What Happened At Cornell?

Allow me to state, categorically, that I do not know what happened to Jane Doe in October 2024 at Cornell.

I certainly am no closer to knowing by reading the now dozens of New York Times articles about the case. The NYT has, however, allowed me to read about the reaction of people who have taken up the cause they see represented by this case--victimization, ravaging a woman, rape, cruelty to women, misogyny most foul.

The New York Times does run a podcast, and from that I got some information, which is incomplete, but may have taken me some steps closer to understanding, although none of this reporting, which includes the reporters reading the 120 page transcript of Jane Doe's statement to police, is actually testimony under oath cross examined in court.

1. Jane Doe had a very bad day even before her visit to the fraternity: She had been robbed and lost her ID that morning.

2. She visited a bar and drank alcohol, although she was underaged, before going to the fraternity, 

3. She visited the fraternity to have sex with a boyfriend who then proposed a threesome involving another frat brother. 

4. This frat brother asked her if she was okay with having a sexual experience with two men and he told her it was okay if she did not want to do this, but she said she was fine with it. She said, "We are all consenting adults here."

5. She performed fellatio on one frat boy who was drunk, who later filed a complaint, after she filed her complaint, saying that if she was rendered unable to give consent because of drunkenness, then he was likewise unable to give his consent to her, and she should be charged with sexual assault.

6. At some point, other frat boys visited the room where all this sex was happening and the woman may have been given more alcohol and she may have taken ketamine.

7. At some point someone texted or placed on Snapchat a message that a girl was having sex with everyone and come on by.

8. She left the fraternity the next morning and got a text from the original boyfriend apologizing for "how things went down," but she responded it was all good, and she still liked him and wanted to see him again.

9. At some point news of this bacchanalia got out and Jane Doe was accused by other Cornell women of being a "slut."

10. The president of the fraternity called her to say she could not come to the fraternity's Halloween party, given all the negative publicity. She told police or someone she had very much wanted to go to this party, back at the fraternity. This was after the event she later described as a gang rape. She expressed indignation at this rejection.

11. Now, two years later, she has had time to "process" what happened to her. Her friends in her sorority told her what had happened was very bad, and this seemed to pivotal in her filing her complaint, two years later.

All this sounds familiar: In 2014 an engineering student at Brown University found a drunk, naked co-ed in his bed after a fraternity party, had sex with her and they exchanged phone numbers the next morning, and he thought they had had a pleasant experience. When she got back to her dorm, her roommates heard what had happened, and told her she had been raped and she filed a complaint. But her initial reaction to her experience had been positive; it was only after consultation with other women, she decided she had been raped. The boy was expelled. 

The current vocabulary for this phenomenon of delayed revulsion, after initial delight is now called "Processing trauma."

Whether or not any or all of the frat boys were drunk seems to be immaterial in the view of those damning their actions; drunkenness apparently only renders women suspectable, not men.

In both cases, "delayed processing" occurred only after the women involved discovered their women friends considered their sexual experiences wrong, or even slutty. 

In the case of the Cornell Jane Doe, at least some of the frat boys suggest that it was only after Jane Doe's reputation was assailed she cried foul.

In 2026, "hook ups" for sex with partners who are not looking for "relationships" or romance are considered just fine on many campuses. Sex is now recreational and no shame attaches to one night stands, spontaneous encounters or sex for simple pleasure. Why Jane Doe got called a "slut" is unclear, given this ethos, although perhaps having sex with multiple boys on the same night crosses a line among 18 year olds in 2026. 

Who can say?

The fact that weeks after the incident, Jane Doe still wanted to go to a party at that same fraternity suggests she had not felt traumatized by that experience--she was looking forward to partying in the same place, presumably with some of the same boys.

But now, all of this is akin to "recovered memories" where what happened at the time was too traumatic to be "processed," but later comes back to haunt the victim.

Am I simply too old to understand this line of reasoning?

Or is there something wrong with this?