{ "archive_path": "archive/1790888427.17826", "base_url": "spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo", "basename": "cornell-brings-back-metoo", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-01 21:00", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=spectator.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo.html" }, "domain": "spectator.com", "extension": "", "hash": "1MEWED1HQ41TA3GCGWFA", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=spectator.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-02T04:17:15.732015+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790888427.17826", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-02T04:17:14.916548+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-02T04:17:16.574701+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790888427.17826", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-02T04:17:15.741401+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-02T04:18:20.616012+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1790888427.17826", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-02T04:18:16.009266+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmp_xkx7oal", "https://spectator.com/article/cornell-brings-back-metoo" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-02T04:18:15.995140+00:00", "index_texts": [ "#MeToo is back \u2013 thanks, largely, to Cornell University. A former student, identified only as Jane Doe, alleged in a civil suit last month that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity drugged and gang-raped her in October 2024. Most of the subsequent social media outrage blurs a few distinctions. Prosecutors looked at her initial 2024 police statement and decided not to file charges. Cornell ran its own Title IX process. The county DA says the new civil lawsuit is \u201cdramatically different\u201d from what she told police at the time \u2013 as her original statement suggested she consented, and that when she raised concerns, the men stopped. The 2024 statement recounts Doe participating in three ketamine-fueled threesomes with four men, while three others burst into the room and snort ketamine off her naked body.\u00a0The DA has since reopened the case and sent it to a grand jury, which could bring charges.\u00a0\n\n\n\nYou would not know much about what Doe told the police initially from the social media clamor around the story \u2013 which centers on some vulgar but not incriminating Snapchat messages between the fraternity members, and how few of them were solely disciplined by having to write essays. After news\u00a0of the civil suit broke, the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper decided to name the seven men it accused. Since then, Instagram, TikTok and X have been\u00a0awash with outrage. People are being encouraged\u00a0to call Cornell University and complain. At least one of the seven has been fired from his job at a North Carolina bank. A man unfortunate enough to share a name with another of the seven has been harassed online. On TikTok, mothers are filming themselves hectoring their male children about sexual assault, to broadcast that they\u2019re not raising rapists.\u00a0\u201cRemove their heads in a public setting, it\u2019s the only answer,\u201d declares one Instagram post featuring the fraternity brothers\u2019 faces, that has 200,000 likes.\u00a0\n\n\n\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMost popular\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCNN can\u2019t kill Tim Dillon\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\n\n\nYet the events of the days that followed the night of the October 19, 2024\u00a0party merit consideration. The New York Times has more than 1,000 pages from Cornell\u2019s internal investigation, which tell a broader story than the civil lawsuit or viral rage would suggest.\u00a0\n\n\n\nThe first threesome of October 19 involved Doe, Jonathan Newell and Matthew Ingalls. Two days after the party, Newell texted Doe to apologize as he and Ingalls \u201chad been too drunk and high to shut things down.\u201d Doe responds that\u00a0\u201cnone of the sexual part was illegal.\u201d\u00a0On the same day, she informed her sorority \u201cbig sister\u201d about rumors circulating that she was a \u201cslut.\u201d Per the Times, \u201cthe big sister\u2026 told investigators that Jane Doe added with a laugh that \u2018unfortunately they are true.\u2019\u201d Another two days pass, and Doe\u00a0tells\u00a0Ingalls that \u201ceveryone knows\u201d about their encounter, and that this was \u201cRUINING my life temporarily.\u201d Despite the campus chatter, Doe was eager to attend Chi Phi\u2019s Halloween party. Ingalls assured her over text that she was still welcome. The Chi Phi fraternity president then called Doe to disinvite her, and tells her it was for her own good. She texted Ingalls: \u201cYall aren\u2019t my friends. Yall are covering your asses.\u201d On November 3, Doe wrote to another of the seven, and expressed for the first time that much of what had happened on October 19 was \u201cnot consensual.\u201d Five days later, Doe reported a sexual assault\u00a0to police.\u00a0\n\n\n\nYou might pore over the text messages between these twenty-somethings and think, \u201cwhy is this a national news story?\u201d Yet now, thanks to the public outcry, a grand jury will have the final word on the criminal question. But this is exactly the kind of evidence the first wave of #MeToo taught us to look at, and most of the outrage is ignoring it.\u00a0\n\n\n\nNewell\u2019s apology also points to a\u00a0double standard. He says the men were too drunk and high to control the situation. One was reportedly so drunk he threw up and passed out during the act. Could he legally have consented to sex? Had a woman been that drunk, few would claim that she could. So why is it different when it\u2019s a man?