Warning: Content in this story may be triggering or disturbing for some readers.
My memories of Fraternity Row have damp, jagged edges.
They were made during my freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley.
I was 18 years old when I moved into Griffith Hall, a high-rise dorm that loomed across the street from Neuman Hall, a Catholic parish with an oddly brutalist design.
Everything that I knew about my school came from its marketing materials.
Everything that I knew about frats came from comedies like “Revenge of the Nerds.”
Instead of believing the stories told by Hollywood, I chose to believe the stories that my university told about itself, the propaganda that it used to sell itself to kids and parents.
Berkeley’s marketing materials persuaded me that Cal was a temple of learning. Its brochures convinced me that I’d be safe there.
From afar, Cal’s Fraternity Row looked imperious and majestic. Once I walked its sloping sidewalks and saw its houses up close, doubts emerged.
The frat houses looked tattered. Beer cans littered their lawns. Offensive odors lingered. One mansion had a large broken window that spat out a long, dirty curtain.
Despite these omens, I desperately wanted to believe my school’s message of safety. And so, when friends invited me to a frat party, I went.
Despite these omens, I desperately wanted to believe my school’s message of safety. And so, when friends invited me to a frat party, I went.
It was dark inside the house, making it difficult to see people’s faces. Flashing lights disoriented me, occasionally offering a glimpse of my thrashed surroundings; it looked like an ogre had gotten so hungry he’d tried to eat the walls.
A smiling man handed me a plastic cup filled with alcohol.
“Wanna dance?” asked a stranger.
I nodded and shyly followed the man into a throbbing crowd of bodies. To soothe myself, I sipped from my cup. After several songs, my dance partner lunged at me, blurring. His wet tongue pressed against my jaw, licking my face from chin to hairline, his dog-like saliva coating me.
Overwhelmed by disgust, humiliation, and terror, I recoiled, then froze.
Pleased with himself, my anonymous dance partner laughed.
When I recall what that man did to me, the sensory memory fuses with the image of that big broken window, its jagged edges glinting in the East Bay sunlight.
Women across the U.S. have been expressing their solidarity with Jane Doe by sharing stories like the one I just told. Her lawsuit alleges that Matthew Ingalls, Scott Kretzschmar, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Jonathan Newell, Scott Norris, and Diego Sarabia gang-raped her at the Chi Phi house at Cornell University in 2024. She further alleges widespread institutional betrayal.
At universities across the country, students have put up posters saying, “I stand with Jane Doe.”
“I am Jane Doe” has also become a popular slogan, one that I imprinted on a selfie that I posted to social media. In this picture, I make my politics clear; I’m brandishing a double-barreled shotgun.
Defenders of the Cornell 7 ask, “Why would a young woman enter a frat house if she knows it’s a dangerous place?”
Their question deflects from our national environment—this country is controlled by a small group of men who overwhelmingly belong to fraternities.
These campus brotherhoods open the gates to impunity and power.
These campus brotherhoods open the gates to impunity and power.
The U.S. declared its independence from England in 1776, the same year that Phi Beta Kappa, the first U.S. fraternity, established itself in Williamsburg, Virginia. Five students from the College of William and Mary met at a tavern to create this secret academic society, one that still exists.
In 1825, students at Union College in Schenectady, New York, founded the Kappa Alpha Society, a men’s organization considered the first modern residential fraternity.
Today, women don’t just visit frats. Sometimes, they live in them.
Zoe Doe is one of these women.
A student at the University of California, Los Angeles, Zoe is a junior involved in Greek life.
She was just 9 years old when a San Jose jury convicted Brock Turner of sexually assaulting Chanel Miller.
In “Know My Name,” Miller writes about the night that her path crossed with Turner’s at a frat party on the Stanford campus.
The house hosting the event was Kappa Alpha, a Palo Alto chapter of the country’s first residential fraternity.
Miller recalls that before her memory went black, she felt “bored, at ease, drunk and extremely tired.” She was “less than ten minutes away from home.”
Next, she woke up in a white room with a polished floor. A deputy told her, “You are in the hospital, and there is reason to believe you have been sexually assaulted.”
Zoe remembers the media coverage of Turner’s criminal trial. At the time, Miller was anonymized, known to the public only as “Emily Doe.”
While 9-year-old Zoe didn’t understand what rape was, she quickly figured out that it was something awful. She inferred this by watching her dad rage at people who displayed sympathy for Turner. The swimmer’s father begged the court to be lenient with his son, referring to the sexual assault he committed as “20 minutes of action.”
