{
    "byline": "Damian Reilly",
    "charset": "UTF-8",
    "dir": null,
    "excerpt": "#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.",
    "lang": null,
    "length": 9731,
    "publishedTime": null,
    "siteName": null,
    "title": ""
}