Campus Sexual Violence

College Campuses Are Ripe for Sexual Violence *and* Uniquely Positioned to Fix It

PUBLISHED 11/11/2026 by

On a warm September day in 1984, my parents dropped me off for my freshman year of college. I had just turned 18. I was eager to make new friends, take challenging classes and embrace all that college had to offer.

I wasn’t thinking about the statistic that one in four women would be sexually assaulted during those four years on campus. Little did I know, I would become one of them.

That experience reshaped my life, driving me to research and teach on gender-based violence. Today, my co-authored textbook, The Social Dynamics of Family Violence, is read by thousands of college students each year, including my own.

In 2009 and 2011, I dropped my own children off at college. I knew the statistics; I had written about them. Yet little could have prepared me for the sickening realization that my daughter and my son’s friends faced the exact same risk of sexual assault that I had decades earlier.

That is because the one-in-four-women statistic hasn’t budged in more than 40 years.

Sexual assault happens on college campuses because men are raised to believe they are entitled to women’s bodies. Period.

I’m glad the Cornell case has pressured administrators to take real steps to mitigate risk and handle reports properly. But given how little has changed in four decades, standard policy updates are not enough. We must fundamentally rethink how we prevent sexual assault in the first place.

What does work, as trauma psychologist Dr. Jennifer Freyd has long argued, is “sustained education.” Sexual assault prevention specialist Jackson Katz, in his documentary The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots, demonstrates that men need dedicated time and space to unpack and deconstruct rape culture, not only with experts, but with their peers. Where better than in college classrooms?

College presidents can, and must, do better by educating themselves and investing in evidence-based prevention strategies. We expect nothing less, and the students on their campuses deserve so much more.

As Trump Administration Decimates Title IX Sexual Assault Protections, Students Call for Abolition of Fraternities and Other All-Male Groups

PUBLISHED 11/11/2026 by and

Under the Trump administration’s new Title IX rules, a student who reports being assaulted at an off-campus fraternity house may find that her school has no obligation to investigate at all. And if it does, she could face cross-examination by a representative of the men she accused, be held to a higher standard of proof, and wait indefinitely, with no deadline, for a decision.

Cornell’s handling of Jane Doe’s case shows how badly universities already fail survivors; the new rules give them even more room to do so.

But students are fighting back. As protests roil college campuses nationwide over the Cornell case, a growing number are going further, demanding an end to fraternities and other all-male groups like secret societies and the “eating clubs” of the Ivy League. Others are calling for the abolition of Greek life altogether.

At Cornell itself, where the university’s president has suspended fraternity social events for the rest of the academic year, abolition isn’t students’ top demand. Instead, they are demanding that the university revoke the degrees of the Cornell 7; enforce minimum sanctions for sexual assault; bring in external investigators and independent hearing officers; and require sexual assault prevention training for students and campus police.

As the Cornell students seem to recognize, abolishing fraternities alone may not make campuses safer. Research suggests that banning fraternities doesn’t so much reduce campus sexual assault as relocate it, pushing high-risk parties into off-campus apartments, athletic team houses and dorms. That’s because the forces driving sexual assault, including a culture of binge drinking and broader misogynist norms, don’t disappear when the fraternity houses do.

What does work? The strongest evidence points to bystander intervention training. A four-year study of three public university campuses found lower rates of unwanted sexual victimization, sexual harassment and stalking at the campus using the Green Dot bystander program than at comparison campuses without it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends pairing such training with a comprehensive, campus-wide strategy, including reforming high-risk social environments through alcohol oversight and amnesty policies that let students report assaults without fear of being punished for drinking. Universities must also hold themselves accountable, with transparent, trauma-informed Title IX reporting systems, independent advocates for survivors and regular campus climate surveys to track progress.

