On the evening 19 October 2024, a 20-year-old female student at Cornell University attended a sorority social event. Visibly drunk, she walked to the Chi Phi fraternity house. The young woman is now referred to as Jane Doe, to protect her anonymity, because of what allegedly happened there. She states that she was taken inside by her friend Matthew Ingalls, who plied her with booze and ketamine and proposed a threesome that escalated into an alleged gang rape.
Doe filed a civil lawsuit in September 2026 that could be a landmark case for women who have notoriously been ridiculed, humiliated and sexually abused by men in fraternities for decades – so much so that there is a subgenre of Hollywood films about it, usually comedies and mostly created by former frat boys. Some that feature sexual harassment and sexual assault for laughs include National Lampoon’s Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, Sorority Boys and Neighbors.
Doe’s lawsuit claims that she was so intoxicated she was incapable of even consenting to the original proposition of a threesome, much less what happened after that. It also says that at around 1.40am the men exchanged messages in a Snapchat group named "Chi Phi Actives". It alleges a student called Jonathan Newell said that there was "free pussy upstairs", that Ingalls added, "like you can walk in and whip it out”, and that subsequently a photo of Doe was sent. Another man is then said to have asked: "Shop still open?" The answer was yes. Ingalls is said to have added: "Boys come whip it out."
A screenshot of the ‘Chi Phi Actives’ Snapchat group messages on the night of the alleged incident.
A number of other men entered the room and Doe alleges she was "horrified" and hid under the covers. Two men took Doe into a closet and were allegedly "just raping" her as she was "in and out of consciousness". Doe was "completely incapacitated" at this point, she says. According to the lawsuit, she passed out at around 5:45am on the morning of 20 October.
It has recently come to light that, three weeks later, Doe made a phone call to Ingalls and recorded it. She asked: "Do you remember how any of these guys walked in?"
Ingalls didn’t tell her about the group chat. He said: "The door was just unlocked ... The party was sort of like crowded ... There was nowhere else to go."
Doe replied: "If I wanted to take this somewhere, what y'all did would be classified as gang rape."
Seven men were believed to have participated in the alleged assault, but over 50 men were on the group chat. That none of them seem to have expressed alarm on the chat, or called authorities to stop it, or used it as evidence to report it later, appears to demonstrate that this event is part of a wider culture and not an isolated incident.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which was closed in 2024. Photo: Matt Burkhartt / Getty
Three days after Doe filed a police report, the local chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity voted unanimously to remove the accused members from its rolls. The fraternity house was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus. No one imagines fraternities are banned without cause, so it seems extremely strange that the police have brought no charges against any of them.
According to the New York Times, “the [Cornell University] panel found Mr Ingalls responsible for sexual assault, judging that he was willing to manipulate, exploit and endanger Jane Doe for his own self-interest and the entertainment of others. Mr Newell was also accused of sexual assault, the university files show.” Ingalls’s lawyer declined to comment and Newell did not respond.
The rest of the men were variously suspended and/or made to attend sexual harassment seminars and write “reflection papers”. One man had already graduated and is banned from campus for three years. Jane Doe will probably not finish her studies and lives with the obvious emotional and mental consequences. The district attorney initially decided not to prosecute, but, in response to Doe’s civil lawsuit, the criminal case has been reopened and on 1 October this year, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, appointed New York attorney general Letitia James as a special prosecutor.
American college fraternities began in the 18th century, ostensibly to provide camaraderie, accommodation and future networking opportunities, but have long been associated with toxic behaviour, misogyny, bullying, racism and sexual assault, often fuelled by extreme drink and drug use. This is not just anecdotal.
In 2007 there was a study entitled "Behavior Differences Seven Months Later: Effects of a Rape Prevention Program on First-Year Men Who Join Fraternities", authored by three men: John D Foubert, Johnathan T Newberry and Jerry Tatum. The study found that first-year male undergrads who joined a fraternity were three times more likely to commit sexual assault during their first year than men who did not pledge: around 8% versus 2.5%. This was not some predisposition that led young men to engage in sexually coercive behaviour. They were changed by “Greek life”, as the fraternity lifestyle is often referred to by those in that world.
Perhaps any progress we’ve made is being destroyed by the frat house every young man can now carry in his pocket
Even more astoundingly, women in sororities, the female equivalent of fraternities, are 74% more likely to be sexually assaulted than women who do not join, specifically because of their exposure to unregulated frat-house environments where abuse of drugs and alcohol are prevalent.
There has been a lot of commentary about the Cornell case and much of the social media response has been in line with Bill Frezza’s notorious Forbes headline from 2014: “Drunk female guests are the gravest threat to fraternities”. The article, which was removed extremely quickly, went on to say: “As recriminations against fraternities mount and panicked college administrators search for an easy out, one factor doesn't seem to be getting sufficient analysis: drunk female guests … We have very little control over women who walk in the door carrying enough pre-gaming booze in their bellies to render them unconscious before the night is through." Frezza (who was then alumni president of his fraternity at MIT) was dropped by Forbes, but he maintained he stood by every word. If my Instagram feed is anything to go by, a lot of people agree with him.
