NPR’s Juana Summers talks with New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand about the reopening of the rape case at Cornell University, and her history of pushing legislation to curb campus sexual assault.
Transcript
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
When I heard a woman’s allegations that she was drugged and gang raped at a Cornell University fraternity house in 2024, the story felt familiar to me. It’s not because the story was well known before this weekend. It’s because so many of the details she alleges – a campus party, a fraternity, drugs, alcohol and sexual assault – echo so many of the stories we’ve heard from numerous college campuses for years.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
The alleged assault at Cornell happened in 2024. Campus police investigated but no criminal charges were ever filed. Cornell defends its handling of the case. Now, the woman – identified as Jane Doe – has brought a civil case against the university, and the seven male students she says assaulted her. That has prompted prosecutors to reopen the case, and the details of these allegations have sparked national outrage.
SUMMERS: To unpack all of this, I called up someone earlier today who’s been pushing for years for legislation to address the handling of campus sexual assault crimes – New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. And I started by asking her for her reaction to these allegations, as well as the decision to reopen the case.
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: Well, I’m certainly grateful that the DA is reopening the investigation. I’ve just seen the public reports, and, obviously, these allegations are extremely serious and horrific. And as a parent with a kid in college, this is probably something that every parent in America wants addressed.
SUMMERS: Matthew Van Houten, who’s the Tompkins County district attorney, said on Monday that Jane Doe’s original statement two years ago – and I’m going to quote him here – “did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped.” Now, in light of the new details provided in that civil suit, he says he would now let a grand jury decide. Her lawyer told CNN that the new report was not materially different from what was contained in the original complaint. What questions would you want answered about how investigators handled that initial report?
GILLIBRAND: So one of the things that I found over the years of working in this space is that the people who do the interviews initially or ask questions initially have to be highly trained. They have to be experts in this kind of trauma. They have to be experts on what happens when someone has lived through this kind of trauma. You need a trauma-informed counselor to do that…
SUMMERS: Yeah.
GILLIBRAND: …First interview. And a lot of our lawyers, a lot of our district attorneys, a lot of law enforcement are not trained in that way. We studied cases where law enforcement groups were trained appropriately, and it exponentially increased the number of people who reported rapes. It increased the number of people whose cases actually went to adjudication, and it increased the number of convictions.
SUMMERS: I mean, you have been working on these issues for such a long time. I think it was more than a decade ago that I was talking to you, covering the bipartisan push that you and other lawmakers made to address this issue, to curb the rates of sexual assaults on campuses. You’ve come back to this legislation over and over again. And yet, I have to say, Senator, it doesn’t feel like much has changed. Is that your view?
GILLIBRAND: No. I think very little has changed. I do imagine that many campuses have put in place much better policies than they had a decade ago. But Congress hasn’t done its part. And we just spent two weeks talking about college sports. Congress should spend at least that time talking about how to make campuses safe for all students.
SUMMERS: What would you like to see Congress do? What’s an appropriate step here?
GILLIBRAND: Well, I’d like to have hearings on the piece of legislation that Senator Grassley and I have authored, CASA. And then we should be able to get a vote. Just simply get a vote so that we can hold campuses and communities of responsibility, hold them accountable for whether they are protecting all students or not. And that is literally not happening today on many, many college campuses.
SUMMERS: Senator Gillibrand, I’ve covered you for a long time, on and off the Hill, so I want to ask you a question not as a senator but just as a mom. And I understand that you have at least one son who’s college age. How do you talk to your sons? How do we talk to young men about situations and allegations like these? Because these instances, they keep happening year after year, from college campus to college campus.
GILLIBRAND: Well, as a mom, I, of course, worry about the safety and well-being of my children. And I try to make sure that they understand the risks they have every day. I also read the story about a bunch of kids who died on campus because they did some drug that’s not fentanyl but worse than fentanyl. So when I hear stories like this, I just talk to my children about what happened on these campuses, what happened to these children, and ask them, like, do you ever see yourself in this situation? What would you do in this situation? Who would you ask for help? You know, would save someone? Would you stick up for someone? Would you prevent someone from taking a risk that’s very scary, like taking drugs?
I think a lot of campuses have some sexual assault prevention training. I don’t know if all campuses have them, but I know that my sons have had those trainings on their campuses. So it’s very hard, and you just want your children and their friends and their whole community to be safe.
SUMMERS: I mean, just taking a step away from the specifics of these allegations at Cornell University. I just know so many women, myself included, who have had stories of experiencing unwanted sexual contact, assault or rape on their campuses, who then seek help from systems that were ostensibly built to keep them safe and yet feel let down or betrayed. And it keeps happening. So I guess the question I have is, what makes it stop? What’s the tipping point?
GILLIBRAND: What you’ve heard from many survivors – and this is the through line – is that when they felt they could report what happened, they were not received openly. They were received with disbelief. They were received with blame. They were received with, that’s what you were wearing, or you were drinking that, or you were doing drugs, what do you expect? Like, sometimes, the first person they talk to is so uninformed and so poorly trained. They say all the wrong things. And the things that they say in those instances often will leave a survivor to drop the case or to blame him or herself and unwilling to tell his or her story. That does not set a campus up for safety or for success. You need to have a system that works, that works for everyone that is 100% transparent.
SUMMERS: We’ve been speaking with Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Thank you so much.
GILLIBRAND: Thank you.
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