OPINION:
As Cornell University grapples with the 2024 gang rape allegations of “Jane Doe” against seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity, alumni and friends of the school must ensure that justice is not confused with a referendum on Greek life itself.
Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff has vowed to take “a serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities in campus life,” while campus activists and student assembly representatives such as Adam Sendelbach have pressed the administration to go further — demanding that Cornell abolish the Interfraternity Council and withdraw official university recognition from all affiliated chapters.
Big Red should reject this radical idea, which would eradicate a vital tradition dating back to Cornell’s founding in 1865.
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I can speak from my own experience, having served on the undergraduate student assembly and even making a somewhat embarrassing bid for president. I also belonged to a fraternity, where I served as secretary after transferring to Cornell in 2017.
As a transfer student, joining a fraternity gave me a community of 60 young men to help navigate the harsh winters and an intense Ivy League education. We shared meals, studied and traveled together, and introduced one another to a wide variety of interests.
The alumni who came before us have poured their wisdom into us through mentorship, referrals and friendly advice.
For those who wanted to save on living expenses, fraternity housing was substantially cheaper than any other living arrangement available in Ithaca. My old industrial and labor relations professor, Ron Ehrenberg, would smile at me as I explained the economies-of-scale benefits of fraternity living: Our house chef could feed French dip to all 60 of us for about $2.50 a meal, far cheaper than grocery shopping and cooking for one.
Research has repeatedly identified Gen Z as the “loneliest generation.” We have fewer unstructured, face-to-face interactions, low in-person social confidence and fewer shared institutions than other generations.
The situation has become grim enough that in 2023, the U.S. surgeon general called loneliness a public health epidemic, on par with smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
During the 2024–2025 academic year, in which the Jane Doe incident allegedly occurred, roughly 30% of students at Cornell were reported as being in significant psychological distress, according to the 2024 Student Wellbeing Survey. Some 16% of students screened positive for depression.
Members of fraternities and sororities have been shown to have stronger mental health outcomes than nonmembers. A study by the Postsecondary Education Research Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, found that across 41,302 students at 78 universities, those who participated in Greek life reported higher levels of positive mental health and lower rates of depression, though diagnoses of anxiety were higher among Greek-affiliated students.
None of these excuses bad — or criminal — behavior, and universities are right to take allegations seriously. Even before the university’s recent suspension of fraternity parties for the remainder of the 2026-2027 academic year, Cornell had already imposed strict rules on Greek houses, including mandatory sober monitors and hard-alcohol bans — regulations that do not apply to other campus organizations. Yet according to data in Cornell’s March 2026 Task Force Report on Sexual Assault, the most common location for nonconsensual sexual assaults on campus was in residence halls (29%), not fraternity houses.
Those who believe that abolishing Greek life will make for a safer campus should look at Princeton. The university does not officially recognize fraternities or sororities, but its “eating clubs” have been the subject of plenty of scandals. Cornell should also look to Harvard, which abandoned its policy of penalizing students for joining single-sex Greek organizations after concluding it would lose a federal lawsuit, though it has never formally recognized those organizations.
Banning Greek life does not ban bad behavior. It simply pushes that behavior into corners where the university can no longer see or easily regulate it.
Cornell’s decision is not between Greek life and safety. It is whether to strip away one of the last reliable environments for making friends — at a time when the nation’s leading health experts call loneliness a public health epidemic — in exchange for the illusion of having done something.
• John Dominguez graduated from the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 2020, served in the undergraduate Student Assembly and was secretary to his fraternity on campus. His X handle is @John_outofpocket.
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