It’s not often that an article in a college newspaper becomes national news, but an explosive oped titled “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” has sparked front-page headlines, protests and demands for accountability across the country since its publication in The Cornell Daily Sun on Sept. 21. Authored by the newspaper’s editorial board, the piece highlighted the alleged gang rape of a female student, identified as Jane Doe, by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. The op-ed denounced not only the actions of the alleged perpetrators but also what it described as the inaction of Cornell University in response to them.
The authors accused the university of failing to provide transparency and accountability in the wake of Doe’s assault, calling it part of a “morbid pattern” of institutional indifference to campus sexual assault. Despite a finding by Cornell’s own task force that incidents of sexual assault had increased by roughly 40 percent between 2023 and 2025, Cornell had provided “no concrete, feasible solutions beyond the usual passivities of ‘communication’ and ‘understanding.’” The editors argued that the failure to protect the physical safety of students constituted a betrayal of Cornell’s promise to “preserve a higher education community and residential campus where ‘any person’ in the community can pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment.”
Just over a week later, another op-ed by a Cornell student criticizing the institution reached a national audience. “Cornell Fails Its Free-Speech Test,” authored by Cornell senior Jared Lederman, ran in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 29. Lederman’s op-ed cited his recent personal experience of being criticized by fellow Cornell students for his views on gender equality as a demonstration of the university’s “culture of intolerance.”
Lederman recounts that after publishing an online essay titled “Men and Women Were Not Created Equal,” which condemned “modern feminism” for “trying to suppress masculinity” and insufficiently appreciating the “irreplaceable beauty in a woman creating the home to which her husband returns and in which her children grow,” his professional fraternity asked him to resign from a leadership position and his social fraternity expelled him. According to Lederman, his experience of “exile” is proof that “expressing heterodox views is socially suicidal” at Cornell, despite the institution’s claims in a recent report to value “‘rigorous deliberation and engaged discourse.’”
The gulf between these two op-eds speaks volumes about what is perceived as a campus crisis, not only at Cornell but across the country.
Sexual abuse is a free speech issue. A campus where students are pressured to stay silent about abuse, where students are doxxed, threatened and swatted for filing complaints, where victims are forced to share classrooms and living spaces with their abusers, is not a campus that respects physical safety or free speech.