\u00a0\n\n\n\nThe Cornell story is not the start. The first rumblings of a second #MeToo wave emerged earlier this year, in Democratic politics. Graham Platner dropped out of Maine\u2019s Senate race days after an ex-girlfriend\u00a0accused him of sexual assault, an allegation he called \u201ccategorically false.\u201d Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress and quit the California governor\u2019s race following a social media-led campaigni encouraging women to come forward with their stories of his sexual impropriety. The investigations into him are ongoing, and his lawyer calls the whole thing \u201ca calculated and transparent political hit job.\u201d Neither man currently faces criminal charges; both careers are over anyway. If an accusation can get rid of a candidate faster than voters can, their adversaries will deploy it in order to do so. \u00a0\n\n\n\n\n\nThen there\u2019s \u201clooksmaxxing\u201d streamer Clavicular, real name Braden Peters. He has been charged with rape in Massachusetts over a May 2025 incident involving a girl who was 17 at the time. What usually gets left out in retellings of the Clavicular tale is that he was barely older than she was, that she texted him to initiate contact and that she was even paid to be on his stream. His representative says she went to the police because he \u201cwouldn\u2019t pay her.\u201d\u00a0\n\n\n\nLast month Harvey Weinstein, the man whose downfall started the first wave of #MeToo in 2017, was given another prison sentence, for 15 years, for sexually assaulting a production assistant. Unlike other men, his fate was sealed\u00a0through a trial, a jury and a conviction. It seems awfully old-fashioned to decide someone\u2019s guilt in a court of law.\u00a0\n\n\n\nSo what\u2019s different with #MeToo 2.0? On the one hand, skeptics are more willing to dig into the details than they used to be \u2013 and mainstream outlets have been more open to writing stories that challenge the \u201cbelieve women\u201d trope. On the other, the people plastering accused men\u2019s faces all over their Instagram Stories seem more willing to ignore the facts and jump straight to a conclusion.\u00a0\n\n\n\nAs in 2017, Democrats are out of power in Washington but still have overwhelming cultural influence, over academia and much of the American media. Liberal culture wars gain real traction once ordinary people are experiencing fatigue: the first #MeToo movement came during the first year of Donald Trump\u2019s first term \u2013 when Americans were overwhelmed by the chaos of the news cycle: Russiagate, Charlottesville, the Women\u2019s March. Today, Trump fatigue is again resurgent. There is a backlash against an administration whose policies are highly controversial and hurting most people financially. Reenter #MeToo.\u00a0\n\n\n\nRecall what happened to people who tried to voice even mild skepticism in 2017-18. Matt Damon said there\u2019s \u201ca difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation.\u201d The backlash was fierce enough that he publicly apologized a month later. Compare that to The View\u2019s Sunny Hostin this week, who calmly explained why the Cornell affair did not meet the standards for a sexual assault conviction in the state of New York, despite sputtering from her co-anchors. Going by the written statement, Hostin said, Doe showed up to the party drunk, took ketamine voluntarily and agreed to two threesomes. She also pointed out that in the state of New York, being impaired by alcohol or drugs you chose to take doesn\u2019t render you incapable of consent. The law looks at\u00a0whether someone was incapacitated, for example passed out or unable to say no. Making bad decisions or regretting them later isn\u2019t the test.\u00a0\n\n\n\nYou see the same imbalance in the coverage. The story went national within days. Photos of the boys, none of whom has been charged with a crime, are \u201cplastered all over the internet.\u201d as Hostin put it.\u00a0Yet, the New York Times was careful to\u00a0obscure Jane Doe\u2019s identity. There are good reasons to protect accusers. But when uncharged young men are exposed while the person accusing them stays anonymous, many people will make up their minds before any court has.\u00a0\n\n\n\nThe Cornell case bears similarities to a number of other high-profile campus sexual assault scandals \u2013\u00a0two of which predate the 2017 #MeToo movement. In 2006, three lacrosse players at Duke University were charged with raping a woman hired to dance at a team party. The case fell apart, the North Carolina attorney general declared the players innocent (not just \u201cnot guilty\u201d) and the prosecutor, Mike Nifong, was disbarred. The dancer eventually admitted to making the story up. Eight years later, Rolling Stone ran a story about a gang rape at a UVA fraternity. The magazine retracted it after a number of discrepancies in the woman\u2019s account were pointed out. The magazine ultimately lost a defamation suit filed by the university\u2019s assistant dean.\u00a0\n\n\n\nThen in\u00a02022, rookie NFL punter Matt Araiza was accused him of taking part in the gang rape of a 17-year-old at a party near San Diego State University. The Buffalo Bills released him from his contract days later. Yet based on a witness and other information, prosecutors said he couldn\u2019t have been involved because he had \u201cleft the party at 12:30 a.m. before the alleged rape happened.\u201d Prosecutors never filed charges. But Araiza\u00a0had already lost his gig with the Bills long before anyone looked at the evidence.\u00a0\n\n\n\nIn Duke, UVA and Araiza, the truth eventually came out, each time after the damage was done. This round of #MeToo looks a lot like the last one. 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