There is a great deal of discourse that boils down to this: if a woman goes into a frat house, especially if she joins in the drinking, then what can she expect? She knows they will take advantage of her. That’s what frat boys do.
The Daily Bruin, the University of California’s legacy student newspaper, carried a headline last year: “Fraternity parties are a part of college life. Women must navigate them safely”. The well-meaning article, by a female student journalist, included the advice: “Be careful, because your safety is never guaranteed … If [women get joy] from attending fraternity parties, so be it. But I urge them to do so guided by a strong sense of caution.”
It’s common knowledge. They’re dangerous places. So, young women, don’t go alone. Don’t go to drink, even though the men will coerce you. Better still, just don’t go. That’s the advice. But that won’t solve the problem. Why not?
Because fraternities are where young men’s values are formed and minds are shaped. Only 7% of men in the US have been members of a college fraternity. But the North American Interfraternity Conference says that 76% of US senators and congressmen, 44% of presidents and, astonishingly, 85% of Fortune 500 execs had their ideas of masculinity, sexual politics and power shaped in fraternities. Why would they showcase these figures? It’s an advertisement. Get into a fraternity and you have brotherhood for life. Men of influence will have your back and make sure the right doors are open, the ones leading to the corridors of power.
That means if women aren’t safe in a frat house, nor are they safe in a courthouse, congress, the White House or any boardroom. And if frat boys run everything, they get to make the rules and bend them. So women aren’t safe anywhere.
Men, I guarantee you, if you walked into a women’s sorority intoxicated, seven women would get you a blanket and make you a cup of tea
If you’re thinking, “well, thank God the UK doesn’t have fraternities,” over the last decade or so the Times, the Guardian and various student publications have reported on Oxbridge drinking clubs targeting women, some “existing to get girls so drunk they don’t know what they’re doing”, coercing them into humiliating rituals of downing drinks and eating without using their hands. Some reported men chasing first-year women in a mock fox-hunt (based on their “attractiveness”) and spectacles of young women wrestling in jelly as bespoke entertainment for the men.
In 2015, the master of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, Sir Alan Fersht, emailed students to decry drinking initiation rituals, stating that it was a “national scandal” that men were “indulging in laddish behaviour and sadistic initiation rights, and … plying women with drink and abusing them”. This was around the same time the police investigated allegations that members of the Wyverns (another notorious Cambridge drinking club) chanted “rape” as they paraded through Oxford.
We would all like to think that the #MeToo movement of 2017 and 2018 tempered the worst behaviour of the Oxbridge drinking clubs – Britain’s answer to the frat houses, and similar portals to power – but reports of sexual assault and harassment have gone up, not down. Perhaps that is, in part, because young women feel more able to report it when it happens, but that is cold comfort if reports are not acted upon. In England and Wales, more than 99% of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction. It’s easy to wonder if the lack of convictions is directly related to the most powerful men getting their education at the most elite drinking clubs. Whatever you do there (even if you’re influenced by peer pressure) can make you complicit in the crimes of other men for the whole of your life.
A Hope Not Hate study found that around 80% of UK boys aged 16 to 17 have consumed content created by core manosphere figures such as Andrew Tate, and that 23% of them said they had a positive view of him; similar studies have found that 24% of young men agreed with his views about women. The RAP Project (a recent consent workshop programme which operated heavily within elite fee-paying British schools) reported that the infiltration rate within affluent demographics is often perceived to be just as high, if not higher, than in less privileged communities. It said this was due to those boys being able to afford more devices, and a hyperfixation on the luxury-lifestyle branding and shortcuts to wealth that manosphere influencers show off as part of their misogyny package.
Cornell University students and others from the Cornell community at the Justice for Survivors protest, 5 October, 2026. Photo: Matt Burkhartt/The Washington Post via Getty
Perhaps any progress we’ve made is being destroyed by the frat house every young man can now carry in his pocket. There is simply nothing we can wear, no way of being abstemious enough and no building we, as women, can avoid. The fraternity house has always been invisibly taken into seats of power and now it is on the loose. It is down to the decent men in our communities, in our universities and in positions of influence to step up and insist that this is not acceptable. They need to create systems of accountability and education and reshape society so that women are no more afraid to visit male students in their halls of residence than men are afraid to visit women.
In the interim – men everywhere, let me assure you, there is no woman who wants sexual contact with seven men on the same night. If she did want that, she’d organise it in advance when she was sober and she’d interview all the men ahead of time and lay out the ground rules and safe-words. If one of your friends has given a woman ketamine after she’s been drinking, always assume she doesn’t want strange men touching her and penetrating her, no matter what is said or done on the night. Always get all the men out of the room and phone the authorities. Because I guarantee, if you walked into a women’s sorority or hall of residence intoxicated, seven women would get you a blanket and make you a cup of tea or call you a cab. None of us would call our friends and say: “Free dick – come get some.” And if someone did that, we’d stop her. We’d report her. We’d protect you.
Deborah Frances-White hosts The Guilty Feminist podcast. Her latest book, Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, is published in paperback by Virago. Buy at a discounted price in the Nerve’s bookshop here