I've stayed away from the Cornell Seven story because, frankly, I find the whole thing disgusting.
I don't have an opinion on what really happened because I wasn't there, and there are conflicting stories; as new evidence comes out, reasonable doubt about the "victim's" story grows. Still, regardless of the specifics, in my rather Victorian eyes, nobody comes out looking all that great.
So let's set aside the question of the guilt or innocence of any of the accused or the accuser, and focus on an issue that doesn't actually require a judgment: how Pravda has reported it.
This is going to raise questions for NYT. They reported on these texts but did not report on Jane Doe referring to the incident as a "gangbang" before adding, "our body our choice." The NYT story appeared to be based on the Title IX investigation docs. These texts are not in the unredacted version, so it's unclear if the Times intentionally left this out or received the snippets elsewhere and published without the full context.
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) October 8, 2026
It turns out that some media outlets had in their possession exculpatory evidence that, while not exactly exonerating the boys who have been accused of sexual assault, certainly put the facts in a totally different light. These facts will likely come up as the legal process moves forward, but they have been withheld because the case is not being tried right now.
The case is being decided in the court of public opinion, and the media is prosecuting the accused, and the media can do what prosecutors can't: hide relevant facts that would influence the outcome.
@JSweetLI Update: @FDRLST’s @briannalyman2 asked CBS NY for comment. They confirmed having the full text exchange and choosing to leave “our body our choice” out of the story. (This means NYT likely got the same info from Jane Doe’s camp and made the same choice.) https://t.co/1kRty8zwyn https://t.co/S3ApSE5PYT
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) October 10, 2026
The reason why the case was never prosecuted in the past is pretty simple: Jane Doe originally expressed happiness about what happened behind closed doors, and there is a significant amount of evidence that she changed her mind about that after she suffered social opprobrium for acting like a "slut."
No doubt this surprised her because the reigning ideology at Cornell, fully backed by the administration, celebrates polyamory and sexual "kink." Cornell Health had Resident Assistants put up flyers promoting sex with multiple partners at a time, and the illusion that this was socially encouraged was created by the college. It's an illusion that doesn't hold up to a test, since most people thrill to the imagining, but recoil at the reality.
Cornell handed students raunchy sex checklist discussing 'three partners at a time' - which could've led to frat orgies: critics https://t.co/1vMK1QKEvQ
— New York Post (@nypost) October 10, 2026
We've all heard about how colleges and universities promote transgressive sexual practices, and students probably like the idea more in theory than in practice. Cornell hosts a "sex week," features a "kink club," and even distributes checklists about how to have sex while intoxicated or high on drugs.
Kids may take this all in, but talking about it is hardly the same as approving of it. Jane Doe herself described the social blowback and proudly texted to one of the men that she didn't care. ""our body, our choice,"." Now she says that she was just dealing with the trauma of sexual assault and didn't mean it.
Whatever. What matters to me is that the college promoted this behavior and now acts shocked that it happened. And, as importantly, the media decided to cover up the early texts where she said she had a good time engaging in the sexual activity.
That's Narrative™ control. They want to tell a simple moral story where none exists, and that story is that an innocent, victimized girl was raped by frat boys. The evidence complicates that story, so they picked and chose which facts to tell you.
We don't know if The New York Times had the full set of texts when they wrote a story that simplified the events into "frat boys bad, innocent girl good," but we do know that CBS New York did, because they admit it and defend their decision to deceive people as an editorial decision.
Well, indeed it was an editorial decision, and the editors decided to lie by omission. It really is no different than the methods used in the "fine people" hoax — cut and paste the text to make it say what you want it to. That's not journalism as we conceive of it, but that is journalism as it is practiced today.
The dispute between the Cornell Seven and Jane Doe is yet another political football where the facts get compressed and distorted to make a complicated reality into a simple morality play that fits into the leftist Narrative™. We will never get the full truth for any number of reasons, but one of the biggest is that nobody involved in telling the story has an interest in getting to it.
The boys want to get off, even if they did something wrong. Jane Doe wants a certain story to be told, and there is no greater social currency in our society than victimhood. The politicians want an issue they can exploit. Talking heads want to fit the facts to promote their ideological priors. And the Critical Theorists want to hang the patriarchy.
Nobody looks great coming out of this, but as of now the two institutions that look the worst are Cornell, which has a double standard on the sexual practices issue, and the media, which is filled with liars.
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