Cornell Jane Doe and due process

This writer spent four years attending Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

That time still represents the four best years of my life.

Thus, to me, it’s so unbelievably confusing - and painful - to see the same paths I crossed thousands of times now marked by protests over the fate of “Jane Doe” and her allegations of sexual assault lodged against seven members of the Chi Phi.

Her allegations directed at the fraternity have resulted in the filing of a civil complaint.

No one is charged criminally yet and everyone has denied wrongdoing.

A cursory reading presents many narratives.

There is the woman’s narrative as presented in the civil case filed this past September.

There is another narrative, also from her, as put forth in her sworn testimony of 2024.

And, there is another - a competing narrative - from the accused emergent in bits and pieces. Had the university done everything it was expected to?

Is Cornell a “rape school,” serving as an apologist: where fraternities run amuck over the dignity of women?

Did the district attorney, and Cornell University Police, do their job?

Or, did they negligently allow her original complaints to go unacknowledged?

It’s too soon to tell which narrative has more “legs” than the other.

In all that fog, the narrative favored by the Main Stream Media runs on a single track. They paint women in colleges – a majority at most institutions – victims of institutional apathy and from men’s presumed capacity to escape consequences. Never mind that all accused are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Never mind that there has to be more to the story. Never mind due process and fairness.

We live in a world where men are instinctively deemed guilty in cases like Jane Doe, where “believe women” means “believe only women,” or worse, “believe women only when her story paints her as blameless.”

This is seemingly happening in our post- “#Me-Too” world.

We live in a world when a woman’s narrative can change years down the line, and/or she just happens to remember a “transgression” long past its sell-by date.

We live in a world it is drilled into boys and young men that no matter what you are always “guilty as charged,” and proving it otherwise will take you into your middle ages at the soonest.

In the meantime, and even after you are cleared of wrongdoing, a very vocal part of the digital universe will say you just got away as you are privileged, no matter your actual antecedents.

As with many things, the Main Stream Media and their handmaidens, the Democratic Party operatives, can be too forgetful of facts on the ground.

A key constituency they forget are moms of boys and young men who are justifiably worried that the mob-justice in courts of public opinion will find their sons guilty as charged no matter what.

—No, these moms are not traitors to the cause of women.

—These moms are not “whitewashed” enough to turn a blind eye to a woman’s plight.

—These moms are not propagating “patriarchy” just because their wards can be insecure and vulnerable too. These moms are not letting their sons escape justice by insisting on due process.

—These moms are not raising inconsiderate boors just because they claim that young men, with a prefrontal-cortex still under development, deserve leniency when experimenting, just as women do.

The sad reality is that these moms – suburban women, primarily – have read the tea leaves and warned their wards that criminal justice matters zilch when you are denied opportunities at the very beginning of your life and career.

For these young boys and men, a single “aw shucks” moment can turn into years-long nightmares, expenses, and collateral damage that brand them, and their families, forever. They, and especially their moms, are watching the “Jane Doe” case with a deep sense of misgiving.

An argument says that President Donald J. Trump’s genius was to identify young men as key to his coalition; that he gave them a representation that they forgot they deserved to have.

But these young men are actual children of moms who are as scared as they are; mothers who supported Trump.

Thus, it may be happening one more time to young men: guilty until proven innocent.

A scenario the left in general seems all-too-comfortable with.

Democrats and the MSM might drive suburban moms to the Republican Party, again.

By pushing the men, and their moms, more into the corner Democrats and the MSM are showing their true colors and are increasingly losing their luster before the midterms.