• “I’m an educational consultant who helps young people in moments of crisis like this one. I have known about this specific story for longer than most, because I advised one of the seven accused Chi Phi members last year (though nothing in this piece is based on specific information I learned that way, and I am no longer working on this case). I’m hoping to help add context to this story from my broader experience with these types of situations: I’ve been an educational and career counselor for 363 students involved in campus sexual misconduct proceedings, including dozens of survivors as well as many accused, and I’ve been an expert witness in 21 civil suits arising from those matters. Families hire me to help their (often adult) children continue their educations following crises like school discipline, mental illness, and substance abuse. I think my vantage point allows me to understand what went uniquely wrong at Cornell, and what is the result of messy systems that have long demanded more attention than they have been given.”
• “Many rapes go unreported, and getting convictions is no easy matter. Lots of observers hear sickening echoes of their own experiences, or their daughters’, reflected in this story. I understand the reaction: If someone feels like they are watching a house burn down with their kids inside, they want the person who lit the match to be found and punished, as quickly and dramatically as possible. They’re not in the right headspace to contemplate societal solutions to the problem of arson.”
• “Hateful chats are not proof of violent rape. We have plenty of time to condemn the defendants when and if we get confirmed facts about what each one did, but there is still a lot we don’t know. I want to be clear that if the facts lead the men to be found civilly or criminally responsible, they should be punished for what they did, as they were in Title IX proceedings already. Right now, we are not there yet.”
• “This story doesn’t happen without substance abuse. The case is an extreme outlier in terms of alleged severity; I’ve not encountered another case in my career involving ketamine, or with four or more alleged assailants over the course of multiple hours. (Though I must note: Despite the prominent use of the chilling phrase the “Cornell Seven,” the lawsuit accuses four of the defendants of having sex with [Lucy Craig: that’s her name, and that’s her deadlifting above, this showing that this is not a case like the one in “The Accused,” with guys overpowering an unwilling 110 pound young woman. Stott calls her “Jane Doe.” EA holds that it is unethical to have the accused men’s names publicized but not their accuser’s.], one of kissing her; and two of snorting drugs off her body.) But the case is par for the course in the sense that everyone on both sides of the allegations was abusing substances, which is a factor in nearly every case I’ve worked on.”

From other sources I see that the essay debunks the viral claim that Cornell administrators allowed “seven gang rapists” to merely write essays to atone for their actions. The author explains that when the Title IX complaint was filed in November 2024, Cornell temporarily suspended the seven defendants and offered them an initial opportunity to mitigate their immediate interim conduct restrictions by submitting essays. The university did not let the students off with just essays. Following the full adjudication process, the Chi Phi fraternity chapter was permanently shut down and barred from campus. Furthermore, Cornell expelled two of the students and issued a range of long-term sanctions, including formal suspensions, to the other five. The piece concludes, as many have, that allowing college administrators—rather than the criminal justice system adjudicate complex, highly sensitive allegations of sexual assault is wrong, irresponsible, foolish and courts injustice.

This dysfunctional system was, as everyone should now, embedded by the administration of the most over-rated U.S. President since 1963, Barrack Obama, whose education system threatened dire consequences for universities and colleges that didn’t rig its process to presume accused male students are guilty.

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