San Francisco      Running from meeting to meeting, traveling from airport to airport, I was missing the headlines that might have scrolled past my screen, until calling home.  Mi companera immediately asked if I was following the Cornell University story.  Answering in the negative, I was sternly brought up to date.  The condemnation of the way the college had handled a woman’s drugging and rape by a gang of fraternity men was absolute on the phone.

Reading the whole story was no better in what seemed a combination of cover-up, indifference, and a miscarriage of justice, all of which would have been over and done in 2024, if the young woman had not taken it upon herself to get a lawyer and sue the college, the fraternity, and others in a demand for her own justice.  If it achieved nothing else, it shamed the local prosecutor who had not charged the frat boys to reopen the case and re-investigate the matter.  He claimed the fact that she was drugged was “new” evidence and she and others would be re-interviewed.  Her lawyer said the information in her lawsuit tracked her original statement, but who are we going to believe at this point – the woman of course!  She even had a screenshot of one of the guys encouraging his buddies to come take a poke.  How did these guys walk?!?

All of this slipping and sliding was child’s play compared to the jig zagging, broken field running on Cornell’s part.  They claimed they had punished the fellas appropriately.  Yet, the campus cops had not pressed the issue.  Some were allowed to continue to stay in school.  Cornell claimed it made them write an essay.  Are you kidding me?  Can they be serious, really?  How in the name of everything that is holy does writing an essay atone for raping and drugging a young woman?  For all of them, life went on.  For the victim, she left Cornell, likely not wanting to continue to face this gaggle of criminals on the campus and class day after day, year after year.  Oh, yeah, and they suspended the fraternity and tossed it off the campus.  Not sure the frat was permanently banned.  They probably have to write a group essay that we will not rape on the blackboard 1000 times or something equally severe.

Is this just about Cornell?  Hardly, but there are many more Cornell’s with equivalent horrors coming our way.  The Trump administration on the same day as this case erupted again were busy pulling back the regulations that protected women in sports and required reporting and investigations of sex discrimination and harassment.  Were these two events connected?  Well, not deliberately, but certainly politically and culturally as the tide continues to break over all the walls protecting the vulnerable in our society and administration.

When the question is asked, “who let the dogs out,” the answer will be Cornell and the Trump administration.  The next question is when and how will be put them back in their cages?