Moral Apathy

A female former student at Cornell University, legally known as Jane Doe, has just filed a civil lawsuit against seven male former Cornell students, alleging sexual assault two years ago. In 2024, Jane Doe went to a fraternity house intoxicated, voluntarily took the highly potent drug ketamine and consented to having sex with two men. While she was in her intoxicated state, five other men proceeded to have sex with her. In the days and weeks following the incident, Jane Doe sent text messages and made statements which appeared to be contradictory about the nature of what happened, and her level of consciousness and consent. She eventually went to the authorities who decided not to pursue criminal charges against the seven men, and Cornell chose to temporarily suspend the men and required them write essays about the incident to remain at the university. Now two years later, Jane Doe has filed a civil lawsuit to expose these men and hold them accountable for their actions.

Here’s an idea, don’t get drunk and take drugs at a frat house and consent to have sex with two men. Here’s another idea, if a woman is intoxicated and using drugs, don’t have sex with her even if she is consenting.  Or a better idea, how about, do not engage in the hook-up culture that is so prevalent across colleges in this country. But that is what our society has devolved into. 

The mixed messages about the sexualization of women are so confusing these days. Is it empowering? Is it degrading? Is it objectifying? It’s all subjective. Women have been told for years that they can behave as egregiously as men, but then they want special protection when they cross the line. You cannot erase all the lines then expect people not to cross the line with you. It is foolish to throw away all your constraints and inhibitions then expect the people around you to have constraints and inhibitions towards you. Party, drunk, drugs, take your clothes off, then you want to be protected. You want others to protect you more than you are willing to protect yourself. Don’t get drunk, don’t do drugs, don’t take your clothes off, don’t agree to multiple sex partners in one night. Every decision she made, put herself in a more and more vulnerable position. 

This is not a ‘blame the victim’ screed because every man in this scenario was absolutely wrong. Not one of those seven men, thought about protecting her in her vulnerable condition. Where are the lines that men draw for themselves? Legal or illegal, what they did was wrong. Simply because it may just barely fit inside what is deemed legal behavior, it is still wrong. You don’t have sex with a semi-conscious intoxicated woman. You don’t. Are you an animal? I’m not a lawyer. I do not know the laws of consent in New York State, and I don’t know all the evidence, but I am a human being, I do know proper human behavior. Was it rape? Was it not rape? If you have to ask that question, you don’t do it. Ever. If we are guiding our behavior by the narrow definitions of what is legal and what is illegal, we are doing it wrong. 

Everyone, that night, put themselves in this situation and their consequences are the results of their own choices. Every decision that woman made that night led to what happened to her. She did not deserve what happened to her but she also did nothing to protect herself from it. She placed her protection in the hands of equally drunk 20-year-old men. And every decision each one of those men made led them to being accused of rape, losing their jobs and possibly long stays in jail. Here’s a thought, if you don’t want to be accused of rape, don’t have sex with a semi-conscious intoxicated woman.  I am not defending anyone, if these men spend years in prison, they are there as a result of their own actions. They have no one to blame except themselves. Everyone made extremely bad decisions that night. Everyone. Morally, everyone was wrong. 

If she was intoxicated to the point that she couldn’t give consent, then how does she know she didn’t give consent. And if a person cannot give consent – cannot make informed decisions – when they are intoxicated, then how many of the seven men were intoxicated or on drugs to the point that they could not make an informed decision when they did what they did? What would we be saying about Jane Doe if in her intoxicated state, she decided to get behind the wheel of a car and caused a serious accident? We would tear her to shreds. The same intoxicated state that caused her to be the victim would have caused her to be the victimizer. So, in the frat house, she is incapable of consent, but the moment she steps into a car, she is capable? Which is it? Is an intoxicated brain capable of determining right from wrong?

On April 28, 2023, Jamie Lee Komoroski, got completely intoxicated, almost the exact mental capacity as Jane Doe, got behind the wheel of a car, struck and killed a bride on her wedding day. She is serving a 25-year prison sentence. So, we’re saying that a person in an intoxicated state does not have the mental capacity to consent when it comes to sex, but does have that capacity when it comes to deciding to get behind the wheel of a car. Couldn’t we argue that Jamie Lee Komoroski, when she decided to drive drunk, did not know what she was doing was wrong, and therefore, should not be in prison? People will say that she should’ve taken that under consideration before she decided to get drunk, but we could say that same thing about Jane Doe. It seems that our legal system picks and chooses who we hold accountable for their actions while they’re intoxicated and who we don’t. Who’s the victim? Who’s the victimizer? One decision that you make in a completely intoxicated state could determine whether you are raped or are a rapist or you kill someone.

The real villain is this whole situation is one that our societies refuses to vilify – alcohol. 12,000 people die every year in the streets of our country from drunk driving accidents. Most rapes occur when one or both of the parties involved are intoxicated. 29 million people are alcoholics in our country.  Most homeless people have a substance abuse problem. Most domestic violence incidence involve alcohol. How many families are destroyed by alcohol every year? 178,000 people die from alcohol related medical issues every year in our country.

We in our country do nothing about it because alcohol is a $300 billion industry in the United States and a $2.5 trillion industry worldwide, so we can never blame alcohol. We can’t blame horrible life decisions on the substance that lowers your IQ by 20 points because there is too much money at stake. Every person who says that these people should have learned to handle their alcohol are one drink away from being Jamie Lee Komoroski, or Jane Doe, or one of the Cornell 7. And knowing all this, we still consume 7.7 billion gallons of alcoholic beverages every year.

We all continue to play with fire, and then we are shocked and blame others when the house burns down. Who are we as a society, as a species, where we view drunkenness and nakedness and promiscuity as anything other than pure debaseness. Why is any part of this behavior encouraged or celebrated? Don’t we want more for ourselves, for our society, for our country?

Who’s to blame? Everyone – the men, the woman, their friends, Cornell, college party culture, the Fraternity system, the alcohol industry, society, American culture. What happened at Cornell is just the logical end result of our collective moral apathy.

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Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.