We Need To Talk About Sexual Violence on Campus

When I arrived at Harvard, I thought I had finally made it. I walked through the Yard believing this could be the beginning of the life I had imagined for years.

One week later, I was sexually assaulted.

I’ve hesitated to speak those words out loud: sexual assault, rape. People lower their voices to say those words. When a survivor speaks, the conversation can quickly become about whether she drank too much, why she was with him, what she remembers, or how quickly she made a report. I know because I asked myself those same questions.

But the recent lawsuit involving Cornell University has motivated me to speak out. A former Cornell student, identified as Jane Doe, filed a lawsuit this September alleging she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity in 2024. The case has sparked massive media attention and national outrage.

Are we not angry enough? Why does it take high-profile cases like these for all of us to finally speak out?

The only reason we know about this case is because the survivor was brave enough to speak up, and I am so proud of Jane Doe for having the strength to file a lawsuit. But I also think of the many survivors who couldn’t. That includes me.

A week into my freshman year, I was drugged and raped on campus. Although I don’t remember the whole incident, I blamed myself for what had happened. I reported the incident to Harvard’s Title IX Office and they told me my options were to file a formal complaint, file an informal complaint, or do nothing. I was told it would likely take almost a year to go through a formal Title IX process.

Only a month into college, I decided not to file a complaint because the thought of having to relive my rape through an investigation, and of wondering if Harvard would find my rapist guilty, would only take more of what was already taken from me.

I remember thinking I’d done everything I was supposed to by disclosing what had happened, and still I felt powerless. To this day, my rapist walks around campus.

I am not surprised that Jane Doe has remained Jane Doe. I am not surprised that it has taken two years for her to sue. I am not surprised that this happened at an Ivy League institution. I am not surprised because this is a frequent part of the college experience.

What makes Jane Doe’s case even more devastating is that her story is all too familiar. In a 2025 survey by Cornell itself, 35 percent of undergraduate women reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact during their time there. Nationally, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network reported in 2019 that 13 percent of undergraduate students were raped or sexually assaulted after starting college, including about one in four undergraduate women.

We cannot keep treating these numbers as an unavoidable part of college life.

Harvard students complete mandatory sexual misconduct prevention modules, but not everyone takes them seriously. We have no shortage of Title IX training, a range of hotlines, and resources like the confidential SHARE team and Harvard’s Counseling and Mental Health Services. But policy cannot be the beginning and end of the conversation.

We need a culture where students understand consent before they ever need to define misconduct. We need freshmen to know where to turn before something happens, not after. We need friends to know what it looks like to believe someone, support them, and not turn their trauma into gossip. Universities need to confront the power structures that can make sexual violence easier to conceal, whether that structure is a fraternity, a sports team, or simply the fear that speaking up will destroy someone’s social life.

According to Jane Doe’s lawsuit, a message was sent out to the fraternity’s group chat at 1:42 a.m. advertising “free pussy,” and more men came running. What about the people who saw that message and didn’t say anything? The people who didn’t shame their “brothers” for what they had done? This is how rape becomes normalized.

It is normal for institutions to have sexual assault offices because sexual assault happens. It is normal for universities to have hotlines because students need them. Harvard students talk constantly about changing the world, but change doesn’t always begin with a new policy or another institutional statement. Sometimes it begins with being willing to say the words we have spent too long avoiding: sexual assault, rape, survivor.

Many people treat “rape” or “sexual assault” like dirty words. But what is dirty are these acts themselves, and the perpetrators who chose to commit them against women, men, and children.

We need to wake up to what is happening around us. Not because every campus is the same, and not because every institution has failed in the same way, but because no university should accept a culture of sexual violence as the norm.

The question is no longer whether sexual assault happens. We know that it does. The question is what we are willing to do about it.

Editors’ note: We made the decision to run this op-ed anonymously due to the private and intensely personal nature of its content. It is our hope that this piece will bring to light issues that affect members of our community.

—Heidi S. Enger and Zakiriya H. Gladney, Editorial Chairs

—E. Matteo Diaz, President