US universities are failing to protect victims of sexual assault

The Cornell case illustrates how university bureaucracies discourage complaints, obstruct accountability and protect institutional reputations.

Cornell University’s internal processes for responding to sexual assault reports failed “Jane Doe”. In 2024, the third-year student reported being sexually assaulted by seven men while incapacitated at a fraternity house. Cornell launched an investigation that would last months, but the process failed to deliver the accountability Jane Doe sought. She was left feeling unheard and unsafe, dropping out without completing her degree. No criminal charges were brought against the men she accused. She is now suing Cornell over its handling of her case. None of the administrators involved in those processes have been named. They have yet to face accountability.

Every week, students on campuses throughout the United States – overwhelmingly women – are sexually assaulted. A 2025 Cornell University survey found that 35 percent of undergraduate women respondents had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact involving force or incapacitation since enrolling. The problem extends well beyond Cornell: a 2025 Michigan State University survey found that approximately one in five undergraduate women had experienced sexual assault since enrolling.

Yet most incidents go unreported. A US Department of Justice study found that fewer than 5 percent of completed and attempted rapes were reported to police.

Those who are victimised are expected to be the responsible party, documenting what happened to them in detail even as the trauma of the experience is ongoing. They are forced to repeat the particularities of the assault multiple times – to campus policemen and various administrators supposedly there to protect the student. As research shows, being forced to repetitively “perform” for various administrators makes one relive the violation and compounds trauma.

Strategic dysfunction has a purpose: It safeguards the institution and silences victims. The “broken” system encourages victims to keep things in-house, assuring them that institutional processes will be less injurious than reporting a violation to the police. Disciplinary proceedings are kept secret, ostensibly to protect the victims. (Indeed, those traumatised by sexual violence deserve privacy. But these are not the reasons that institutions want to keep things quiet).

Students may not be able to go to family for support, because not all families are safe. Some are actively discouraged by their families from making formal complaints.

As one of my students said, don’t be fooled by those cute flyers declaring campuses as “safe zones”, touting the university’s zero-tolerance policy towards discrimination or assault. They are the public face of the institution and, importantly, part of its strategy.

And essential to these performances on which educational institutions rely for covering up embedded practices of violence are the women and minoritised people that institutions appoint to prominent positions, meant to safeguard those who are vulnerable to gender-based violence and other forms of discrimination: The Affirmative Action Officer, the Title IX Officer.

They are the compromised wingnuts that hold tertiary educational institutions together, protecting them from being held accountable, and deeply imbricated in the creation and continuation of a culture of impunity. Instrumentalising these willing “representative bodies” to be the face of institutions’ public-facing policies is crucial for plausible deniability. Their actual job is to block any efforts to file formal charges or seek accountability or redress.

Through their efforts, they are hoping to convey that better communication, even more education about consent, or banning parties at fraternities may not be enough.

We would do well to understand that universities – and those highly-paid administrators charged with protecting students, faculty, and staff – are also guided by shame and the fear of losing positions and power. Working against what they know will keep you silent – shame, fear, and lack of resources and support systems – is the only way to drag “strategically broken” systems into taking action.