ITHACA, New York — A sea of students hangs on every word as Saya Taylor, an 18-year-old Cornell University student, urged them to think beyond the trauma of the past few weeks.
“We are known as the rape school, but we don’t have to be,” Taylor boomed into a microphone before a vast crowd, her pink hair falling over her face. “We can be the students that lead a nationwide reform movement against the institutions that perpetuate rape at every single level.”
On Monday afternoon, Taylor was one of about a dozen speakers at a “Justice for Survivors” protest blasting Cornell for perpetuating a culture that allows rape to go unpunished.
Their fury was on behalf of Jane Doe, the anonymous student who filed a September 14 lawsuit alleging that seven male students gang-raped her at a fraternity house in 2024. The student, then 20 years old, initially described the evening—including her drinking and use of a dissociative drug called ketamine—as voluntary and consensual. Then, more than two weeks after the alleged incident, with rumors about her in full swirl on campus, Jane Doe requested a rape kit at a local emergency room. At the time, the Tompkins County district attorney declined to bring charges in relation to the case based on a statement Jane Doe had given to university police, finding the description of her participation to be “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
The case has since exploded far beyond Ithaca, dividing the country as it wrestles with some of the thorniest questions that remain nearly a decade after #MeToo: What happens when a woman comes to understand a sexual encounter as rape in retrospect? How relevant should a woman’s alcohol and drug consumption be in determining consent? And should the names of the accused men be public given they have not been charged with a crime?
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