We take an in-depth look at extreme fraternity hazing rituals while new details emerge in the alleged Cornell University gang rape case. Plus, the latest with the nasty legal battle between Halle Berry and her ex Olivier Martinez while newly released body-cam footage shows the moment when police cuffed alleged CEO shooter Luigi Mangione…
Page A5From§Eachthe matinee edition — 2 October 2026
Told to stay silent on a case where a defendant's texts already said sorry.
As it ran on the front
My neighbor put up a fence this summer, finally, after four years of saying he was going to and never getting around to it. Before it went in he had a surveyor out — state-licensed, clipboard, the whole business — and the man walked the yard with a can of orange marking paint and a fistful of pin flags, right down the line where his property stops and mine starts. Took him about an hour. A flag every ten feet or so, a pin driven at each corner, and when he packed up and left, the line was there. Not agreed on. Not argued about. There. In the ground.
Weeks went by before anybody did anything else about it. Around Labor Day my neighbor — nice guy, I play cards with him on Thursdays — told me he'd rather we not get into it with the people on the other side about exactly where the old line used to sit; there'd been bad blood a few years back and he didn't want it reopened. Fine by me. I wasn't going to bring it up. But I kept coming back to this, driving past in a car that needs a new fan belt and complains about it the whole way to the corner store: the flags were already down before he asked anybody not to talk about the line. The asking came after. The marking came first. Can you ask a man not to discuss a boundary? Sure. Can you ask the pins to come up out of the ground because of it? They don't take requests.…
…(cont) Which is what I kept thinking about, reading on Cornell this week. Was there a text, this year, from an aide, telling people connected to the case not to say anything? I had it written down, hold on — yes. And did that text have something to do with the matter being taken from the prosecutor's office in Tompkins County and handed instead to the state attorney general, who now calls it, in writing, an active criminal investigation? Around the same time, did the university's own survey — the one it commissioned and published itself — come back with thirty-five percent of undergraduate women reporting the same kind of thing the lawsuit describes? Thirty-five. Did I read that number right?
Then this week, more texts. Not from the aide, not from the university administration — from one of the fraternity brothers named in the lawsuit, to the woman identified in the filings as Jane Doe. CBS obtained the screenshots; ABC reported what was in them. They apologized. In writing. In the days right after the night described in the lawsuit — 2024, near enough two years before anyone typed out "don't say anything" to people who, as far as the record shows, hadn't apologized to anybody.
So which came first in this one, the asking or the marking? Did the fraternity brother alleged to have done this leave their own marker down — a text message, timestamped, saying they were sorry — a long time before an aide told everybody else connected to the case to stay quiet?
I don't know what the attorney general's office makes of a timeline like that; I imagine they've got people whose whole job is lining up dates. I just notice what I noticed in my neighbor's yard. Can you ask people to stop discussing where a line sits? Can you ask the thing that already marked it to take it back?
Oh — hold on, one more thing, before you go. That apology text, the one from the days after the night in question — what date is on it, compared to the date on the instruction telling everyone else to stay quiet? Sorry.
“They tell everybody connected to the case to stay quiet about something that already has a written apology sitting in somebody's phone, two years old. Thirty-five percent of the undergraduate women on that campus say the same thing happened to them, and the only instruction anybody put in writing was "don't say anything." That's not an investigation getting protected — that's a university protecting itself first and asking everybody else to swallow the silence.”
“Look, an apology isn't an admission of anything — people say sorry about all kinds of situations, misunderstandings, bad judgment calls, it could be totally unrelated to what's alleged. And the "don't discuss the case" guidance, that's completely standard, you tell people connected to an active matter not to talk to press — okay, that does sound a little strange when the case itself is about people not talking. I didn't say that.”
Earlier in this story
- University tells investigators to say nothing on one case; its own survey says something happened to 35 percent By Lou · the noon edition, 2 October 2026
- National Review says "follow the evidence"; the evidence says "don't say anything." By Lou · the coffee break edition, 2 October 2026
The receipts
A former Cornell student, identified as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit against the school and seven former fraternity brothers she accuses of rape and sexual assault.
New York's attorney general will investigate the rape allegation.
· New text messages from days after alleged gang rape at Cornell University from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Video shows string of text messages connected to alleged Cornell gang rape from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· Screenshots show string of text messages connected to alleged Cornell gang rape from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· AOC Calls Out Cornell and 'Culture of Rape' as Prosecutors Reopen Campus Assault Case from the morgue, 28 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.