Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
There’s been quite a controversy. It’s sweeping the country, maybe the world, about Cornell University, and I think it’s called the Cornell 7. I don’t know if that implies sympathy or furor at them to make them the center.
But there was a young woman, in 2024, 20 years old, still unidentified, who went to a bar with some people underage. She was 20, the drinking age was 21, and she became intoxicated.
At that point, the boy that was accompanying her, or maybe others, invited her to a frat party. Well, that should have given a signal. Anybody in their right mind knows that young people at a frat party, with a lot of frisky boys that feel entitled, you have to be very careful.
She goes in there and is invited up to a room. At that point, she might have, if she had been sober, made a decision: “Am I going to be alone with this boy?” And then that’s a question of two consenting adults whether to have sexual congress.
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But as soon as she got up there, he invited another person to partake in the sexuality, and apparently he did. And at that point, everything started to spiral downhill.
There were five others that came and went, and I can’t repeat exactly what ensued because I think this is a family-orientated video. But five more people either directly came into the room and had relations with her, or they videoed her, or they sat and watched. It’s hard to know exactly what each of the seven did.
But when it was all over, she left. She was completely drunk, sick. She went back, and then she felt something had happened. She talked to friends. She had text exchanges with the boy who invited her.
And let’s just say that for the next six or seven or eight months, she didn’t quite think that she had been raped. She felt pressures that people were not going to like her, they wouldn’t invite her to another party, that they were calling her a … I don’t know what the bad words were, but we’ll just say sluttish, and her reputation was being damaged, and she really hadn’t quite processed what was going on.
After she left Cornell, almost a year later, she filed a complaint with authorities saying that she had been physically raped and named the boys who did it.
Outrage followed when they read exactly the details of what had happened on the part of the men, and then they wanted to know, in a legalistic sense, why Cornell or why the local DA hadn’t gone before a grand jury and had them all indicted.
And of course, they had to follow New York law. In a legalistic, and I say “istic” because I’m not sure it’s really the right word, legal … In a legalistic sense, if you are a person, an adult, usually over the age of consent or 18, and you see another adult and you’re able to answer, “Do you want to go up to my room? Yes, no,” and people say you’re functioning, and when you go up there, and you have sexual relations, and later within a certain time period you do not characterize it as rape, the DA usually says, “I don’t think I can win that case,” and doesn’t prosecute.
But as the months wore on and the details came out about these boys, some of them actually texted, I can’t repeat it to the world, but basically, there is free blank here, come on over.
She filed. There is all of this anger now, and it’s not male, female. Brilliant women like Camille Paglia said we have to stop babying girls. These are women. They’re not little girls. If they’re of age, and they choose to drink, even if they’re breaking the law when they do, and they go into a den of frisky boys who are ill-mannered, and they go up to one room, at some point, they have a lot of avenues before they’re incoherent to stop it. And afterwards, if they do not immediately say they were raped or assaulted, then what do you expect?
Other people say, well, it doesn’t really matter when she realized that she was raped. Maybe she was traumatized, etc.
So that’s where it is. But I have a different take on it, and I’ll finish with that.
It’s not so much for me a legal avenue, a legal question. It’s a moral or ethical one.
What were these boys thinking? What were you thinking, that you see an attractive girl, she’s drunk, she goes up with one of her liaisons, her partner, they go into a room, and then they apparently have sex, maybe with another person?
At that point, didn’t you think this is bizarre? This girl is consenting to … Would she have done that if she wasn’t drunk or drinking?
And then what were the other five boys … Why would you video that? Why would you join in that? Why would you mock her? Why would you put on the text … I’m not saying that any of this was illegal, but my God, where was the decency?
Wasn’t there one person, just one, in that whole fraternity that said, “This is outrageous. This is sick, and I’m going to stop it.”
And even if she’d objected, wouldn’t you see one person would go up to her and say, “Please, I think you’re drinking. And when you go up to that room, things will happen that you don’t want to happen.”
And even if she said, “I’m an adult, I can go, then you could monitor the situation.” Go up there yourself and tell everybody, “This woman is not capable of making informed decisions as she would be if she was with other women and sober. She’s now in a room by herself with other men, and she’s intoxicated, and we have people texting that it’s a chance to have free or easy sex with her. This is sick. It’s going to destroy this fraternity. I’m going to stop it.”
So we were looking for just one honest, wise, brave person in that fraternity. He may have existed, but we haven’t heard of him yet.
So yes, she should have filed rape charges immediately. Yes, she should have never got drunk in the first place underage. That’s against the law.
She should have never been so naive to go over with her … I don’t even know what you would call this guy. He seems to be either inept or weak or pernicious. I don’t know what.
But he accompanies her into this den of horrors. I mean, H-O-R-R-O-R-S, horrific things.
And then, yes, as soon as she saw that other people … As soon as somebody said, “Would you like a threesome?” she should have said no, because that could invite even more catastrophes, but she didn’t.
But on the other hand, she’s one, and she’s a woman, and she’s intoxicated, and the other people are strong men, and there’s a lot of them, and it would just take one to stop this evil thing from happening, and none did.
In the old days, I think, women had family support, so maybe a brother or a cousin or a father would have heard of it and said, “I’m going to go talk to these people.”
Or he would sit down with his daughter and say, “You are on a very liberal, freewheeling campus, and be careful about these people. They may smile at you, but human nature being what it is, don’t set foot.” That would be wise advice.
But we don’t live in the old days where men protected women. That’s considered chauvinistic and patronizing. But it does require men to be better than that.
So my final conclusion about the entire foul escapade is we in America wanted the boys to be better than they were.
I’m not saying that that meant that they’re guilty of, in the legal sense, rape. I don’t have the evidence or the knowledge to do that. But I do know enough about the case that they should be ashamed of themselves because not one stopped it.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.
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