I graduated from Cornell University in 1997. I also started drinking and using there, in fraternity houses, the way a lot of us did. I remember going out with a frat guy one night who served me a plate of cocaine. Having no idea what to do, I took the straw he handed me and inhaled most of the pile. It took me years of recovery to understand how my addiction took root in that moment. He provided the drug to increase the likelihood that I would hook up with him. I never did, but I started hanging out with him just to get it. That memory still sits in me like a stone. It was not a wild night I can laugh about. It was a lesson in how a young woman can become a target without understanding what is happening to her until much later. So when I read the lawsuit a former Cornell student filed this month against the university, the Chi Phi fraternity and seven of its current and former members, I wasn’t surprised. I was sick. Then I was furious. The woman, who was 20 at the time, alleges that in October 2024 members of the chapter pressured her to snort what they called ketamine, gave her more alcohol and marijuana, and then sexually assaulted her over several hours. According to the complaint, one member announced her to the house on Snapchat like she was the evening’s entertainment. She reported the alleged assault about three weeks later and the district attorney initially declined to bring charges. Cornell investigated and disciplined those involved, reportedly through suspensions, workshops and essays. The chapter is now barred from campus. She left school. The Tompkins County district attorney is reopening the case, while noting that the lawsuit’s account differs from what she told police in 2024. I don’t know what happened in that house. But I know the house. Not that one, but every one like it. I know the smell of stale beer and the sound of a door clicking shut. I know how alone a woman can feel in a crowded room full of men who think they deserve whatever they want.
Nearly every detail in that complaint runs through substances that the men provide the women. That’s the usual way it goes. It’s claimed they pressured her to use ketamine, a drug that can leave a person awake but unable to move or resist. I keep thinking about her, someone’s 20-year-old daughter. She got into her dream school. Instead of finishing it, she left, and has had to relive the alleged events of that night for police, for hearing panels, and now for a lawsuit and a reopened criminal case, while strangers online pick her apart. Whatever else turns out to be true, she deserved to be safe that night. She deserved to be believed and protected afterward. If she ever reads this: none of it was your fault. You were not naive for trusting people who were supposed to be your peers. You were not asking for it because you went to a party or took a drink. You were not responsible for the choices of men who saw your body as something to be used. I have seen too many women carry that shame into adulthood. They replay the night in their heads, looking for the moment they should have known better. But the moment belongs to the men who handed her the drugs, poured her the drinks, and then took what they wanted. A drug that can leave a person awake but unable to move is not a party favor. It is a weapon. The alcohol, the Snapchat announcement, the brothers closing ranks around the lawsuit—they are part of the same machinery. Every detail was chosen by someone. Every detail had a purpose. The purpose was not her safety.
The pattern is familiar. Congress ordered the Epstein files released almost a year ago. Millions of pages are out, deadlines were missed, and lawmakers are still fighting to pry loose the rest. Survivors keep asking the same question: why have so few of the powerful men around him ever had to answer for anything? The scale is different, but the story is the same. From a billionaire’s island to a frat house in Ithaca, the system keeps finding a way to let the men move on. The women don’t move on. I know, because they end up in my office. I have sat for years with women still carrying one night from when they were 19 or 20. It shows up as panic in a new relationship, flinching at a partner’s touch and drinking that began as a way to forget. The men write their essay and graduate. The women spend decades, and their own money, in therapy trying to heal their wounds. That is the double standard I can’t stomach. We treat a young man’s future as something precious that must be protected. We treat a young woman’s future as collateral. And this is bigger than beer and bad supervision. It’s a system, built by men and still largely run by them, that has always worried more about ruining a young man’s life than about the life he may have ruined. We are teaching our sons that almost anything can be survived with a good lawyer and an apology. We are teaching our daughters that their bodies and reputations will be picked apart in public, that their trauma is less important than a young man’s diploma. The asymmetry is grotesque. A woman who reports is scrutinized: what was she wearing, how much did she drink, why did she wait, why did she go upstairs. The man who is accused gets a defense fund and a character witness. We have made a world where the victim must prove she was not at fault, and the accused just needs to wait for the next news cycle.
