Dylan Jackaway '24, M.Eng. '25, is an alumnus of Cornell University and a former staff writer for The Cornell Daily Sun's News department. He can be reached at dkj27@cornell.edu.
Editor’s Note: This article references sexual assault and drugging.
In Spring 2024, during my senior year, I knew people whom the University administration had arrested for sitting in Day Hall calling for divestment from the Israeli siege against Gaza, while Martha Pollack was still president. After her departure, which was widely speculated to have come as the result of the Board of Trustees’ dissatisfaction with her relative lenience towards that year’s pro-Palestine encampment compared to her Columbia University counterpart at the time, Minouche Shafik, Michael Kotlikoff was announced as her interim replacement.
By September of that year, Kotlikoff was presiding over the University’s aggressive response to the disruption of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations Career Fair by pro-Palestinian student activists. Punishments for these students entailed not only arrests but also months-long disciplinary proceedings and partial campus access bans. Some of these Cornellians, too, I knew personally.
Little did I — or most members of our community at the time — know, that while the Kotlikoff administration was taking a hard line against banging drums within earshot of Boeing’s recruiters, a lawsuit by an anonymous Jane Doe alleges that they were simultaneously offering the alleged Chi Phi rapists amnesty in the form of writing essays reflecting on their behavior. Additionally, Doe’s lawyer, who handled cases involving Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs, has stated that only two of the seven perpetrators were expelled, leading one to wonder if those two submitted unsatisfactory essays.
The harm that this state of affairs has caused, and will continue to cause if not changed, cannot be overstated. The University cannot expect the student body to treat the campus disciplinary process as legitimate when the consequences for violent sexual crimes make a slap on the wrist look harsh in comparison, while the survivors are met with callous indifference. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would consider simply keeping the Chi Phi chapter barred from operating to be an appropriate substitute for actual repercussions for these individuals. Cornell’s choice to not protect its students ripples out across campus in a number of other ways, inducing heightened vigilance in those concerned with keeping themselves safe, while emboldening would-be predators. The result is a community with less trust, more alienation and a robust cycle of trauma that can touch anyone of any gender. This is made especially consequential by the online visibility of the alt-right manosphere, figureheaded by the likes of Andrew Tate and Braden “Clavicular” Peters, who have both been charged with sexual assault and actively seek to lure young men to their ideology.
Furthermore, despite Greek Life making headlines on an annual basis for an assortment of atrocities (usually hazing), the perpetrators see that the University considers these to be tolerable side effects in exchange for well-connected alumni that can write fat checks. These fraternities don’t seem to feel that anything is missing from their circles when, as far as we know, there was not a brother that night who said ‘wait a second, guys, this isn’t right,’ despite Chi Phi’s purported mission to “build better men.” Matthew Ingalls, whom Doe’s lawsuit describes as having been one of her friends prior to the assault, not only committed unthinkable betrayal against her, but in playing his role in this deplorable script, also betrayed the thousands of other Cornellians who aspired to establish and develop meaningful connections with our peers as a product of our time on the Hill. Meanwhile, anyone who would’ve intervened on Doe’s behalf would probably also have been less likely to be interested in joining a fraternity in the first place. In these spaces where everyone has dirt on each other, putting skeletons into one’s own closet serves to bolster one’s loyalty to the group and vice versa, and can therefore even become the price of admission.
Meanwhile, less than two weeks before his interim status was made permanent, Kotlikoff’s hawkishness towards the pro-Palestine movement continued at the Pathways for Peace panel, where a Cornell University Police Department officer was recorded discussing the amount of student arrests that an unspecified “Mike” had been hoping for. And of course, who can forget his woe-is-me email to the student body earlier this year after his hit-and-run incident involving two students who had hoped to discuss his policies on free speech, but before the actual video footage of the situation was circulated publicly? One can make the argument that those students should’ve stood further out of the way, but it was the view of myself and many others that the president’s responsibility to not strike students with his car outweighed the students’ responsibility to facilitate his egress. And now it’s revealed that Kotlikoff’s double standard and endangerment of students both went further than we even knew.
The news of the Chi Phi lawsuit comes at a time when millions of high schoolers are pouring their blood and sweat into finding their way to their respective futures, with the Nov. 1 Early Decision college application deadline rapidly approaching. What will they think when they look up Cornell and see this as the first result? Will they want to make their bid for four years on the campus where “any person can find instruction in any study,” or will they and their families see that prospect as too dangerous to risk? If Kotlikoff won’t ask himself this question, I hope that the Board of Trustees will. And if he’s unable or unwilling to make things right with celerity, then this year ought to be his last in office, before alumni such as myself become ashamed of our degrees, and before he gets his hat handed to him in court.
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