Ithaca, New York (The Daily Whatever Press)—Two years after a Cornell student reported being drugged and gang-raped at a fraternity house, the Ithaca Police Department finally found out about it. From the news.
I had to put my phone face down on the counter for a full minute after I read that. Then I picked it back up and swore at it, and then I wrote this.
If you missed the first round, I wrote about the Cornell gang-rapists who got slapped on their wrists with essay sanctions just yesterday, and the story has moved so fast since my fingers can barely keep up. On Monday alone, Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten reopened the criminal investigation and said he’d take it to a grand jury. By Monday afternoon, the mayor of Ithaca had decided he was done asking nicely.
The city found out from the news
Here’s the receipt that made my eye twitch. Ithaca police say the incident was never reported to them, and that they learned about it through recent media coverage.
Please indulge me whilst I scream into the void because OH MY GAWD THE ITHACA POLICE ONLY FOUND OUT ABOUT THE GANG RAPE ON THE INTERNET, just like the rest of us slobs, and I CANNOT WITH THIS YOU GUYS I JUST CAN’T.
Cornell has its own police department, the Cornell University Police Department, with badges and cars and everything. Back on November 26, 2024, Cornell’s official statement said CUPD “continues to pursue its criminal investigation.” So for two years there was a criminal investigation into an alleged gang rape in the City of Ithaca, and nobody picked up the phone and called the City of Ithaca.
My teenagers text me when they get to a friend’s house three blocks away. An Ivy League police department, meanwhile, couldn’t be bothered to loop in the cops in their own town about an alleged drugging and gang rape of one of its own students.
What the actual fuck were they doing with their phones, playing Candy Crush?
Party’s over, Delta House
Enter Mayor Robert Cantelmo, who called the allegations “heinous and sickening” and said Cornell administrators and police “failed to contact or coordinate any response with the Ithaca Police Department.” He called the whole thing “a miscarriage of justice” and an “appalling response from university administration.”
GOOD.
Then he reached for the only lever a city has over a university on a hill, which is paperwork. Cantelmo called for an immediate moratorium on all student event and special event permits, “including, but not limited to Greek life and other student group gatherings.” Those are the permits for the big stuff, the events with street closures, tents, noise, and crowds that need the city’s cooperation.
My favorite part is: Cantelmo has a master’s degree from Cornell, class of 2020. It took a Cornell grad sitting in City Hall to act like the grown-up Cornell kept failing to find in Day Hall.
I’ve waited my whole life to see the plot of Footloose happen with the town as the good guy. In 1984, the town of Bomont banned dancing out of grief and fear. In 2026, Ithaca is pausing the parties because a university never called the local police about an alleged gang rape. John Lithgow was wrong. Robert Cantelmo is right. I’m punching my card, y’all.
There’s one caveat. The Cornell Daily Sun reports the directive won’t take effect until Ithaca’s Common Council passes the resolution, and three council members told the Sun they’ll vote yes. Other outlets describe the directive as already in effect, with the council voting to endorse it.
Either way, the mayor has made his move, and Cornell’s fall social calendar is about to get a lot shorter.
Again I say, GOOD.
Show your work, Cornell
The moratorium lasts until the university “conducts an accounting of its protocols to prevent and prosecute crimes of sexual violence and publicly releases new standards and practices to keep our community safe.”
The mayor of Ithaca gave Cornell a writing assignment.
According to Jane Doe’s lawsuit, some of the accused were allowed to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays. Now the university gets a prompt of its own, with no page limit, no private grading in Day Hall, and a public release requirement. The whole city gets to read this one, and the whole city gets to grade it.
Cornell, of course, is mad at the rest of us. It now says nobody was offered an essay as their only punishment, and that the “false narrative that there were minimal consequences” is irresponsible and will make survivors feel less safe.
Oh, please.
The essays came from Doe’s own lawsuit. The university that told us “federal privacy law prohibits” it from disclosing any individual sanctions is now scolding the public for not knowing what those sanctions were. You can’t hide the receipts behind a privacy statute and then yell at people for failing to read them. Pick one, you tweed-jacketed motherfuckers.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in town for a Sunday town hall, picked hers. She hit Cornell for temporarily suspending student protesters while making the accused “write an essay in private.”
So Cornell knows exactly how to suspend students when it wants to. Somebody over there should write an essay about that.
It worked
Van Houten has assigned a senior prosecutor to prepare the grand jury case, a woman with significant experience prosecuting sex crimes, including trials of college students accused of assaulting other college students. That person should have been on this two years ago, and I’m furious that she wasn’t. I’m also grateful as hell that she is now.
None of this happened because Cornell had a change of heart. It happened because one woman filed a 101-page lawsuit, the Cornell Daily Sun kept printing, strangers on the internet refused to let it scroll by, a congresswoman said it out loud in a town hall, and the mayor of a small upstate city decided that the biggest institution in town doesn’t get to keep its own secrets anymore.
So keep going. Keep posting, keep sharing, keep calling your own city halls about your own universities, and keep making noise until the institutions that pull this shit decide the noise is more expensive than the truth.
Jane Doe was assigned the hardest essay there is, which is telling the world what happened to her. She turned it in.
Now it’s Cornell’s turn. Pencils down in public, assholes.
Oh and PS, Cornell? I’m a pretty damn good writer. I’d be happy to grade those rapist essays, should you need another red pen to review them…
Hi, I’m Dana. And I Write Out Loud.
I Write Out Loud is my primary home for cultural memoir, personal essays, and live conversations about the strange, brave process of becoming yourself in midlife. If you like essays with a point of view and a pulse, you’ll find plenty to read there.
And if you enjoyed this story — why not buy me a coffee?☕
{Make mine a decaf iced oat milk mocha, please!}
Thanks for reading!
We’re Dana DuBois and Lawrence Winnerman, lifelong BFFs and co-hosts of The Daily Whatever Show — our independent home for smart, irreverent conversations about culture, politics, media, creativity, relationships, aging, and whatever else is shaping modern life this week.
If you’re enjoying what we’re building, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription. Your support helps us keep the show independent, book fascinating guests, and continue creating smart conversations with your morning coffee.
We love you — mean it!
Writing assignment. That’s rich. We’ve heard of Stanford to.
Dana, thank you for your righteous outrage! It's time for women everywhere to start exercising their superiority.