No national controversy is complete until Amanda Marcotte has made a fool of herself about it, and the feminist writer has gotten a good head start on the so-called “Cornell 7” case. The sordid tale of an Ivy League orgy that devolved into accusations of sexual assault prompted Marcotte to indict “Trumpism” as somehow explaining skeptical reactions to the story.
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Before getting into the details of what happened to “Jane Doe” at a Cornell University frat house two years ago — or what Marcotte had to say about it — it is best to begin by recalling Marcotte’s history of error and folly. She was a mere independent feminist blogger in January 2007 when it was announced that she (along with the execrable Melissa McEwan) would be joining the Democratic presidential campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. That gig was short-lived, as Marcotte’s previous commentary proved too controversial for Edwards, who said he was “personally offended.” (The Edwards campaign itself later collapsed in ignominy.)
Among the topics that Marcotte addressed in her (now deleted) blog was the infamous 2006 rape hoax involving Duke University lacrosse team (see my column, “The Long Shadow of a Lie: The Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax, 20 Years Later“). After the charges against the falsely accused players were dismissed, Marcotte mockingly wrote: “Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.” The accuser (Crystal Mangum) was lying, and the district attorney (Mike Nifong) was corrupt, but Marcotte continued to insist that the “white boys” were guilty. Those who had defended the Duke players were “rape-loving scum,” Marcotte subsequently declared.
Marcotte has never admitted error, never apologized, and apparently never learned any lessons from that disgrace, as she later went all-in on another notorious rape hoax, the 2014 University of Virginia case that resulted in a multimillion-dollar defamation verdict against Rolling Stone magazine. In that case, an emotionally disturbed freshman student named Jackie invented a gang rape during a party at a fraternity house orchestrated by a junior named Haven Monahan. It turned out that no such party occurred on the night in question, and there was no UVA student named Haven Monahan. Jackie had created “Haven Monahan” using a fake email account and the photo of a former high school classmate who never attended UVA, in an apparent scheme to inspire jealousy in a guy she liked, but who hadn’t reciprocated her romantic interest (see “‘Hitler Made a Difference’: The Liberal Gang Rape of Journalism,” April 6, 2015).
As the Rolling Stone story unraveled in December 2014, Marcotte popped up to downplay the “media kerfuffle” over what she called “some discrepancies” in the story. Marcotte insisted that these discrepancies were “very likely to be the result of Jackie misremembering key details of the night” and lamented that “many anti-feminists have seized on these discrepancies to argue that Jackie is lying.” Marcotte was wrong and the “anti-feminists” were right, because Jackie was lying. Marcotte remained undaunted four months later, after it was proven that Jackie made up the whole rape story. Without admitting any error on her part, Marcotte proclaimed that the exposure of the UVA hoax was not a victory for “rape deniers,” as she labeled those who had doubted the Rolling Stone story from the beginning. Marcotte lamented that “anti-feminists are surely going to use this story to cast doubts on rape accusations that have nothing to do with this situation.”
Let’s be clear here: It’s the media bias, stupid.
Those whom Marcotte derides as “rape deniers” do not actually deny that rape occurs, nor are “anti-feminists” (a synonym for Republicans, in Marcotte’s lexicon) against the apprehension and punishment of rapists. What conservatives oppose, however, is the media’s habit of seizing on dubious atrocity tales to gin up a witch-hunt climate of hatred against male college students, what KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. have called the Campus Rape Frenzy. As with so many other issues, the media bias regarding sexual assault on college and university campuses is basically partisan: “Girls are getting raped by frat boys, and the only way to stop it is, VOTE DEMOCRAT!”
Such is the obvious motive for national news organizations turning the “Cornell 7” case into a cause célèbre, despite the fact that (a) it’s actually just about a handful of students and former students at an Ivy League school, and (b) the incident happened two years ago and was already the subject of extensive investigations by police, the local district attorney, and Cornell University itself. There are more than 340 million people in the United States, of whom at least 339.99 million have nothing to do with the “Cornell 7” saga, yet ABC News is running Good Morning America segments about it?
OK, as briefly as possible: “Jane Doe” (whose identity is not actually secret) was a sophomore member of the Cornell chapter of Delta Delta Delta (“Tri-Delt”) sorority. She had a crush on Matthew Ingalls, a member of the Chi Phi fraternity. They had been texting each other and, on the evening of October 19, 2024, Ingalls invited her to a party at the Chi Phi house. “Jane” spent the early part of the evening getting drunk at the Tri-Delt house, then visited a couple of bars in downtown Ithaca before walking a mile to the Chi Phi house. It was after 11 p.m. when she arrived at Chi Phi, having already consumed 10 drinks by her own admission. She had another beer and danced for a few minutes with Ingalls before he suggested that he, “Jane” and another Chi Phi member should have a ménage à trois.
By her own admission, in a sworn statement to police, “Jane” agreed to this proposition because (a) she was really attracted to Ingalls and (b) she interpreted the invitation to such a threesome to mean that she might get to witness some guy-on-guy action between Ingalls and the other male participant, Jonathan Newell (because “Jane” is pro-LGBTQ, or maybe just kinky like that). The initial threesome ended because Ingalls was too intoxicated to continue, and fell asleep. Then “Jane” and Newell were joined by another Chi Phi brother, Gillio Lopes, for another three-way. Later, Ingalls woke up and there was yet a third three-way with Ingalls, “Jane” and Chi Phi member Winston Lee. During this roughly five-hour span, “Jane” and her male partners were using the drug ketamine.
According to the local DA, Matthew Van Houten, the sworn statement by “Jane” did not describe any actual crime: “[She] did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” No criminal charges were filed, but the university administration conducted its own investigation and issued punishments that included expelling two of the participants, suspending two other Chi Phi members, banned a fifth Chi Phi (who had already graduated) from campus, and permanently shutting down the Chi Phi fraternity chapter at Cornell.
