Sexual Assault Galore At Cornell

You may have heard of the depressing contretemps at Cornell of late (written in the lady’s (a hotelie) own words here, but I cannot recommended reading it). It is not a coincidence that Cornell recently asked all students about how much sexual assault and harassment they enjoyed. It is that survey which interests us, because it so closely matches the breed and we need to understand their shortcomings.

Don’t put too much blame on Cornell. New York has a law that makes them give this survey every two years. This allows bureaucrats and rulers to think that they have done something good, which is the main reason for their existence, regardless how silly the results are.

Cornell gave the “instrument”—toot, toot—to 6,000 students, but only had “757 full completions”, which is a return rate of just over 12%.

How would the missing 88% have answered? This is a key question. The assumption sociologists make is: exactly the same. Yet, as we’ll see, it is far from impossible that those who blew off the survey would have responded differently than those who did answer, especially on the questions I’ll highlight.

Naturally, a lot more ladies than men answered, because women like to “play quiz” more than men. They also had a handful of students who, it seems, were unable to identify their sex; non-science majors, one supposes. All the extra ladies would have been fine if Cornell had broken the results out by sex, which they always didn’t. It will make a difference.

Cornell reported 49% of the students claimed that they “experienced any form of harassment.” My guess, since I am an arch sexist, is that the great bulk of that 49% were female reports. We never learn, but never mind. Let’s take the number as given.

If we extrapolate the survey results, as all good sociologists and rulers do, we would announce that half of all students were harassed. Half. Half, my dear readers, is an enormous number. Half would suggest that a small army of mouth-breathing harassers, likely from the Poetry Department, skulk around campus hiding behind bushes waiting for their chance to harass. Who could tolerate such an environment where half of all students are so abused?

I’ll tell you who: students. They can tolerate it. Because similar numbers of harassed were also reported in 2021 and 2023. Which can only mean one of two things. One: students come, they get harassed, then they come back for more of that rousing hands-on experience. They must be loving them some harassment to stick around when half get the business.

Or two: the survey and its results are, to use a technical word, bullshit.

I favor the second explanation, though I don’t entirely dismiss the first.

Let’s now look at what “harassment” is. Things like this (two of seven similar questions):

• “Someone at Cornell made inappropriate or offensive comments about your or someone else’s body, appearance, or sexual activities.”
• “Someone at Cornell made sexual remarks or told jokes or stories of a sexual nature that were insulting to or offensive to you.”

The first includes second-hand harassment. Not the genuine article, but harassment a student believed some other student ought to have felt, and, of course, might not have. The second one is the new Western standard of feelings-as-proof, appropriate in an increasingly matriarchal society. If it feels bad to you, it is wrong, no matter when you have the feelings. The can be the day of some incident, or even years after. It’s up to you, and should be, because what are more important than your feelings?

A lawyer, or at least one in the patriarchal days of yore, would have preferred tighter language, making the act of “harassment” well defined and justifiable, and tied to measurable acts in the world. That would have made it closer to real science, too. But here we are given loose and undefined feelings.

Feelings represent changes in the law, too, as we also see lately at Cornell. Rape used to be defined in concrete terms, which was necessary because to accuse and even convict somebody of this crime required events be tied to acts in the world, and not feelings. But now feelings, because of the idea of Consent, can change acts that were at one time legal (we say nothing about their morality) into criminal occurrences sometime in the future if feelings have changed.

Incidentally, I have a chapter on the Consent Fallacy in the upcoming second edition of Everything You Believe Is Wrong. (Upcoming? When? Soon. More on this Wednesday.)

If you doubt the importance of feelings, here is Cornell’s definition of stalking: “someone at Cornell behaved in a way that made you afraid for your personal safety or caused you substantial emotional distress.” Was the stalking genuine or mere feelings? We can’t tell from this question. In any case, 17% reported “stalking.” And here they do give us a sex breakdown: “The prevalence was notably higher among undergraduate women, with nearly 30% indicating they had been stalked during their time at Cornell.” No kidding.

Cornell also asked if a student’s “partner”—-a word entirely dismissive of polycules, caring only about students “who had been in a partnered relationship”—was “verbally abusive” or whether the “partner” “controlled or tried to control.” Have a stab at defining these terms unambiguously. Anyway, some 19% of students reported “partner” “domestic abuse.”

Incidentally redux: we now never know if someone discussing their “partner” is in business with them or is their sexual plaything.

There were 15% of students who reported “nonconsensual sexual contact”, which was at least defined in concrete terms like “forced penetration”—but it also included “kissing”, which is not in the same league. An unwanted kiss is not a rape. Some 35% of women reported “nonconsensual sexual contact”. As did 11% who weren’t sure of their sex. Are the numbers genuine? Who knows? I don’t believe more than a third of all Cornell ladies had “nonconsensual sexual contact”.

But before you dismiss that as just my opinion, recall the survey answers are also just opinions. So we have a classic he-said she-answered dilemma here.

If these questions and answers seem intolerably loose and useless, then I have some bad news for you. The President of Cornell, presumably not wanting grief about it, launched a—what else?—“task force”. But worse is that surveys like this litter academia, with a fair chunk of them passed off as science. It’s a good bet the “task force” will not ask questions like, “Why would anybody take a survey with such a slippery and indefensible list of questions seriously?”

The answer? Politics.

Bonus: From reader Ahem comes this tip: Cornell University’s shocking sex pamphlets handed out to students encouraging orgies and BDSM exposed. From—what else?—Cornell Health. They want everybody debasing themselves in every possible way, just do they can accuse you of debasing yourself. College!

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