President Kotlikoff and Provost Bala,
As members of the Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies Program and Field, we are compelled to stand against sexual assault on campus and to address how gender and power are unequally shaping student, staff, and faculty lives at Cornell.
We recognize the trauma endured by Jane Doe, past Jane Does, and other survivors. Sexual assault is not just a traumatic problem for the survivor. It sends shockwaves throughout our entire community. It conveys the message that the assaulted and all women on campus are not equal to everyone else, that women can be subject to abuse for the amusement of others, that women’s pain means nothing. That is why we are utterly appalled by the university’s disciplinary response concerning the 2024 sexual assault case.
We commend the convening of the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault. We support its recommendations to increase knowledge, teaching, and programming about consent and citizenship. And yet these recommendations are not enough to confront the culture of impunity and inequality that teaches certain students that they can get away with crimes and violence if they can write persuasive essays. This outcome is even more egregious, knowing that students were punished and even forced to flee the country after Cornell accused them of violence for banging pots at a job fair. Cornell’s process makes a mockery of restorative justice.
Consider the group chat. Participation in the thread was collusion and complicity in violence. It should be treated as such. When facing such minor consequences, how can students seriously learn the depth of pain suffered by the assaulted? How can they begin to see the consequences of their actions on others? How can they be prevented from committing such violence again, especially when college-attending perpetrators of sexual violence who have recognized their actions to be sexual assault are also likely to have assaulted more than once? Writing an essay is an action that can only benefit the perpetrator. Where is the responsibility towards and repair for the victim?
Consider the psychological harm it takes to make allegations, to gather witnesses, to be interrogated while those who you are accusing are in the same room staring at you. Having more knowledge about consent is needed, but it does not address the injustice underlying the current mechanisms for reporting sexual assault at our institution and the limited forms of accountability and culpability that left perpetrators on campus.
Consider the message that Cornell’s disciplinary action sends when it considers hours of assaulting another student as a disciplinary problem resolved with essay-writing. Such disciplinary response signals that sexual assault is a trivial and minor error. There is an abyss between the ideals of reparative and restorative justice and Cornell's implementation which leaves systemic sexual violence and impunity intact. Consider, in comparison, the label of violence placed on student activists who speak up and act against the worst crime against humanity, genocide.
How can we, in good conscience, persuade prospective students to attend a university where they have a greater chance of experiencing sexual assault than the national average? Some of us hesitate sending our own children to Cornell. It is on all of us at Cornell to fix this culture of impunity that belittles the violence of sexual assault and mislabels activism as violence. That starts with undoing institutional privileges that protect abusers and the policing that protects the interests of select university’s donors at the expense of its students. It includes redesigning the disciplinary process to consider the impact of sexual violence in ways that support reporters and survivors instead of harming them.
We in FGSS are planning a teach in and we will continue to teach about structural origins of and responses to gendered violence. However, we alone cannot effect the broad change in campus climate that is clearly needed. We need a longer and more serious commitment to healing the distrust and outrage of this campus community. We ask you to recognize that the recommendations of the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault are only the start of fixing Cornell's unequal and unjust culture of impunity.
Sincerely,
Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies Core Program Members
Kate McCullough, Director of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Professor of Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies and English
Juno Salazar Parreñas, Director of Undergraduate Studies for Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Associate Prof of Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Science & Technology Studies
Saida Hodzic, Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Associate Professor Anthropology
Lucinda Ramberg, Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Anthropology
Jess Marie Newman, Visiting Assistant Professor of Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Anthropology
Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies Field Members
Mari Jarris, Assistant Professor of German Studies
Cat Lambert, Assistant Professor of Classics
Masha Raskolnikov, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies
Suman Seth, Chair & Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science, Department of Science and Technology Studies
Noah Tamarkin, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies
Sara Warner, Director of LGBT Studies and Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts
Links above:
Lynse, Benjamin. “U.N. Special Rapporteurs Raise Concern Over Alleged Human Rights Violations at Cornell, Four Other Universities.” Cornell Sun. January 16, 2026.
https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2026/01/u-n-special-rapporteurs-raise-concern-over-alleged-human-rights-violations-at-cornell-four-other-universities
Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault. Final Report. March 10, 2026.
https://provost.cornell.edu/initiatives/task-force-sa/tfsa-final-report-2026.pdf
France-Miller, Dorothy. “Pro-Palestine Protestors Disrupt Career Fair, Confront Boeing Recruiters.” Cornell Sun. September 18, 2024.
https://www.cornellsun.com/article/2024/09/pro-palestine-protesters-disrupt-career-fair-confront-boeing-recruiters
Abbey A, McAuslan P. A longitudinal examination of male college students' perpetration of sexual assault. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2004 Oct;72(5):747-56. doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.72.5.747. PMID: 15482033; PMCID: PMC4484276.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4484276/
Copeland, Rob. “Warning of ‘Grave’ Errors, Powerful Donors Push Universities on Hamas.’ New York Times. October 15, 2023.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/business/harvard-upenn-hamas-israel-students-donors.html
