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When I was a kid, my community service project was volunteering at what was then called the Rape Treatment Center in Santa Monica, California.
I remember sitting in the office helping file cases. Files about women who said they’d been raped by police officers after being pulled over. Files about women who reported being raped after a night out, then found themselves answering questions about how much they’d had to drink or what they’d been wearing. And a lot of files involving college students.
This was the late ‘80s. Even then, I could see a pattern. The cases involving athletes and fraternities seemed to activate an entire system: coaches, administrators, alumni, lawyers. Suddenly, the question wasn’t only what happened to her. It was what an accusation might do to his future.
Of course rape allegations can be complicated. An accusation is not proof. The accused deserves due process. Getting it wrong can alter the course of someone’s life.
What bothered me then was how exquisitely attuned institutions seemed to the life-altering consequences for one of those people. What would this do to his future? His education? His career? His reputation?
Those are legitimate questions. But being raped can alter the course of a life, too. So can reporting it and not being believed. Or watching an institution close ranks around everyone but you.
It’s been decades since I filed those cases. (Man, that’s hard to write.)
After forty years of shifting attitudes, laws, and rules, I thought something important really did change. Especially on university campuses. Not that women should automatically be believed or men presumed guilty. That institutions had learned to take an allegation seriously, investigate it fairly, and weigh the consequences for both people.
Then came the story of the Cornell 7, which we write about below.
Reading it brought back something I hadn’t thought about in years: those files.
A lot has changed since the 1980s. The language changed. The rules changed. Some instincts changed.
But maybe we’ve been a little too confident about how much the power structures changed with them. In some places, the old machinery is still there. And sometimes it takes a story like this to remind us.
In today’s newsletter: A Cornell gang rape case, reopened. This is bigger than one campus. Trump narrows LGBTQ college protections. Automakers, start your guessing. CNN gets left out. And in News That Doesn’t Suck… your dog heard that!
College Nightmare: [Trigger warning: Discussion of sexual assault, graphic language] A New York district attorneyreopened an investigationinto the alleged gang rape of a woman at a Cornell fraternity house after she filed alawsuitagainst the seven men she accuses of participating in the rape, the university, and others. According to the lawsuit, the woman, a former Cornell student referred to anonymously as Jane Doe, went to the house of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. There, she alleges multiple fraternity members “drugged and raped” her. The lawsuit claims that one of the defendants sent a message to a fraternity Snapchat group chat advertising “free pussy,” encouraging other fraternity members “to join in on the gang rape.” “There were so many people that could have prevented it,” Jane Doe’sattorney said, “and they didn’t. I’ve never seen anything like it.” A few weeks later, Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell police, and the university launched a Title IX investigation. The universitybannedits chapter of Chi Phi and launched a task force on sexual assaults, which published aformal reportand made recommendations earlier this year. Two of the seven accused frat members were expelled. The other five were made to serve brief suspensions and attend workshops. Some were assigned essays (yes you read that right). None faced criminal charges, Jane Doe’s lawyersaid. Today, after the civil suit made national headlines and went viral, the district attorneysaid hehad been unable to bring charges because Jane Doe’s original police statement “described her drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” He said his office is now preparing to present a case to a grand jury. Jane Doe’s lawyerinsistedher allegations to police and in the lawsuit were “not materially different,” and faulted the district attorney’s office for not conducting an independent investigation.Not New: Sexual assault is widespread on college campuses. Cornell’s2025 surveyfound that 35% of undergraduate women experienced “nonconsensual sexual contact,” up from 23% in 2023. Cornell cautions the 2025 survey had a significantly lower response rate. Nationwide, roughlyone in every fourundergraduate women and one in 14 undergraduate men experience rape or sexual assault at college. Experts believe these figures are massiveundercounts, as many incidents go unreported.What’s Fair: The rules governing how colleges handle sexual misconduct are shifting again, thanks to Trump. The Education Department just formallyscrappedBiden-era rules on campus sexual harassment and assault andannouncedit isreturning torulesfrom Trump’s first term. Those rulesreversed stricterObama-era policies that Trump officialsclaimedwere unfair to the accused,reportedly following pressurefrom men’s rights organizations claiming an epidemic of false rape allegations. The Trump-era rules narrow the kinds of incidents that must be investigated, allow students who file reports to be cross examined, and permit universities to require higher standards of evidence to determine responsibility. When these changes were first proposed, dozens of organizations and expertsprotested, withone warningthey would “tip the balance … heavily in favor of alleged perpetrators.”Minority Targets: The Trump administration’s repeal of Biden’s Title IX protections also weakens federalprotectionsfor LGBTQ students, aswell asstudents who are pregnant or parenting. The Biden-era rule strengthened Title IX protections based on gender identity and sexual orientation. In 2025, a federal judge struck it down in a case that challenged protections for transgender students. The Trump administration has now formally repealed it without public comment, which itclaimed“would be contrary to public interest.” It reportedlyplansto amend Title IX itself to specify that its protections are based on biological sex at birth.
