Editor’s Note: This article contains mentions of rape, sexual assault and family violence.
This past spring, I attended a talk by author and activist Diana Whitney ’95, who was presenting her new book “Girl Trouble” at the Literary Arts Bridge. The anthology of poems explores themes of feminism, victim blaming and survivorship, including Whitney’s own experience of being raped by a fellow student, who later rushed a fraternity, during her freshman winter at Dartmouth in 1992.
Although it is very emotionally challenging to read, I invite you to read Whitney’s poem entitled “Hate Poem for Animal House,” which criticizes the 1978 movie “Animal House,” which follows trouble-making fraternity brothers and is based on real events at the Dartmouth fraternity Alpha Delta. Alpha Delta was de-recognized by the College in April of 2015 for allegedly branding its new members.
In “Hate Poem for Animal House,” Whitney details how she “hate[s]” frat boys, their “grand pillared houses of debauchery” and their “traditions alive in iconic movies / and football kids here in town shotgunning beers on YouTube / like the high school kid who raped a girl at a party and someone / filmed it and posted it but nothing happened, he got to / stay in school, stay on the team. … And I hate the mothers / the mothers of frat boys, the ones who raise them, the one / who told me in earnest, in tears I’m sorry your daughter got hurt / but I have to believe my son.”
A few weeks ago, news about the “Cornell 7” lawsuit began circulating: A former Cornell undergraduate student, identified in filings as Jane Doe, is suing seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University for alleged drugging and gang raping her in October 2024, according to The Cornell Daily Sun. When I heard about the case, detailing a sexual assault that occurred 32 years after Whitney’s, I was reminded of “Hate Poem for Animal House.”
I shivered, as if cold water ran through my veins, when I read about how she was allegedly forced to snort ketamine and that one defendant sent a message to the “Chi Phi Actives” group chat describing Jane as a “free p*ssy” available upstairs. I couldn’t forget the details of Jane Doe’s story, and it felt unfaithful to continue my daily activities as I thought about seven men raping a woman for hours on end. Three weeks later, the case still makes me feel deeply sad.
After Jane Doe filed a police complaint against the seven men, Cornell responded rather loosely to her case. Two of the men were expelled while the other five received a combination of suspensions, disciplinary probation, no-contact orders, “reflection papers” and orders to study sexual harassment, responsible social media use, and bystander intervention, according to The New York Times. Jane left Cornell, and it took her two more years to decide to reopen the case and sue the seven men involved, several Chi Phi organizations, the former president of Cornell’s Chi Phi chapter, her former sorority and the university itself, among others.
Parallels can be drawn between Diana and Jane’s cases: female, fraternity and institution. I thought the U.S. had made progress in women’s rights and bodily autonomy since 1992, but maybe the systems we’ve built are not working well. I cannot process the fact that Cornell allowed many of these men the chance to graduate happily ever after. Perhaps, as the poem says, their families reassured the administrators that they believed their sons, and that one belief was enough for the Cornell administration.
As I’m from Uzbekistan, a country where family violence frequently occurs, I came to the United States thinking feminism would have made substantial progress in securing women’s rights. Although there’s no denying that — outside of Greek life — Dartmouth’s campus feels safe whether it’s dawn or dusk. I keep thinking that Jane, too, must have had a similar thought: Cornell is a predominantly liberal Ivy League institution, and it should uphold its institutional values of women’s bodily autonomy and rights by protecting its students when cases like this happen.
On social media, some blame Jane Doe for going to a fraternity drunk and not taking what they see as reasonable steps to protect herself. I am deeply saddened that people think that she is the one to blame when she was intoxicated, surrounded by many men with greater physical capacities and not in the proper mental state to give consent in the first place.
While victim blaming exists among strangers online, it can trace to our own families, too. Many times, women in Central Asia are told to “cover up” by their families so as not to attract unwanted attention from men. That self-consciousness is something that becomes ingrained in our minds as we grow up. After experiencing sexism, we tend to question ourselves: Maybe I wore something too exposing; maybe I should not have walked alone; maybe I smiled too much. But why should we question, educate ourselves and cover up when it is they who do not educate themselves and look down? Why do our moms teach us strategies to avoid unwanted eyes, when in reality, it’s their eyes and desire that should learn a lesson?
Ultimately, catcalling and sexism occur so often in women’s lives that, at some point, we tend to ignore it altogether because society tells us that it’s “what it means to be a woman.” Instead of advocating for ourselves, we simply let go of the pain and move on.
I don’t have a good solution for what we can do collectively. I hope that the lessons learned in Sexual Violence Prevention Project trainings are not just there to tick off the requirement. I hope we understand that a sexual assault is an attack on not only the body but also the mind, which takes years to heal, if one is able to experience healing at all. I hope we do not dare to question the validity of the trauma that many women like Jane Doe have experienced.
In Uzbek culture, there is a proverb that I like: “All women are your mothers, sisters and daughters.” While it can serve to remind us that survivors of sexual assault are also someone’s daughter and sister, caring about someone’s human dignity should not require this connection. It does not matter if they’re your cousin or a Jane Doe from a continent away. What matters is what individuals and institutions can do to prevent sexual violence.
Whether the act occurred in the United States or Uzbekistan, when news like Jane Doe’s circulates in our daily conversations and on social media, our reactions tend to be similar. We think about it for a while, we feel sorry and then society tries to rationalize the tragedy by telling us that we have progressed compared to the previous generations. But no statistic can be enough to stop us from continuously thinking about and taking actions towards improving women’s rights. Female, frat and institution. As women, we are not supposed to feel “baggy sweatshirts of shame,” as Whitney writes. We need better solutions and prevention.
