Alex Cooper has spoken about the alleged 2024 gang rape of a student at Cornell with a current university staff professor.
“I wanted to come on and I wanted to talk about this today because it is so important to note it has been almost a decade since the ‘Me Too’ movement first started. A decade. How the hell are we still here?” Cooper, 32, said on the Sunday, October 11, episode of her “Call Her Daddy” podcast with guest Kate Manne, an Australian philosopher and professor of philosophy at Cornell University. (The #MeToo movement is a social awareness campaign against sexual abuse, harassment and rape culture that gained public attention in 2006 through sexual assault survivor Tarana Burke.)
Cooper continued, “When I started to think about who could help us make sense of this moment, who could answer some of the questions and help us understand where do we even go from here, I immediately thought of today’s guest. My mom actually introduced me to Kate a few years ago [and] I genuinely believe she is one of the most brilliant, important feminist thinkers of our time — and she just so happens to also be a professor at Cornell University.”
Before the Unwell Network founder commenced her interview with Manne, 43, she also commented on how the investigation, sparked by a complaint filed by an anonymous former student (aka Jane Doe) in New York City on September 16 following an alleged October 2024 fraternity party incident involving seven Chi Phi brothers, should not exist today.
“We have been talking about campus rape, consent [and] the way institutions fail women, for even longer than that. We’ve got the language. We have the research, we have the tools and the resources to understand sexual violence, to help survivors and to prevent it from happening, and yet we are still having the exact same conversations,” Cooper said. “It is exhausting. And more importantly, it is infuriating.”
She also noted that Jane Doe’s allegations “carry the weight of countless stories we hold as women,” before detailing their prevalence.
“The stories of our friends, of our sisters, of our mothers, of our grandmothers, and for many of us, our own stories. And right now one of those stories … is forcing the country to pay attention,” Cooper said. “More than one in five women have experienced rape. So every single one of us knows a Jane Doe. Many of us are Jane Doe.”
Manne’s interview largely condemned the allegations, with the professor summarizing at one stage, “For the record, I believe Jane Doe.”
Doe filed legal documents on September 16 in the New York Supreme Court, alleging she was drugged and sexually assaulted by the seven men on October 19, 2024. The case has drawn national attention and prompted New York Governor Kathy Hochul to appoint state attorney general Letitia James as a special prosecutor to reinvestigate.
A legal expert spoke to Us about the allegations on Friday, October 9, claiming that it’s not unusual for a high-profile lawsuit to spur a follow-up criminal investigation. Los Angeles-based civil trial attorney Tre Lovell stated that it’s likely the men accused of raping Doe will face criminal charges.
“Then, at that point, whether or not they get convicted, that’s a much much different question,” Lovell noted.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). https://www.rainn.org/
