United States of America

US Prosecutors Reopen 2024 Cornell Gang Rape Case

Is the university failing victims or is a rush to judgment trampling due process?

Published SEP 30

US Prosecutors Reopen 2024 Cornell Gang Rape Case

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Above: Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on April 11, 2023. Image credit: Bing Guan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Spin

Left narrative

This isn't one Title IX case gone wrong — it's what the campus culture looks like when it's working exactly as designed. Nearly two full years of total silence, then a carefully worded statement only once the headlines and a lawsuit forced the university's hand. A survivor was never told how her own case ended, while most of the accused remained enrolled. Cornell failed her, and it failed everyone who trusted it to keep them safe.

The Nation Cornell Daily Sun

Right narrative

While these are serious allegations, plastering the names and faces of those accused across the internet before any charge exists is exactly how the Duke lacrosse and Rolling Stone campus assault hoaxes happened. A sworn statement describing consensual sex, later contradicted by a suit seeking damages, is reason for caution. Due process is not an obstacle to justice — it is the only thing that makes justice mean anything.

Townhall Reason Magazine