For those readers who have been keeping count, only four Chi Phi brothers (Ingalls, Newell, Lopes and Lee) are alleged to have had sex with “Jane Doe” that night, so why is it called the “Cornell 7” case? Because three other members of the fraternity (Diego Sarabia, Scott Kretzschmar and Scott Norris) visited the room where this orgy occurred. Sarabia tried to get involved in the action, but was pushed away by “Jane Doe,” while Kretzschmar and Norris walked in, saw what was happening, decided they weren’t interested, and then walked out.
All seven of these former Chi Phi brothers were named among the defendants in a civil lawsuit filed last month on behalf of “Jane Doe.” She dropped out of Cornell after the Chi Phi orgy or, as her lawsuit describes it, “criminal sex acts” perpetrated against her, an organized “gang rape,” because she “was incapable of consenting” due to her extreme level of intoxication. It was her lawsuit that resulted in this 2024 incident belatedly becoming a national news story, and prompted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to appoint the state Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to conduct a new investigation of the “Cornell 7” case.
Naturally, Amanda Marcotte decided that the world needed to hear her perspective on this saga. She is 100% committed to a victimhood narrative in which conservatives are sadistic villains:
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[A]ccording to some on the right, Doe has not suffered enough for reporting her alleged assault to the police and then later suing the accused, the university and the fraternity. It’s not enough that she saw no charges filed, or that reportedly only two of the accused were expelled from campus. On top of her existing pain, therefore, many of the MAGA faithful are punishing her further by calling her a liar, implying she’s a slut and even threatening to out her, which would put her personal safety at risk. Whatever their intent, by doing this, they are sending a strong message to any victim of rape who might feel tempted to seek justice: Stay silent, or you’ll be next.
Does that describe me? Or you? Or anyone else whose skepticism is aroused by various aspects of this story? Marcotte’s column includes references to Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, who have criticized the way the “Cornell 7” saga is being portrayed. If the media were reporting the story objectively, there would be nothing to criticize, but it is clear that most major news organization have taken the same stance as Marcotte, Hochul and James: “Jane Doe” is a victim, the seven Chi Phi brothers named as defendants in her lawsuit are all guilty of heinous crimes, and the previous investigations of the incident were basically a cover-up.
Permit me to declare my own bias: I despise everything about Cornell University and everyone associated with it. It’s the same with all our rotten “elite” universities, as I’ve been saying for years: “The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved.” Cornell is almost as bad as Harvard, and nearly worse than Brown. The faculty at Cornell leans so far left, they’re practically horizontal, and the students are mostly Communists, who rioted this week in support of “Jane Doe.”
Nothing makes me more uncomfortable than the idea of defending any Cornell student, much less a bunch of degenerate frat boys whose idea of a fun weekend is to load up on ketamine and run a train on any Tri-Delt who shows up for the party. Nevertheless, the frat boys aren’t worse than the rest of the students at Cornell, whose obvious motive for marching around with protest signs is because nobody ever invited them to an orgy. And whatever the controversy might be, if you ever see Amanda Marcotte on one side of an issue, you may be assured that truth and justice are on the other side. She is a reliable barometer of wrongness.
How is this about “Trumpism,” though? Cornell is a hive of leftism, and the area (Tompkins County) voted 74 percent for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The local DA is a Democrat, as are nearly all the administration and faculty of the university, who conducted the Title IX investigation of Chi Phi. There are no “MAGA faithful” implicated in the case. We are merely spectators at this circus.
However, everything is about Trump to those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and Amanda Marcotte might as well be Patient Zero of that epidemic. So in her column, Marcotte brings up the E. Jean Carroll farce (as if Carroll’s claims were plausible) and then proceeds to unload this absurd paragraph:
But the past decade of Trumpism has largely been built on stirring up male anger at women’s growing equality. Paranoid and unsupported claims that women have immense power to ruin men with false accusations have been the bread-and-butter of a MAGA media industry designed to exploit men’s resentment for profit. Their audiences yearn to hear that Jane Doe is the real bad guy here, and so attacking her without a single shred of real evidence against her is an opportunity that many right-wing pundits can’t seem to pass up.
Ah, “the bread-and-butter of a MAGA media industry”! Pardon me if I’m exploiting your resentment for profit, guys, but have you considered the possibility that Amanda Marcotte is wrong? Because she’s always wrong about everything, and if she is on the side of “Jane Doe,” the smart move is to assume that, indeed, “Jane Doe is the real bad guy here.”
These are the rules, and while Marcotte goes around accusing others of anger, paranoia, and resentment, those terms much more describe her and her fellow witches in the feminist coven. For the past decade, they have been seething in rage because Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, thereby depriving them of the First Female President they’d been promised (as the logical sequel to the First Black President). Feminists have been craving vengeance ever since, and ruining the lives of a few Cornell students is mere collateral damage — a few minor casualties — compared to the massive harm they’ve inflicted on other targets of their wrath.
Nothing feminists have done in their decade-long crusade against what Marcotte calls “Trumpism” has really helped women. Their agenda is entirely destructive in its intentions and results, and rallying in support of “Jane Doe” is not really about helping the former sorority girl, whose reputation is permanently ruined no matter what happens with her lawsuit. No, like everything else feminists have done for the past ten years, the “Cornell 7” fury is about trying to satisfy their appetite for vengeance. But their appetite is limitless, and as soon as they’re done with this episode, they’ll go hunting for new targets to destroy.
None of what they’re doing now will change anything. When it’s all said and done, Trump will still be president, Hillary will never be president, and Amanda Marcotte will always be wrong about everything. Bet on it.
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