are a cry for help, Our young people are in trouble, morally, and it freaking shows.

Some young people go to college with a specific career goal in mind. Some young people come to a university to explore their identities, to embark upon new horizons and, yes, to belong. Some of these years of discovery involve pre-marital sex and hook-ups, partying all night, getting drunk and, yes, overall bad decisions. For young men, there is a great deal of posturing, peacocking and conquest. For young women, there are copious amounts of competition and being pretty enough to be chosen to “run home” to the house where all of their newfound “sisters” are waiting for them with open arms (see ‘Bama Rush). This is wildly apparent in the “Greek” scene on campus. Fraternities and sororities sell the price tag of lifelong friends, leadership opportunities and exclusive networks and experiences on their websites and social media of carefully-curated videos and photos. The guys want the hot girls at the parties and the girls want to go to the parties at the “husband house”. And, in some cases, you’re a nobody on campus unless you’re one of them. Fraternities use slogans like, “building better men”, “friendship, justice and learning”, “transforming lives”, “courage to be more”, to name a few of their catchy and contrived mottos. Sororities talk of philanthropy, “bravery”, “togetherness”, “family”, “values” and “inspiring positive change”.

The privileged little Cornell douchebags who sent a group chat amongst their “better men on campus” (57 of them total) brotherhood belonged to Chi Phi fraternity. From Chi Phi’s mission statement:

As the oldest men’s Fraternity, Chi Phi is rich in heritage and tradition. Generation after generation, our Brothers build on the legacy of our Founders to Build Better Men. Our members commit themselves to upholding Chi Phi’s values and practicing global citizenship. Chi Phi men are leaders, scholars, innovators, and gentlemen.

Above all, Chi Phi is a home-away-from-home, providing the bond, the companionship, and the lessons on how to participate productively in society.”-Chi Phi fraternity

Gentlemen. Yeah. That’s another word the frats like to throw out there. Nothing says “bonding” and “gentlemen” like putting “free p*ssy” in a group chat. On the flip side of this coin, the young woman who was allegedly raped spent some time drinking at a sorority house on campus before going to the Chi Phi house to meet a guy she was chatting with for an alleged hook-up. How she ended up upstairs with no girlfriends who value “togetherness” is also a big, glaring question. So much for the “values” of the sisterhood. Was this “inspiring a positive change” in this young woman’s life?

As my son’s undergrad time comes to a close in May, I’m (not so) secretly happy. I’ve heard the heartbreaking stories about women who lower their standards, self-worth and self-respect regularly and the men who are flat out, (as he states) “feral”. He has healthy habits, friendships and views college as a means to an end (grad school) and for this, I am grateful. As a very physically fit, good-looking young guy with smarts, he has been recruited by some of his friends to join houses, but he chose to focus on academics and it’s been, sometimes, a hard and a bit lonely of a road. And, while there are good guys and girls out there in those houses on the row, from what I gathered from his accounts, as best as I can tell, the term “gentlemen” is often a guise and the supposed “sisterhood” is every woman for herself. There are a vast amount of kids looking for “family”, who are morally backwards and flawed, and a host of adults who either encourage or flat-out ignore these red flags. This is the stuff you never see on the highlight reels of those parents’ weekends, (that we have come to flat-out avoid) where mom and dad live vicariously through their offspring by getting sloppy drunk with their sons at the frat house on Saturday and joining their daughters for Sorority Sunday Brunch.

AOC will politicize this and call this issue of a “rape culture in the patriarchy”. A former South Park writer is vowing to go scorched earth and destroy.

Special prosecution or not, this case, and all of the young people involved, is a tragic depiction of a toxic campus community. I honestly do not believe that fraternities and sororities started out this way, or even the old school brothers and sisters believe it currently is this way, but the recent events should beg serious inquiry to those parents of young people both in and out of the Greek community. Really, they all need to take a good, hard look. Universities’ blanket statements that “they take sexual violence seriously” and their willful ignorance of what happens on off-campus houses that still bring money into the University is not enough. Organizations that claim to raise “gentlemen and leaders” and “brave women” do not lend themselves to this type of behavior. A “gentleman” in a formal suit one evening who later participates in a chat (or who is an “innocent” bystander in said chat) advertising “free p*ssy upstairs” is not a “productive member of society”. I don’t care whose trust fund he is living off of. A girl that offers to sniff ketamine off a guy’s junk and have a threesome is a woman with severe insecurities who needs REAL friends who will stop her from the self-destructive behavior that she may later regret and encourage her to have dignity and respect herself. This is not a Cornell problem. Or a college problem. Or a left versus right problem. Or even a legal problem. This is a bigger MORAL problem.

This is a right from wrong problem.

These guys and gals will ultimately enter the real world after four years of hazy weekend experiences of dance parties in Tudor-styled trash hovels of jello shots, upstairs cocaine rooms and EDM music. They will Spring Break in Cancun, summer in Europe, spend a semester abroad interning and “create lasting memories”. They will pay thousands of dollars a semester just for this experience alone. All for High School 2.0. Meanwhile, the dysfunction continues into their adulthood, their relationships, their marriages and, God forbid, the next generation.

In the meantime, if you have college-aged kids, please join me in prayer for all of them. If peaking in college looks like this, we’re all in trouble.

Photo Credit: 颐园居, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/Cropped