We talk about campus sexual assault as a problem of consent, and it is. We talk about it as a problem of fraternity culture, and it is. We don’t talk nearly enough about the fact that alcohol and drugs are the medium it happens in. One thing needs saying plainly, because it always gets twisted: alcohol and drugs don’t cause rape and they excuse nothing. Plenty of men drink and never hurt anyone. The violence is a choice. But when substances run unchecked through a house full of young men, they knock down every barrier that might have stopped it, and they give everyone a ready-made story for the morning after. The blame gets scattered across a bottle or a line, as if the drugs themselves acted. She was drunk. She was high. She didn’t say no clearly. She passed out. The language of these cases is full of passive constructions that hide the active choices of the people who supplied the substances and orchestrated the situation. Put limits on the substances and an adult in the building, and I believe fewer nights like this one happen. It won’t solve every case. Bad men exist in every setting. But we are not even trying to change the conditions. We leave an entire system of unsupervised housing, unchecked alcohol and open drug use, and then we act shocked when a young woman ends up on a stretcher or in a courtroom. The same institutions that spend millions on optics and alumni relations cannot put a trained adult in a fraternity house? That is a choice. And we need to start calling it what it is: a decision to protect the institution and its men over the safety of the women they bring inside.
I’m a clinician now, and much of my work is with people in recovery. Over and over I hear the same story: it started in college. Eighteen-year-olds arrive on campus with no tolerance, no judgment, and nobody watching. The fraternity houses organize the drinking. Upperclassmen supply it. Younger students consume it. That should change. Every residential fraternity should have a live-in house director: a trained, older professional, paid by the chapter or its national organization and answerable to the university. Not a chaperone who shows up for parties, but someone who lives there, knows the members and can intervene when situations become dangerous. I know the arguments before they come: it costs too much, it infringes on independence, the fraternity is a private organization. But these houses have been allowed to operate as their own little jurisdictions for generations. They serve alcohol to minors, they manage risk with secret handshakes and insurance policies, and when something goes wrong, they circle the wagons. A real adult in the building changes the math. It doesn’t guarantee that no one ever harms anyone, but it makes it harder to move a drugged woman from room to room while the rest of the house watches. It makes it harder to hand a 20-year-old a plate of cocaine as a form of seduction. It makes it harder for a young man to tell himself there are no consequences. We don’t need to ban every party or pretend young people won’t experiment. We need to stop letting institutions off the hook. We need to demand that a house full of young men is not a lawless island, but a place where a woman can be safe and still be free.
I love Cornell. I got an education there that I still use every day. I also got a disease that took me years to arrest. What I won’t accept is a university, or a justice system, that keeps asking women to carry the cost of what happens in these houses. Put an adult in the building. Make the consequences real. And stop assigning essays to the men while the women write their stories one session at a time, in rooms like mine. This is not about banning fraternities or pretending young people won’t drink. It’s about refusing to look away. It’s about telling every young woman who walks into a party that her safety is not a bargaining chip. It’s about telling every young man that his future is not more valuable than her body. We can do better. We have to do better. The next woman’s story should not be written in a therapist’s office decades later. It should be a memory of a night that ended with her walking home safely, untouched, and unafraid. That is the least we owe her. That should be the standard for any institution that calls itself a home away from home. I know it can be done, because I know what happens when it isn’t. I have spent years listening to the aftermath. I am tired of it. And I hope the rest of us are tired enough to change it. This is not a moment for another statement from a university president. It is a moment for a different way of doing things. We owe that to every young woman who is still trusting that the adults in charge will keep her safe. We owe it to the version of myself who stood in that fraternity house in 1997, not knowing that the night would stay with her forever. And we owe it to the next twenty-year-old, who should never have to learn what I learned.