War on Women Report: Antiabortion Extremism Makes Its Way to the White House; 28th Woman Accuses Donald Trump of Rape; Arizona Man Wins $68K Settlement After Ex-Wife’s Abortion

PUBLISHED 10/30/2026 by and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—Dolores Huerta, the labor organizer at the helm of United Farm Workers and one of the most powerful women in the movement, passed away on Oct. 28. She was 96. Huerta was also a board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, the publisher of Ms. In March of this year, at the age of 95, she revealed that in the 1960s, Cesar Chavez sexually assaulted her.
—Abortion bans may be linked to approximately 135 excess homicides among women of reproductive age between 2023 and 2024, a new study suggests.
—Federal agents searched the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in the last few weeks of her reelection bid. Omar called the search an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”
—Bernadette Greene-Placentia, the Democratic candidate challenging Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, says she was raped while repairing a campaign sign in Sun City on Aug. 14. According to her account, Greene-Placentia was struck in the head and lost consciousness, later waking to discover evidence of a sexual assault.
—A University of Arizona sorority member has reported being sexually assaulted by two men at a Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on Aug. 26.
—During Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Education has drastically reduced its investigations of sexual assault and other civil rights violations at schools and colleges, even though the number of complaints has not slowed.
—A new report from House Judiciary Democrats includes an allegation from Beatrice Keul, former Miss Switzerland. Keul says that in 1983, Trump offered to help her secure a U.S. visa and admission to New York University, and invited her to a meeting at the Plaza hotel.

When she arrived at his hotel room, Trump allegedly raped her in an attack she describes as “brutal.” According to Keul, the assault tore her clothing and caused bleeding and bruising across her body, and Trump told her not to tell anyone about the rape.

… and more.

The Campus Free Speech Crisis We Don’t Talk About

PUBLISHED 10/19/2026 by

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.

War on Women Report: ICE Lost Count of Detained Women’s Miscarriages; Sexual Assault Still Rampant on College Campuses; Post-Dobbs Ectopic Pregnancy Deaths on the Rise

PUBLISHED 10/2/2026 by , and

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide: the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.”

We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report:
—On Wednesday, Sept. 2, Gloria Steinem, feminist, social activist and cofounder of Ms., died in her New York City home. She was 92.
—The family of Tierra Walker, who died in 2024 after she was refused a medically necessary abortion under Texas’ abortion ban, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and several of Walker’s doctors and nurses in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit.
—House Republicans have formally censured Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.) for his documented inappropriate conduct toward women staffers, including excessive unwanted attention and gifts ranging from flowers and purses to personalized handguns.
—Trump’s FCC chair, Brendan Carr, spent a decade as part of a cult that trafficked and sexually exploited children and young women, former members allege.
—Almost 200 women have died in the U.S. due to an ectopic pregnancy between 2020 and 2025.
—“Jane Doe,” a former Cornell University student, has filed a lawsuit alleging she was coerced into taking incapacitating drugs, then gang-raped by seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers over a period of several hours at their fraternity house in October 2024. The plaintiff is suing Cornell University, several fraternity and sorority organizations and the seven Chi Phi members: Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar.
—A jury in Lima, Ohio, has indicted a 22-year-old woman for “abuse of a corpse” after she was arrested in February when she suffered a miscarriage and placed the fetal remains in the trash.
—The same month the details of the Cornell case emerged, a student at Louisiana State University is seeking criminal charges against a student football player for allegedly sexually assaulting her in October 2025. A Title IX investigation at the university level has found that the student-athlete is “responsible” for “sexual assault” and “forcible rape.” However, an appeals judge reduced his punishment from suspension to probation.

… and more.

‘To Catch a Predator’ at Cornell

PUBLISHED 9/28/2026 by

Feminists on the internet are erupting in rage and recognition after a former Cornell University student filed a lawsuit alleging she was pressured to take ketamine and was subsequently gang-raped for seven hours at a Cornell fraternity house.

At the same time, A24’s new blockbuster Primetime just hit theaters. And as pedophiles and predators continue to occupy the highest echelons of the U.S. government and walk free at universities across the country, Primetime captures why public exposure can feel like the only recourse left when institutions fail to act.

The Cornell case now has a consequential new development: This week, Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten says his office is reopening its investigation and acknowledged his office relied on campus police’s investigation rather than conducting its own.

Public outrage helped bring the case back into view, but it cannot be the primary way that we seek justice. What matters now is whether Cornell and law enforcement answer the questions raised by Doe’s lawsuit … and whether the next student who comes forward has to wait for the Internet to demand those answers.

High School Sex Ed Is No Longer the Norm. That’s a Problem When Students Go to College.

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

It’s back-to-school season, and besides exams, essays and job applications, college students have another threat to worry about: sexual assault. As many U.S. universities start their fall semesters, we’re heading into the “Red Zone”—the high-risk period on college campuses from now through Thanksgiving break, when over 50 percent of all campus sexual assaults occur.

