Jamie Says · Opinion
Featured photo: Cornell University campus, photographed in 2013 by P. Hughes / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized.
We keep asking women why they don’t speak up.
Why didn’t she report it? Why did she wait? Why didn’t she tell somebody sooner?
Then a woman does speak up, and we watch what happens next. Somehow, we still act confused about why the next woman might be afraid.
I keep thinking about the former Cornell student identified as Jane Doe. According to Associated Press reporting, she filed a lawsuit in September alleging that seven fraternity members sexually assaulted her at the Chi Phi house in October 2024. Her allegations are being contested. A civil complaint is not a criminal conviction.
But a woman asking the institutions around her to take an allegation of sexual violence seriously should not have to become a national news story before the rest of us pay attention.
Yes, the actual consequences matter
The part about essays is what has made so many people furious. And I understand why. When the allegation is sexual violence, the idea of a reflective writing assignment being part of the response feels grotesquely small.
But we need to be accurate about what Cornell says happened.
In its September 28 statement, Cornell says its disciplinary process resulted in sanctions that included suspensions and expulsions. It also says nobody was offered an essay as the sole consequence of their involvement.
So I am not going to tell you there were no consequences. That would be wrong.
I am going to tell you that listing consequences does not end the conversation about whether the response was adequate. Those are two different questions, and I want the second one answered too.
An institution can describe the steps it followed. We can still ask what those steps accomplished for the woman who came forward.
She is the person I want us to keep looking at
There is a young woman at the center of this. Not a headline. Not an opportunity for a university to explain its procedures. A person.
I do not know her, and I am not going to pretend I know how she feels. I also do not need to borrow her pain to make this about me.
What I want is for the attention to stay on what she reported, how her report was handled, and whether the people responsible for responding did enough.
We can demand a fair investigation without treating the person who reported it like an inconvenience. We can distinguish allegations from findings without using that distinction as an excuse to stop listening.
And we can be furious about the questions this case raises without repeating something inaccurate just because it makes the story sound worse.
The story is serious enough to deserve the truth.
Trying to expose her is not accountability
And now there is another part of this that makes me furious: the effort to identify the woman bringing the lawsuit.
Katie Couric Media reports that commentator Michael Tracey publicly asked his followers to help identify Jane Doe and said he would publish her name and identifying information. Supporters have responded with #IAmJaneDoe posts to help protect her anonymity.
What the actual fuck are we doing?
A woman reports sexual violence, and somebody decides the public needs access to her identity so strangers can investigate her life?
Investigate the allegations. Examine the evidence. Ask hard questions. None of that requires handing her name to an internet audience.
Her privacy is not an obstacle to your understanding of this case. You do not need her face, her accounts, or a way to contact her to decide that these allegations deserve a serious investigation.
I see this effort as intimidation, whatever its defenders want to call it. It tells other women that coming forward could mean losing control of who has access to them.
Then we turn around and ask why women are afraid to report.
I want Cornell held responsible, too
This cannot end with everybody looking at the accused men while Cornell gets to point at a disciplinary process and move on.
I want Cornell’s own handling of this examined independently. What did the university know? How did it respond to her report? What support and protection did it offer her? How were the sanctions decided, and were they adequate?
Those are questions for investigation, not findings I am pretending have already been made. But they are not optional just because the university says it took action.
If that scrutiny establishes failures by Cornell, I want consequences for Cornell. A statement about how seriously an institution takes sexual violence is not a substitute for accountability when its response falls short.
Her name is not the missing piece here. Answers from the institution are.
“The political climate” is not an excuse
I keep hearing people talk about how the political climate has changed.
But the instinct to turn scrutiny back on the woman who reports something is not some shocking new invention. It is painfully familiar.
And what, exactly, is a different political climate supposed to excuse? Trying to expose her? Treating her privacy as suspicious? Lowering what we expect from a university?
We can talk about policy and political power. We should. But I do not want “that’s the climate now” to become a way of shrugging at cruelty.
A woman does not become less deserving of privacy because the politics around her change. Cornell does not become less deserving of scrutiny.
I do not accept that this is just how things are now.
Speaking up should not require this much endurance
On October 1, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that Governor Kathy Hochul had appointed her office as special prosecutor to investigate the alleged October 2024 assault. That is a new development in the investigation. It is not a verdict.
I want that process to be thorough. I want the questions about the earlier response examined too.
Because telling women to report is easy. Making sure a report is handled with care, urgency, and real accountability is the part that requires something from everybody else.
When we say “you should have told someone,” we are asking a woman to trust that telling someone will help. That trust has to be earned.
It cannot rest on a reassuring statement released after people are already furious.
I am tired of the question always landing back on her. What she should have said. When she should have said it. How she should have said it.
There are other people in this story with questions to answer.
Before we ask another woman why she was afraid to speak up, I want us to look honestly at what we are asking her to walk into.
