CT DSA Stands with All Victims and Survivors of Sexual Violence
October 1st 2026
In the wake of the horrific revelations about sexual violence at Cornell University, we as CT DSA leadership reaffirm our solidarity with all victims and survivors of sexual violence, and reaffirm the centrality of the fight against rape culture, misogyny, and patriarchy in the wider class struggle against capitalism.
We extend our deepest solidarity to Jane Doe and to our sisters and comrades in pain, grief, and anger.
When faced with the decision to protect Jane Doe, Cornell University chose instead to protect her rapists and deny her justice. This was an intentional decision to uphold a system of violence that objectifies women and femmes, and deemphasizes their humanity in the eyes of the state and those of everyday men.
Jane Doe’s attorney has characterized her as “not somebody who was a legacy or somebody who was from a wealthy family,” but rather someone who lost the opportunity to pursue her education because Cornell University prioritized the reputations of the men who raped her over her humanity. Too often the experiences of rape victims, especially victims from working class and marginalized communities, are disavowed in favor of their rapists. This dynamic is an expression of power that Cornell University and capitalist institutions everywhere choose to maintain and normalize, the power of men to perpetrate sexual violence over women.
This normalization of patriarchal power extends past those who committed the heinous act to those that were aware of it and said nothing. Seven men raped Jane Doe, but 50 more stood by and said nothing. Silence signals complicity and approval with actions. Silence is a refusal to demand justice, to uphold dignity. Silence aids and abets violence.
This reality is further reinforced in the fact that students protesting Cornell’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians faced greater consequences than the men who raped Jane Doe. It is appalling and indicative that Cornell’s administration was quicker to act against students who protested the University’s financial ties to the Israeli apartheid state—which itself regularly protects and encourages systemic sexual violence against Palestinians—than they were to bring justice to a victim of an unconscionable act of violence on their own campus.
We must also acknowledge the hegemonic and pervasive scale of rape culture and misogyny in every level of society, including the movement spaces that we create and inhabit. DSA is not immune to misogyny by virtue of being a socialist organization. Too many socialist organizations past and present, marginal or revered, have condoned misogyny and sexual violence both to the harm of their women and femme comrades and to the detriment of the movement at-large. Misogyny, rape culture, and patriarchy have been deliberately encouraged and weaponized by state agents as tactics to weaken and dismantle emancipatory movements. As our movement continues to reckon with instances such as the recently elucidated conduct of Cesar Chavez in the United Farm Workers, this case is further impetus for us to choose to organize against misogyny and patriarchy within and beyond our movement.
If we seek to advance a genuinely emancipatory politics, we must see the end of rape culture, patriarchy, and misogyny as intrinsically connected to and part of our class struggle as socialists.
At this time, some chapter leaders and members are in the works of planning one or more support gatherings and other potential programming, and we will create space at the General Assembly this Saturday for discussing how to orient CT DSA towards an organizing approach that is more feminist and inclusive of all other marginalized identities.
As always, being a DSA member and participating in CT DSA spaces entails abiding by a Code of Conduct and our chapter’s Community Agreements. If you are seeking support at this time, please reach out to your Branch, Committee, or Working Group leaders, or to our Harassment and Grievance Officers at grievance@ctdsa.org.
In solidarity,
CT DSA Chapter Council