Judge Aaron Persky, a Phi Beta Kappa, obliged Turner’s dad, sentencing the perpetrator to six months in jail.
Persky defended his choice by arguing that a prison sentence would have had a “severe impact” on the 20-year-old man.
Many women argued that was the point, that perpetrators should be severely impacted.
Zoe has lived in L.A. for more than two years now. She says that her short time here has changed her, that she doesn’t “feel like Bambi anymore.”
In high school, she acted onstage, performing in “Into the Woods,” a musical inspired by “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Zoe says, “First, I learned about sexual assault from an allegory, from a fairytale. Now, I know about it because it happened to me. I’m different now because I’ve lived it.”
Zoe participated in “c-sesh,” a residential, fraternity-led program that happens during UCLA summer sessions. Fraternities choose female students to board at their houses, and the women remain there for six weeks. Some students describe these living arrangements as a six-week-long bender, and Zoe says that her best friend’s parents prohibited her from participating.
Two years ago, one fraternity man was accused of raping a female resident at his house during c-sesh. While the frat announced that it’d kicked out the alleged perpetrator, women later saw him on its premises.
Zoe says that she was assaulted freshman year during a party promoted by several frats. While on the dance floor, a man forced his hands into her pants, violating her. Zoe told him to stop. She said, “No.”
She chose not to report the assault to campus police. Because of what she’s seen, she has little faith in them.
During the spring quarter, students held a town hall asking the UCPD to protect sorority members from two men. Nicknamed the Hilgard Hisser, one followed female students while hissing at them. The other delivered cryptic notes to sororities that made members feel threatened and surveilled.
The police scoffed at the women’s concerns. Zoe says, “They told us that people riding scooters on campus was a bigger issue.”
Zoe also chose not to report her assault to the Title IX office, a school bureaucracy that supposedly corrects gender inequality.
“Their process takes too long,” Zoe says. “An investigation can last 9 months.”
Zoe’s frustration with Title IX is justified.
Sociologist Nicole Bedera, author of “On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence,” spent years studying Title IX offices and investigations. She found that “the vast majority of Title IX investigations [end] in favor of the accused.”
Bedera writes that Title IX offices also promote “the myth of insufficient evidence.”
Bedera writes that Title IX offices also promote “the myth of insufficient evidence.”
In many assault cases, survivors offer up piles of evidence, including emails, DMs, surveillance videos, text messages, eyewitnesses, rape kits, and their own narratives. Bedera found that investigators always concocted a reason “to dismiss the most crucial evidence as inconsequential.”
Zoe believed that she could find a remedy through the Greek system and reported her sexual assault to the Panhellenic council. She expected support. Instead, she experienced what she perceives as betrayal.
“It was disturbing to witness how a cover-up could happen so quickly and so easily,” Zoe says.
“It was disturbing to witness how a cover-up could happen so quickly and so easily,” Zoe says.
Frats keep lists of their members' activities, including party attendance. When frats were asked to turn over lists of party attendees from the night of Zoe’s assault, executive members of one house refused.
Zoe believes that her perpetrator’s name is likely on that list.
Girls and boys are taught that police, university administrators, and elite student organizations have their well-being in mind. Through experiences of sexual violence, girls and women learn that these institutions have a singular motivation: self-preservation.
After her assault, Zoe was scared to go to school; she worried that she might run into her attacker. Post-traumatic terror is one of the primary purposes of sexual violence. Rape is a form of “know-your-place aggression,” a term coined by African American literature professor Koritha Mitchell. Know-your-place aggression happens when anyone who isn’t white, straight, or male experiences success.
In 2024, the same year that Jane and Zoe Doe were assaulted by fraternity men, women in the U.S. outpaced men in college completion. Our high levels of educational achievement appeared across “every major racial or ethnic group.”
Meanwhile, the multi-racial group of fraternity members who assaulted Jane Doe were able to overcome any interpersonal bigotry, like racism or xenophobia, while they violently collaborated against her.
“I’m not pro-prison," Zoe says. “But I think that the Cornell 7 should all be criminally charged. I like the idea of rehabilitation, but that’s not something you can rehabilitate. Honestly, I’ve been trying to avoid reading about the case. It’s been making me upset.”
Zoe doesn’t want her perpetrator to be criminally charged. She also doesn’t want him to be suspended or expelled. Instead, she wants what many might consider a light consequence: banning him from attending certain types of parties.
“I don’t think any of the Cornell 7 should be at the university anymore,” she adds. “None of them should have the rich lives that they’re enjoying. At the very least, get them out of school. I think it’s good that their names are out there.”
