The drinking, drugging and sexual assault culture on American college campuses is once again attracting national attention.

A former Cornell University student filed a civil lawsuit in September 2026 alleging that seven Chi Phi fraternity members gang-raped her when she was a sophomore at the school two year earlier.

The apparent failure of institutions she reached out to for help has become an important part of the story.

As a researcher who studies domestic and sexual violence – and as a college professor who works with students every day – the unfolding narrative about the so-called “Cornell 7” has weighed on me.

Estimates of student sexual assault often understate the problem. Many students do not report an assault because they don’t know where to turn, have concerns about confidentiality, don’t trust the university to respond adequately or are unable to navigate the institution’s resources by themselves.

This parallels vast underreporting of sexual assault and abuse in general.

Sexual violence reporting on campus

The response by Cornell and Ithaca, N.Y., police underscores what many victims of sexual violence nationwide fear about reporting their assaults to authorities.

Only 37.5% of surveyed college students believed campus officials will take seriously sexual assault allegations when physical force or an inability to consent is involved – as was allegedly the case for Jane Doe. Only 7.1% of surveyed students who were assaulted contacted local police.

In Jane Doe’s case, she reported the assault to police three weeks after it took place. Despite telling police definitively that she had been raped, the report Ithaca police sent to the district attorney omitted this language.

The district attorney in the county where Cornell is located declined to press charges against any of the seven men who were accused of involvement in the assault – without ever conducting an interview with Jane Doe.

The school’s own internal investigation led to two of the alleged perpetrators being expelled, two more being suspended and a fifth who had already graduated being barred from campus. The other two students were required to attend training, avoid contact with Jane Doe and write reflection essays.

After Doe’s lawsuit was filed, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate how campus and local authorities handled the case.

Understanding where students are at risk

While campus sexual assault is a well-known issue, data on the current state of the problem is limited.

Under the 1990 Clery Act, federally funded colleges must report annual crime and safety data, but these include sexual assaults only if they are formally reported. Since only 16% of victims report their assault through formal channels, this dramatically undercounts students’ experiences of campus sexual assault.

Large private surveys of students at multiple colleges consistently estimate that 1 in 5 college women are assaulted while attending university. Risks are higher for students involved in fraternities or sororities, like Jane Doe and her alleged assailants were.

Counter to the popular perception that perpetrators are unknown assailants, most sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone known to the victim, and over 21% are committed by an intimate partner. In the case at Cornell, Jane Doe went to the Chi Phi house specifically to meet a friend who then allegedly participated in the assault.

Alcohol and other drug use creates an especially high risk for sexual assault. Campus climate surveys show that a majority of surveyed students who were assaulted had voluntarily consumed alcohol and other drugs before the assault happened. Jane Doe reported being incapacitated and “near hallucinating” due to ketamine and alcohol during the incident.

Effects of assault can last for years

College sexual assault impacts students far beyond graduation.

Students who are sexually assaulted are at higher risk for reporting anxiety and depression. Adverse mental and physical health effects of college sexual assault can last for years after graduation. Students who are assaulted are more likely to have lower grades and learning difficulties – or drop out of college altogether, as Jane Doe did.

Schools receiving federal funding have a legal obligation under Title IX to respond to allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment. This 1972 federal law prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs, including on college campuses.

Given the scale of campus sexual assault, many campuses have adopted new programs to try to reduce assaults on campus.

Web-based interventions and small-group intensives can reduce victimization, improve students’ self-defense measures, and improve bystander intervention awareness. Bystander intervention training teaches students to safely step in when they see unsafe behavior.

These programs help students change their behaviors, such as reducing binge drinking, and combat pervasive “rape myths,” or the belief that victims of sexual assault were “asking for it.”

But the focus remains on teaching potential victims how to defend themselves and look out for their peers. Researchers know much, much less about interventions that can prevent people from perpetrating sexual assaults.

Policies could support victims

Gov. Hochul has already called out a “loophole” in the New York law that may have impacted Jane Doe’s case.

Under New York state law, sexual contact with someone who is “mentally incapacitated” due to drugs or alcohol is only rape if the victim was involuntarily intoxicated, such as in the case of “roofie”-facilitated assaults. Because Jane Doe voluntarily consumed alcohol before arriving at the Chi Phi house and knowingly took ketamine, the alleged gang rape may not be considered to be legally a crime. Hochul has said that she will work to close the loophole, as “voluntary intoxication is not a license for sexual assault or gang rape.”

Other changes in New York have already improved support systems available for victims. As of 2026, the state no longer requires police reports for crime victims to access state compensation funds that can be used to reimburse victims for crime-related expenses like hospital bills, mental health counseling and lost wages. Victims of sexual violence who are worried that police may not believe them can have their crime verified by a victim service agency or a mental or physical health professional. They now also have up to three years after the crime is reported to file for compensation, up from a former one-year time limit.

These funds, which exist in every state, can help survivors work to reestablish their lives after violence. But most survivors don’t receive crime victim compensation.

In Illinois, fewer than 20% of compensation claims by sexual assault victims were paid out between 2015 and 2020. A 2022 national survey found that 96% of victims of violent crime who were surveyed did not receive crime victim compensation.

Other states have yet to revise their compensation programs to account for the specific needs of victims of sexual assault. In Colorado, where I teach, the state didn’t remove a requirement that victims report the crime to police within 72 hours until 2024. Victims do still need to report to police unless they receive a forensic sexual assault exam, known as a “rape kit” – a particularly frustrating requirement in a state that only recently had a 517-day wait for kits to be processed.

And in some states, victims seeking compensation can receive reduced payouts or be denied outright if they were involved in conduct that “contributed” to their victimization. For victims of campus sexual assault, this can include having consumed illegal drugs or alcohol while underage. In Alabama, drug and alcohol use that led to “poor judgment” by the victim is grounds for denial of compensation, and Arkansas denies any victim who was using drugs at the time of the crime.

The result is that many survivors of campus sexual assault may find themselves excluded from the systems meant to help them when they report. And the current news about the Cornell 7 is likely to further fracture students’ confidence in reporting future assaults altogether.

If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, help is available. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) operates a 24/7 helpline at 800-656-HOPE. Victims of violence in New York can receive assistance from the state’s Office of Victim Services.

Portions of this article originally appeared in a previous article published on Sept. 3, 2026.

Kaitlyn M. Sims receives or has received funding from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families, the Denver Basic Income Project, the Arnold Ventures Foundation, and the Institute for Humane Studies.

By Kaitlyn M. Sims, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, University of Denver; Institute for Humane Studies. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.