Part 2- What's Happening on Campus: Why Reporting Is So Hard, and the Federal Law That Forces Schools to Tell You Anyway
Why This Part Exists
Part 1 covered what's alleged in the Cornell case. Before we go any further into the patterns behind it, I want to stop on something a lot of people skip past: almost none of this works unless someone actually reports it, and reporting is one of the hardest things we ask an 18 or 19 year old to do.
Think about what that actually requires. A young woman has just lived through the worst night of her life. She's disoriented, she may not remember all of it clearly because of alcohol or a drug she didn't consent to, and the people she'd normally trust, a friend, a fraternity, sometimes even the school itself, are part of what just happened to her. To report it, she has to say it out loud, in detail, to a campus police officer. Then again to a Title IX investigator. Then again in a hearing, possibly in the same room as the person she's accusing. Then again to a lawyer if it ever becomes a civil case. Every single retelling means reliving it. That is not a minor inconvenience. That is a genuine reason survivors, of any age, choose silence instead.
And here's the part that makes it even harder to think clearly about: she's doing all of that while knowing that even a completely truthful report might not lead anywhere. Prosecutors have to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, and a case built on alcohol, an alleged drug, and no independent witnesses is often exactly the kind of case a district attorney looks at and says there isn't enough evidence to charge, the same outcome we saw in Part 1. Nobody wants to go through the worst night of their life, then relive it publicly, then be told it wasn't enough. That fear alone keeps a lot of survivors from ever filing a report at all.
Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Why These Cases Are So Hard to Prove
Before we go any further, it's worth taking a step back and explaining something that runs underneath every single case in this series, whether it's a sexual assault allegation, a theft, or a hazing death. The American legal system is built on a principle most people can recite but few have really thought through: innocent until proven guilty. That's not a technicality or a loophole.It's one of the foundational protections in our entire justice system, and it exists for a real reason, to prevent the government from locking someone up based on accusation alone.
Here's what that principle actually means in practice. The burden of proof sits entirely on the prosecution, not the accused. A prosecutor doesn't get to charge someone because it seems likely something happened, or because the accusation is credible, or even because most people involved believe it's true. A prosecutor has to gather enough admissible evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest standard of proof that exists in our legal system, before a jury of ordinary citizens. The accused doesn't have to prove innocence. The state has to prove guilt, fully, cleanly, and beyond reasonable doubt, or the case doesn't move forward at all.
That standard is genuinely difficult to meet in the best of circumstances, with security footage, physical evidence, and cooperative witnesses. Now think about what it takes to meet that same standard in a case involving alcohol, a house full of people with competing loyalties, and no independent witnesses to the parts of the night that matter most. Memory gets unreliable. Physical evidence degrades by the hour. People who were there have reasons, sometimes protective, sometimes self-interested, not to say everything they saw. A prosecutor looking at that landscape isn't being callous or dismissive when they decline to bring charges. They're often looking honestly at whether they can actually meet a standard the law requires them to meet, and deciding they can't, not because nothing happened, but because proving exactly what happened to that standard is a genuinely different, much harder question.
And here's the part that makes this even more brutal for a survivor specifically. Meeting that burden of proof doesn't just mean gathering evidence quietly behind the scenes. It means the person who lived through the worst night of their life has to tell that story, in full, painful detail, over and over again. To a campus police officer first. Then to a Title IX investigator. Then, if it goes further, to a detective, to a grand jury, to a defense attorney doing everything legally permitted to find inconsistencies in the account, and potentially to an entire courtroom. Every single one of those retellings means reliving it. Not remembering it in passing, but reconstructing it in specific, often humiliating detail, again and again, to a system that still might conclude there isn't enough to move forward. That's not a flaw in the process. It's what due process actually costs the person on the other side of the accusation, and it's one of the most honest reasons survivors choose not to report in the first place. Not because they're not telling the truth. Because they understand, correctly, exactly how hard the road in front of them would be even if every word they said was accurate.
