Women have a choice to make. They can no longer evade the responsibility for it.
Page A4From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 September 2026
NY law can't call it rape if she took the drugs herself, so Cornell offered the accused an essay assignment
As it ran on the front
In the fall of 2024, seven men at a Cornell fraternity chapter allegedly spent hours raping a woman after pressuring her to take drugs, then advertised what happened in the chapter's group chat. Cornell's response, according to the lawsuit filed this week, gave the accused men the chance to submit essays explaining how they had mitigated their conduct. Two were expelled. The rest were suspended.
Two years later, the case reached Albany. Governor Kathy Hochul ordered an outside review, citing "serious questions about Cornell campus culture." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked for an investigation that leaves "no stone unturned." Chi Phi's national organization broke its silence this week too, telling the New York Times it had acted quickly back in 2024 -- quickly enough that the public is only hearing about the expulsion now, from a press release two years on.…
…(cont) None of that changes what a prosecutor could actually charge. Under New York law, sex is not legally rape if the victim voluntarily took the drugs or drink that left her unable to consent -- the statute protects people incapacitated against their will, not people who got there on their own. Assemblyman Jeffery Dinowitz told the New York Post plainly: "Getting drunk should not be an invitation to getting raped but in the current law, it pretty much is." The lawsuit uses the word rape. The statute has a different word, and the word is weaker.
Into that gap walked the commentary. The Washington Examiner's headline says the case is riddled with "red flags" Democrats won't wrestle with. The Federalist ran its headline straight: women's "bad life choices" at frat parties. Not the fraternity's choices. Not the statute's wording. Hers.
The same month, the state that still can't write "rape" into its own intoxication law watched a Manhattan judge send Harvey Weinstein away for fifteen years, on September 23. Five years before that, the governor who held Hochul's job before her resigned over eleven women's harassment allegations, and she rose to fill it. Men who prey get named and removed when the paper trail is loud enough — a resignation here, a sentence there, a review ordered from Albany. The statute they exploit needs none of that noise. It sits in the code, unrepealed, waiting on the next fraternity chat log to explain itself into a lesser word.
“You don't need a law degree to see the trick: they wrote "rape" so narrow it doesn't cover a woman who drank the drink herself, then acted shocked when a fraternity's lawyers walked right through the hole they left. Every governor, every senator, every review board gets to sound furious about "campus culture" for free, because none of them has to go back and fix the one sentence in the penal code that actually matters. Call the review, unturn the stone, and leave the statute exactly where you found it — that's not an oversight, that's the plan.”
“Look, nobody's saying anything happened to anyone, we're saying the lawsuit has holes, that's just — that's just due process, is what that is. The Federalist piece isn't blaming her, it's about personal responsibility and choices, which, okay, are her choices, but that's not the same as blame, I don't know why that sounds bad when I say it out loud. The statute's fine, the statute's been fine for years, ask literally any defense attorney.”
The receipts
Democrats and celebrities are already taking as gospel the rape allegations made in a lawsuit filed against Cornell University. In doing so, they are already attempting to destroy the lives of the men involved in the story without bothering to wrestle with any of the glaring red flags in the case that are reminiscent of […]
A decade after the Stanford rape trial that saw Brock Turner sentenced to a few months in county jail, a young woman is suing Cornell University and seven fraternity members she says raped her in 2024. The most overtly vile facets of this case have sparked viral, rightful outrage: the men allegedly gang raped Jane Doe for hours after…
The national organization of the Chi Phi fraternity at the center of a Cornell University sexual assault lawsuit explained publicly for the first time how it handled the episode.
“Getting drunk should not be an invitation to getting raped but in the current law, it pretty much is,” state Assemblyman Jeffery Dinowitz told The Post.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called for the outside review, saying what happened raised "serious questions about Cornell campus culture."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for a review of the alleged assault of a Cornell University student during a 2024 fraternity party, saying the case was “horrifying.” “The allegations of sexual assault and rape at Cornell University are horrifying and deserve a thorough investigation that leaves no stone unturned,”…
· Andrew Cuomo announces his resignation as Governor of New York following allegations of sexual harassment, as well as an investigatory report by New York Attorney General Letitia James which stated th from the morgue, 10 Aug 2021
· Weinstein handed 15-year prison sentence in New York sexual assault case from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
· Sherrill calls for resignation of her lieutenant governor after sexual harassment allegations from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.