But many students arrive on campus without having received the sex education that could help prepare them to navigate consent, communication and sexual relationships. A recent survey from college sexual assault prevention nonprofit It’s On Us found that more than two-thirds of men now in college never received formal sex education in high school.

Millions of U.S. high schoolers lack comprehensive, inclusive sex education—or receive no sex education at all—leaving too many without meaningful instruction on consent and communication before they enter college. Today, 36 states and the District of Columbia require schools to teach sex ed. But not all require curricula to cover basics such as consent and contraception, and some do not even mandate that sex education taught in schools be medically accurate.

And instead of closing those gaps, the Trump administration is making them worse. Its attacks on public school sex ed include cutting millions of dollars in funding for community sex education and teen pregnancy prevention programs, while encouraging organizations to rewrite their sex ed programs to promote pregnancy and parenthood.

When it Comes to Consent, ‘Yes Means Yes’ Is Not Enough

PUBLISHED 6/20/2026 by

In 1993, Saturday Night Live parodied a new affirmative consent policy at Antioch College with a sketch starring Mike Myers who asks explicit consent for each intimate act such as, “May I elevate the level of sexual intimacy by feeling your buttocks?” The joke landed because the policy seemed absurd—the punchline signaling political correctness run amok.

Decades later, affirmative consent policies like Antioch’s are now standard at universities across the country.

The arc from national ridicule to national norm was driven by survivors, educators, researchers and students themselves who pushed for a shift from “no means no” toward “yes means yes.” Advocates sought to articulate that women are not merely gatekeepers—survivors are not culpable for not articulating “no” (i.e. silence doesn’t equal consent). Instead, it’s on everyone to make sure they have a clear “yes.” This movement simultaneously sought to emphasize women’s sexual agency, empowering them to actively express “yes” to desired sexual encounters. 

Yet despite widespread adoption of affirmative consent policies on campuses, not much has changed. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, rates of sexual violence on college campuses remain high, with one in five women and one in 16 men experiencing assault, and over 40 percent experiencing sexually harassing behavior.

This persistence suggests that consent alone cannot bear the weight we place upon it.

A New Playbook for College Athletes: Consent, Intervention and Prevention

PUBLISHED 5/5/2026 by

June 2026 will mark the 54th anniversary of Title IX, the 1972 federal law barring sex-based discrimination in education, ensuring equal participation in sports and prohibiting sexual violence in educational programs receiving federal funding.

But even though Title IX passed more than half a century ago, and significantly more women now go to college than men, gender-based violence is still rampant among college students. Thirteen percent of U.S. college students experience rape or sexual assault during their time on (or off) campus. For women, that number doubles: 26.4 percent of women (and 6.8 percent of men) undergraduates experience sexual violence. Young women are especially vulnerable, compared to older grad students, and women college students aged 18 to 24 are three times more likely to experience gender-based violence than women in general.

Most colleges and universities have standard anti-sexual violence training during freshman orientation (often just required videos or something students click through online), but this information is often quickly forgotten or not practical enough for students to easily apply to their own lives and interactions. The nonprofit sexual assault prevention organization It’s On Us is seeking to change that with the The Playbook 2.0, a research-based workshop series for college athletes.

Federal Civil Rights Protections for Students Are Being Hollowed Out

PUBLISHED 1/28/2026 by

At least 25,000 unresolved civil rights complaints involving race, gender and disability discrimination are currently stalled as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights—leaving students in K-12 schools and colleges with few viable paths to federal protection.

At the same time, new Title IX guidance has shifted federal priorities away from survivors of sexual violence and toward expanded due-process protections for the accused—further eroding accountability in school environments already struggling to respond to gender-based harm.

Taken together, these changes represent a sweeping redefinition of equal access to education—one that disproportionately harms women, students of color, disabled students and survivors of sexual assault.

Last semester, after I published a piece in Ms. critiquing Charlie Kirk and violent masculinity, South Carolina politicians—including Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Rep. Ralph Norman—publicly suggested I should be fired. In a climate where ideologically driven attacks on funding and governance threaten the very survival of colleges and universities, I ultimately resigned my full professorship. The message from state lawmakers was unmistakable: Even private institutions are no longer insulated from direct government interference, regardless of stated commitments to academic freedom.