I Went to Cornell. What Happened at Chi Phi Didn’t Shock Me | Opinion - Newsweek

I graduated from Cornell University in 1997. I also started drinking and using there, in fraternity houses, the way a lot of us did.

I remember going out with a frat guy one night who served me a plate of cocaine. Having no idea what to do, I took the straw he handed me and inhaled most of the pile.

It took me years of recovery to understand how my addiction took root in that moment. He provided the drug to increase the likelihood that I would hook up with him. I never did but started hanging out with him just to get it.

So when I read the lawsuit a former Cornell student filed this month against the university, the Chi Phi fraternity and seven of its current and former members, I wasn't surprised. I was sick. Then I was furious.

The woman, who was 20 at the time, alleges that in October 2024 members of the chapter pressured her to snort what they called ketamine, gave her more alcohol and marijuana, and then sexually assaulted her over several hours. According to the complaint, one member announced her to the house on Snapchat like she was the evening's entertainment.

She reported the alleged assault about three weeks later and the district attorney initially declined to bring charges. Cornell investigated and disciplined those involved, reportedly through suspensions, workshops and essays. The chapter is now barred from campus. She left school.

The Tompkins County district attorney is reopening the case, while noting that the lawsuit's account differs from what she told police in 2024.

I don't know what happened in that house but I know the house. Not that one, but every one like it. And I know what most of the coverage so far has left out.

Nearly every detail in that complaint runs through substances that the men provide the women. That’s the usual way it goes.

It’s claimed they pressured her to use ketamine, a drug that can leave a person awake but unable to move or resist.

I keep thinking about her, someone’s 20-year-old daughter. She got into her dream school. Instead of finishing it, she left, and has had to relive the alleged events of that night for police, for hearing panels, and now for a lawsuit and a reopened criminal case, while strangers online pick her apart.

Whatever else turns out to be true, she deserved to be safe that night. She deserved to be believed and protected afterward. If she ever reads this: none of it was your fault.

The pattern is familiar. Congress ordered the Epstein files released almost a year ago. Millions of pages are out, deadlines were missed, and lawmakers are still fighting to pry loose the rest. Survivors keep asking the same question: why have so few of the powerful men around him ever had to answer for anything? The scale is different, but the story is the same. From a billionaire's island to a frat house in Ithaca, the system keeps finding a way to let the men move on.

The women don't move on. I know, because they end up in my office. I have sat for years with women still carrying one night from when they were 19 or 20. It shows up as panic in a new relationship, flinching at a partner's touch and drinking that began as a way to forget. The men write their essay and graduate. The women spend decades, and their own money, in therapy trying to heal their wounds.

That is the double standard I can't stomach. We treat a young man's future as something precious that must be protected. We treat a young woman's future as collateral.

And this is bigger than beer and bad supervision. It's a system, built by men and still largely run by them, that has always worried more about ruining a young man's life than about the life he may have ruined. We are teaching our sons that almost anything can be survived with a good lawyer and an apology.

We talk about campus sexual assault as a problem of consent, and it is. We talk about it as a problem of fraternity culture, and it is. We don't talk nearly enough about the fact that alcohol and drugs are the medium it happens in.

One thing needs saying plainly, because it always gets twisted: alcohol and drugs don't cause rape and they excuse nothing. Plenty of men drink and never hurt anyone. The violence is a choice. But when substances run unchecked through a house full of young men, they knock down every barrier that might have stopped it, and they give everyone a ready-made story for the morning after. Put limits on the substances and an adult in the building, and I believe fewer nights like this one happen.

I'm a clinician now, and much of my work is with people in recovery. Over and over I hear the same story: it started in college. Eighteen-year-olds arrive on campus with no tolerance, no judgment, and nobody watching. The fraternity houses organize the drinking. Upperclassmen supply it. Younger students consume it.

That should change. Every residential fraternity should have a live-in house director: a trained, older professional, paid by the chapter or its national organization and answerable to the university. Not a chaperone who shows up for parties, but someone who lives there, knows the members and can intervene when situations become dangerous.

I love Cornell. I got an education there that I still use every day. I also got a disease that took me years to arrest. What I won't accept is a university, or a justice system, that keeps asking women to carry the cost of what happens in these houses. Put an adult in the building. Make the consequences real. And stop assigning essays to the men while the women write their stories one session at a time, in rooms like mine.

Alison Bulman is a psychotherapist in New York who works with couples and people in addiction recovery. She is the creator of the Lovitation method and the author of the upcoming book Mindfully Yours: A Therapist’s Sobriety Journey to Love and the Communication Secrets to Keep It. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.