I want to be clear about why I'm including this. This isn't a defense of anyone specifically accused in this series, and it isn't a suggestion that survivors shouldn't come forward. It's an honest explanation of why "no charges were filed" and "nothing happened" are not the same sentence, and why a prosecutor's decision not to charge is so often more complicated, and more human, than it looks from the outside.The Numbers Only Count What Gets Reported, and That's the Whole Problem
Here's something every family needs to understand before they ever look at a college's official crime statistics: those numbers only reflect what was reported. They say nothing about what actually happened.
Cornell's own data proves this better than I could explain it. In its 2025 Annual Security Report, Cornell disclosed 23 reported on-campus rapes in 2024, 28 in 2023, and 25 in 2022, along with 21, 22, and 24 reported fondling incidents in those same years. Those are the official, federally required numbers.
Now compare that to Cornell's own 2023 campus climate survey, which asked nearly 6,000 students directly about their experiences rather than waiting for an official report. That survey found 23 percent of undergraduate women and 9 percent of undergraduate men said they had experienced some form of sexual assault during their time at Cornell. The same survey found only 38 percent of students knew how to actually file an official complaint.
Here's what those percentages actually look like in real students, not just numbers on a page. Cornell's undergraduate population runs about 16,100 students, roughly 8,780 women and 7,340 men. Twenty-three percent of that female undergraduate population works out to about 2,020 women. Nine percent of the male undergraduate population works out to about 660 men. Add those together and you're looking at roughly 2,680 Cornell undergraduates, out of a student body of about 16,100, who told the university's own survey they had experienced some form of sexual assault at some point during their time on campus.
Now put that next to the official count. Twenty-three reported rapes in 2024. Twenty-one reported fondling incidents. To be fair, those two figures aren't measuring the exact same window: the climate survey asks about a student's entire time at Cornell, however many years that covers, while the Annual Security Report only counts one single calendar year. But even giving the university the full benefit of that difference, roughly 2,680 students self-reporting an experience against a yearly official count sitting in the twenties isn't a rounding error, it's closer to a hundred to one gap. That's not because assault is rare and the survey is exaggerating. It's because most of what happens never gets reported, and a huge chunk of students don't even know how the reporting process works if they wanted to use it.
When Schools Get the Reporting Wrong on Purpose
It gets worse than students simply staying silent. There's a well-documented history of universities failing to report, or actively downplaying, crimes that were reported to them, because bad numbers are bad publicity.Penn State is the clearest example. The Department of Education found the university had known since 2008 that Jerry Sandusky posed a danger, a high school had already removed him as a volunteer coach over abuse allegations, and Juniata College had refused to hire him after a background check flagged the same concerns. Penn State cooperated with a state investigation starting in 2010 and still issued no warning to the campus. The Department of Education ultimately identified 11 separate Clery Act violations and fined Penn State nearly $2.4 million, over $2.1 million of that specifically for failing to properly classify and disclose campus crimes. Between 2008 and 2011 alone, the university failed to disclose 230 total crimes, including four forcible sexual assaults, seven aggravated assaults, and seven burglaries.
Michigan State is the other major example, and it's the largest fine ever issued under the Clery Act, $4.5 million. The Department of Education found the university failed to disclose Larry Nassar's sex crimes, which reportedly dated back to the 1990s, and never issued the public warnings the law requires. The Department described Michigan State's failures as systemic, not a single missed report, an actual pattern across the institution.
I want to be precise about what this means for you as a parent. It doesn't mean every school is hiding something. It means the official number a school publishes can be shaped by how motivated that school is to look safe on paper, and the two clearest proof points we have both involve some of the most notorious abuse cases in recent American history. When the stakes were that high, two major universities still chose underreporting over transparency, until the federal government caught them and fined them for it.
What the Jeanne Clery Act Actually Requires, Crime by Crime
This is the law that exists specifically to take that choice away from schools. It requires every college and university that receives federal funding, which is nearly all of them, to publicly report specific categories of crime every single year, whether the number makes them look good or not. