Hey, anybody remember the Duke lacrosse case?

New York Times: Duke? Never heard of it.

How about the gang rape at the University of Virginia?

New York Times: Is Virginia a state?

Mattress Girl? Jamie Leigh Jones? Tawana Brawley?

New York Times: Nope. Not ringing a bell.

As the Cornell gang rape story demonstrates, the media cannot learn from the 49th kick of a mule. Reporters get so excited imagining they’ve finally found a case proving American men are huge rapists, they can’t slow down and calmly consider the possibility that the accusation might not be true.

In case you’ve missed one of the 3 trillion reports on the latest hoped-for rape, the pseudonymous “Jane Doe” recently sued Cornell University, Chi Phi, Delta Delta Delta, Moonies Bar, seven individual fraternity members and every living human being who was in Ithaca, NY on October 19, 2024, claiming she was gang-raped and possibly even disinvited to a Halloween party although that hasn’t been confirmed yet. And yes, and it’s everyone’s fault but hers.

First, on the plausibility front: Universities have such a hair-trigger for nabbing any potential rapists on campus that, in the last decade alone, they’ve had to settle hundreds of lawsuits brought by male students subjected to Title IX investigations, paying out about a hundred million dollars. But now we’re supposed to believe that Cornell’s response to an alleged gang-rape at the Chi Phi house was to shrug and say, Boys will be boys!

If an Ivy League university with a dozen diversity administrators performed a full-court Title IX investigation, producing a 100-plus page report that resulted in expulsions and suspensions, but didn’t provide grounds for a criminal prosecution, this isn’t a case crying out for re-investigation.

The real story of the “Cornell Seven” isn’t the sexual debauchery of a few lowlifes. It’s that, contrary to all the venomous denunciations of fraternities, it was the Greek system that stoutly rejected the depraved, sexually-liberated, free love ethos of Hollywood, academia and the media.

The basic facts, corroborated by Doe’s own statements and texts, are these. On October 19, 2024, she got drunk, and hauled herself across town to the Chi Phi house, hoping to have sex with a boy there. He proposed a threesome and she agreed — later texting Player Number Three, “honestly i really liked being w u and matt.”

Over the course of the evening, three more frat brothers joined the grisly proceedings, consuming Ketamine and engaging in various sex acts with Doe. Two others ducked in for five minutes, chatted with Doe, and left without touching her, according to them, which is consistent with her statement to the police.

Whenever one of the boys asked Doe if she was okay, she brushed off their concerns, saying things like, “We’re all consenting adults here,” and “This was normal in the medieval times.”

It wasn’t — but, boy, that sounds sophisticated! Doe should get a job writing for the Times.

Actual articles:

— Jake Nevins, “A Case for Hookups With Strangers” (Jan. 16, 2025)

— “Traveling for a Cuddle, or More, at European Sex Parties” (Nov. 13, 2024)

— Evan Sterrett, “A Throuple’s Tricky Geometry” (Oct. 28, 2022)

— Megan Nolan, “The Joys of Frivolous Sex” (Dec. 22, 2020)

— Valeriya Safronova, “Dating experts explain polyamory and open relationships” (Oct. 25, 2016)

What about the Ivy League university — only “nominally esteemed,” according to the Times — entrusted by Doe’s parents to educate her? Some recent offerings will give you the tenor of the moral instruction there, absolutely typical of academia:

— An exhibit on “Taboo-breaking sex” and “stereotype-breaking women,” intended to promote the view that “pleasurable, consensual sex could never be ‘anti-feminist’”;

— A lecture on “Throuples and non-monogamy”;

— A course called “Decadence” to study writers who “sought to free the pleasures of ... sexual desire from their more conventional ethical moorings.”

Luckily, fraternities and sororities do not share the degenerate morals of the media and the universities. By the time Doe woke up the next morning, the story of what happened at Chi Phi had spread like wildfire through the Greek system. As she said, her reputation was “destroyed.” All week, Doe’s sorority sisters were fielding calls about Doe’s participation in an orgy.

Adopting the blase attitude toward sex promoted at places like Cornell and the Times, Doe texted Ingalls about the fallout, saying, “everyone needs to grow up ‘cause sexuality and sex ... is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common.” She noted that she was “really open minded.” Yes, I think we all noticed that.

Good job, Cornell! Doe had successfully separated the pleasures of sex from “conventional ethical moorings” — just as the course offering had suggested.

But eventually, the normal human reactions emanating from the fraternities and sororities overwhelmed Doe’s urbane sophisticate act. Soon she was begging her roommate: “If anyone asks about this, say it didn’t happen.”

Alas, it was too late. The gossip mill was running wild. Ten days after the squalid incident, she was expressly disinvited from the Chi Phi Halloween party by the fraternity president, upsetting her greatly. On Nov. 8, three weeks after her messy downfall, Doe claimed she’d been raped. The only surprise is that it took her so long to get to this page in the playbook.

What we’re witnessing is not Doe’s needing three weeks of “internal processing” to recall that she’d been violently gang-raped. It’s the operation of “shame” that helps discourage knuckleheaded college kids from making stupid choices, even as popular culture encourages them to be — as the Cornell exhibit put it — “stereotype-breaking women” having “taboo-breaking sex.”

Absurdly, the Times acts as if fraternities are the problem, and quotes a Cornell student demanding that they all be shut down. (That was from Delphi Lyra who spent 6 weeks in Ecuador last year “participating in a de-colonial unlearning education program” — something no self-respecting frat boy has ever done.)

The very reason the Greek system is so loathed by the left is that fraternal organizations tend to be the most conservative institutions on campus. (Also, liberals generally aren’t good looking enough to join a decent one.)

In the free-love sixties, colleges may have abandoned their parietal rules, but for any universities lucky enough to have them, fraternities and sororities have not. Ask Jane Doe.

COPYRIGHT 2026 ANN COULTER