Consider This from NPR - Sexual assault on campus is a problem. Can laws help address it?

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

In New York, prosecutors have reopened an investigation into allegations that a student was gang raped by seven fraternity members at Cornell University in 2024. The incident has reignited debates about how to keep students safe on campus. Can federal law make things safer? NY Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand shares her thoughts.This episode was produced by Vincent Acovino and Karen Zamora, with audio engineering by Ted Mebane. Our director is Jonas Adams.It was edited by Christopher Intagliata and Tinbete Ermyas.Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, keeping students safe from sexual assault on college campuses. In New York, prosecutors have reopened an investigation into allegations that a student was gang raped by seven fraternity members at Cornell University in 2024. The culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States. including Cornell University in this instance. It has got to stop. That's New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaking to students at Cornell Sunday night.

The development raises new questions about how the incident was handled two years ago. Cornell University says they take sexual violence seriously and stand by their investigation, but the incident has sent shockwaves across the country. If you are a young woman who attends college today, You are more likely to be sexually assaulted than those who don't. New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has long been a part of a bipartisan push

to curb rates of sexual assaults on campuses. Here she is announcing the Campus Accountability and Safety Act back in 2014. It doesn't matter where you go to school. It doesn't matter if your college is a big school or a small school, urban, rural, public, private. If you are young women and you attend school, the odds jump that you. will be sexually assaulted at school, probably by someone you know from your class, from your team, from a party. That bill has been repeatedly reintroduced in Congress over the years, most recently in 2025, but it's never been passed into law. Our students deserve better than this. The price of a

college education should not be that one in five women will be sexually assaulted. Consider this, Sexual assault on campus is a long-standing problem. What, if anything, can lawmakers do to fix it? From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. It's considered this from NPR. New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has long pushed for federal legislation, changing the way campus sexual assault crimes are handled, and I started by asking her for her reaction to these allegations, as well as the decision to reopen the case. Well, I'm certainly grateful that the DA is reopening the investigation. I've just seen the public reports, and obviously these allegations are extremely serious and horrific. And as a parent with a kid in college, this is probably something that every parent in America wants addressed.

Matthew Van Houghton, who's the Tompkins County District Attorney, said on Monday that Jane Doe's original statement two years ago, and I'm going to quote him here, did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gangraped. Now, in light of the new details provided in that civil suit, he says he would now let a grand jury decide. her lawyer told CNN that the new report was not materially different from what was contained in the original complaint. What questions would you want answered about how investigators handled that initial report? So one of the things that I found over the years of working in this space is that the people who do the interviews initially or ask questions initially have to be highly trained. They have to be experts in this kind of trauma. They have to be experts on what happens when someone has lived to this kind of trauma, you need a trauma-informed counselor to do that first

interview. And a lot of our lawyers, a lot of our district attorneys, a lot of law enforcement are not trained in that way. We studied cases where law enforcement groups were trained appropriately, and it exponentially increased the number of people who reported rapes. It increased the number of people whose cases actually went to adjudication and it increased the number of convictions. I mean, you have been working on these issues for such a long time. I think it was more than a decade ago that I was talking to you covering the bipartisan push that you and other lawmakers made to address this issue to curb the rates of sexual assaults on campuses. You've come back to this legislation over and over again. And yet I have to say, Senator, it doesn't feel like much

has changed. Is that your view? No, I think very little has changed. I do imagine that many campuses have put in place much better policies than they had a decade ago. But Congress hasn't done its part. And we just spend two weeks talking about college sports. Congress should spend at least that time talking about how to make campuses safe for all students. What would you like to see Congress do? What's an appropriate step here? Well, I'd like to have hearings on the piece of legislation that Senator Grassley and I have authored CASA. And then we should be able to get a vote, just simply get a vote so that we can hold campuses and communities of responsibility, hold them accountable for whether they are protecting all students or not.

And that is literally not happening today on many, many college campuses. Senator Jellibrand, I've covered you for a long time on and off the hill. So I want to ask you a question, not as a senator, but just as a mom. And I understand that you have at least one son whose college age. How do you talk to your sons? How do we talk to young men about situations and allegations like fees? Because these instances, they keep happening year after year from college campus to college campus. Well, as a mom, I, of course, worry about the safety and well-being of my children.

And I try to make sure that they understand the risks they have every day. I also read the story about a bunch of kids who died on campus because they did some drug that's not fentanyl, but worse than fentanyl. So when I hear stories like this, I just talk to my children about what happened on these campuses, what happened to these children, and ask them, like, do you ever see yourself in this situation? What would you do in this situation? Who would you ask for help? You know, would you save someone? Would you stick up for someone? Would you prevent someone from taking a risk that's very scary, like taking drugs? I think a lot of campuses have some sexual assault prevention training. I don't know if all campuses have them, but I know that my sons have had those trainings on their campuses. So it's very hard. And you just want your children and their friends and their whole community to be safe. I mean, just taking a step away from the specifics of these allegations at Cornell University, I just know so many women, myself included, who have had stories of experiencing unwanted sexual contact assault or rape on their campuses,

who then seek help from systems that were ostensibly built. to keep them safe and yet feel let down or betrayed and it keeps happening. So I guess the question I have is, what makes it stop? What's the tipping point? What you've heard from many survivors, and this is the through line, is that when they felt they could report what happened, they were not received openly. They were received with disbelief. They were received with blame. They received with that's what you were wearing or you were drinking that or you are doing drugs, what do you expect. Like sometimes the first person they talk to is so uninformed and so poorly trained. They say all the wrong things.

And the things that they say in those instances often will leave a survivor to drop the case or to blame him or herself and unwilling to tell his or her story. That does not set a campus up for safety or for success. You need to have a system that works, that works for everyone that is 100% transparent. We've been speaking with Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Thank you so much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Vincent Acovino and Karen Zamora with audio engineering by Ted Mebain.

Our director is Jonas Adams. It was edited by Christopher and Tulliata and Ten Beat Airmus. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Wanis. farmers.