HIGH ABOVE CORNELL, THERE’S AN AWFUL SMELL

    I derive my title from the local ditty “High above Cayuga’s waters, there’s an awful smell.  Some say it’s Cayuga’s waters; others say Cornell.”

I am a third-generation Cornellian; my daughter is a fourth.  I attended Cornell from 1958 through 1964 and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees.  I was a member of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity.  I am ashamed of both the university and the fraternity.  I am outraged and pained that Jane Doe has been so grievously abused in so many ways.  I hope that judicial proceedings will bring some relief to her pain.  And I hope that the full disclosure of this horrific episode will prompt an examination of the conditions which made it possible; I hope that it will prompt all of us to determine what we—each of us in our private lives—can do to prevent other such episodes.  At the very least, we must teach boys to grow up to be men, not misfits or misogynists.

 

For various reasons, I severed my connection with the university many years ago.  For good reason, I severed my connection with the fraternity in 2018.  The reason: a gross incident, as described in an AI overview: “Cornell University placed its Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity chapter on a two-year probation in February 2018 following an investigation into a secret 2017 sex competition dubbed a ‘pig roast.’ … The Competition: New members (pledges) of the Zeta Beta Tau chapter at Cornell allegedly earned points by having sexual intercourse with women without their knowledge or consent regarding the game.  The Rules: Additional bonus points or tiebreakers were awarded to the member who had sex with the woman who weighed the most.”  When I resigned, I wrote that I no longer wanted to be associated in any way with a fraternity which had members capable of such disgusting conduct.

 

A contemporary of mine wrote to a friend that Cornell had a curfew for women in our day.  His implication was that the curfew prevented “date rape,” a phrase then unknown.  I doubt it.  Although I heard nothing about sexual misconduct, I have no reason to doubt that it occurred.  Silence or, at most, whispers prevailed in those years.  Even then and certainly now, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

 

Which brings me to the present moment, as another obscene episode is receiving national attention.  Because the facts reported have changed by the day or even by the hour, just now no one can know the whole truth about the episode.  However, the trends bend toward clearing the victim of voluntary participation, darkening the “Cornell Seven” perpetrators, and discrediting the campus, the campus and city police, and the district attorney.  The decision of New York Governor Kathy Hochul to appoint New York Attorney General Latitia James as a special prosecutor with unfettered authority to investigate this episode is a wise one.

 

Appalled as I am by what has occurred not for the first time at my alma mater, I am even more appalled by what it implies about the men involved and their upbringing by their parents.  I can readily imagine that, in many families, the response to youthful male misbehavior is that old maxim “boys will be boys.”  The truth of that maxim is precisely that outcome, no matter what age such misbehaving males attain.  Fade to the still-protected perpetrators in the Epstein case.

 

I think that there are more boys today.  Societies change (I do not say evolve).  Perhaps with the exception of the Roaring Twenties, society had both explicit and implicit rules of social and sexual conduct, and personal respectability meant more, in the first half of the twentieth century.  Occupational and residential mobility—no roots, no connections—eroded those rules after 1945.  The Greatest Generation, which withstood the Great Depression and won the Second World War, were very imperfect parents.  They spoiled the generation of Boomers by giving their children what they had not received, and the Boomers gave their children what they had received.  This parental indulgence created their children’s sense of entitlement, including the right to do as they please.  The relaxation of social rules meant the relaxation of restraints in sexual relations.  I think it quaint that, in my day, talk about virginity was commonplace; the burning question was whether a man should marry, or a woman should be, a virgin on the occasion.  By then, many had answered it: who cares?

 

More generally, changes in social and sexual mores resulted from the post-WWII flourishing of tolerance, a good thing, and moral relativism encouraging non-judgmentalism, a bad thing.  Indeed, it is common today for one person to reproach another for being judgmental, as if being judgmental is a bad thing (of course, the reproach expresses a judgment).  The result has been an erosion of a concern for moral character and moral guidance.  Changes have also reflected changes in technology.  The pill greatly reduced fears of undesired consequences of intercourse between unmarried “copulators.”  The relaxation of the Hays (no relation) code, a set of guidelines about suitable language and conduct in Hollywood films from the early 1930s through the late 1960s, allowed and thus modeled in theaters and on television behavior previously frowned upon.  Computers and iPhones expanded access to the raunchy through pornography, which dehumanizes and objectifies both men and women.  “Research consistently shows a positive association between pornography consumption—particularly violent or degrading content—and attitudes supporting sexual aggression, as well as the actual perpetration of sexual abuse and harassment against women.” (AI). In this period of liberation—“rules are meant to be broken,” so some say—, parental authority has been undermined, and many parents are confused or uncertain about what moral standards remain valid or how to instill and enforce them.  The conditions for episodes like the current one at Cornell exist throughout much of America.

 

Nevertheless, a consensus maintains that the control of these conditions is the responsibility of both institutions and individuals.  Many campuses have codes of conduct and rules of procedure for dealing with sex-based offenses.  The challenge is to enforce them.  In the present episode, Cornell officers and its campus police failed to handle Jane Doe’s complaints in an appropriate, effective manner.  Depending on what the AG James’s investigation learns, what actions it takes, and what recommendations it makes, Cornell will have another opportunity to create a safe environment for women on campus.  It must do better.  And other campuses might well incorporate lessons learned from this episode.

 

Individuals—parents, other family members, and friends—can and must help as well.  The right way, however difficult it might be, is to counsel children from their earliest days to respect others, and to correct them when they fail.  I can speak only from my experience in raising my daughter and my son, with advice given to both throughout their minority, to respect all others.  As a rising high-school senior, my daughter caught the eye of a rising Naval Academy senior.  Before a first date—a movie, a snack, and goodnight—, my wife and I insisted on meeting him, setting a curfew, and implying our expectations.  In advance of a second date, I cautioned my sensible, strong, but relatively inexperienced daughter that the cadet was far more experienced than she was.  Trusting her, I gave her clear guidance: first line of resistance, the neck; last line, the waist.  She expressed her embarrassment; I replied, better embarrassed than pregnant.  She returned early from the date, strode to her room, and slammed the door.  She never said a word about the date, but I knew that her response to his advances was “no,” that her dad would kill her.  My talk with my son is what the cadet’s father should have been with his son.  By the time he reached puberty, he knew the facts of life without a talk about the birds and the bees.  We had a different talk; well, “we” is too generous; I did the talking.  The gist of it was that he must never take advantage of any woman and must accept that “no” means “no,” whether he thinks that she means it or not.  (The old joke—if a lady says “no,” she means “maybe”; if she says “maybe,” she means “yes”; if she says “yes,” she is no lady—is not an OK guide to boy/girl conduct.)

 

Many parents—I think mainly of fathers—do not teach such lessons to their sons, perhaps because doing as they say does not fit comfortably with doing as they had done or were still doing.  Clearly, what the Cornell Seven did in Ithaca they did not learn at home not to do anywhere.  Though they are not entirely responsible for what their older teenage or young adult children do—peer pressure and others become increasingly influential in their lives—parents must do what they can from the start or they might not like the finish.  Despite light being shined on Cornell and Chi Phi as well as other colleges and universities, and their fraternities, much more light needs to be shined on the moral guidance and example provided or not by parents.  A concern for moral character must be resurrected even in these problematic times when current politics is demonstrating how its absence can be so destructive of decency and democracy.