My Dinner With Amodei: After a series of conflicts with the Trump administration, Dario Amodei, CEO of AI giant Anthropic,dined privatelywith Trump Sunday night, apparently todiscussAI regulation. It was theirfirstone-on-one meeting. Unlike other tech executives, Amodei had previouslyavoidedcourting the president, instead publicly calling for slowing down and regulating AI development. The dinner comes after an appeals courtsided with the Pentagonin a fight over whether the military can use Anthropic’s AI models for autonomous weapons and surveillance. The ruling could complicate business for Anthropic just as the companyprepares for a massive IPOthat could value it at $1.5 trillion or more. We don’t know what the two men discussed but it would be a perfect time to smooth over differences with Trump. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are set tomeet AI executivesTuesday. And if you want a laugh, check out SNL’s sendup of Amodei▶here.**How Many Alarms is This:**Another week, another warning from the people who helped build AI. A group of AI experts and researchers, including senior officials at OpenAI and Anthropic, published a newwhite paperurginglawmakers to actbefore AI achieves the ability toimprove itselfwithout human input. The paperwarnsthis phenomenon, called “recursive self-improvement,” could lead to an “intelligence explosion” with potentially serious consequences.What Happened to Press Solidarity: The White HouseblockedCNN from Air Force One this weekend, preventing it fromfulfilling its dutiesof covering Trump for the TV press pool. The other four major networks in the pool — ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — willcontinue to coverTrump as normal, despite the administration’s ongoing attacks against CNN. We’ll see if CNN is given access when it is in the travel pool later this week.
Detente: The US and Chinaannouncedthey are lowering tariffs on $60 billion worth of products, $30 billion from each country. See the full list of Chinese products included in the dealhere. U.S. soybeans aren’t included. China didagreeto purchase at least 10 million metric tons of coal next year. U.S. soybeans are not included.Who Needs Efficiency: The Trump administration announced it willrelaxBiden-era fuel efficiency standards for gas-powered cars and light trucks. It’s asymbolicmove, as Congress alreadyremovedfines for automakers that failed to meet the previous efficiency standard. Administration officials said the relaxed efficiency standards wouldlower the priceof new cars. But criticswarnedthose savings could be outweighed by the cost of using more fuel — plus the environmental cost of burning more fossil fuels. Also, it takes years for automakers to design and manufacture cars to different standards, and many choose not to alter their plans, either to meet different state-level standards or because they assume a future administration will reimpose those old standards.
Mystery in the Cotswolds: UK police areinvestigatinga potentialterror plotagainst a large air base, which the US military has been using for the war with Iran. Authorities arrested five men, all British nationals in their early 20s, close to the base. They have since beenreleasedon bail. Trump claimed the men had been “under investigation” — but itseemsthe arrests were only made after a local farmercalled policeto report suspicious activity. The farmer said she was “absolutely staggered that it was left to me as a member of the public to see and report this.”Motive: Authorities arestill investigatingpotential motives, including the possibility that the men were working on behalf of Iran. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Julywarnedthat it considered UK bases used by the US to be “legitimate targets.” The Iranian embassy in London𝕏deniedIran’s involvement.
Swept Under: Eight U.S. Marines were injured after an Iranian cruise missile struck a vessel they were on in the Strait of Hormuz, a[report by NBC](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-marines-injured-recent-iranian-at…
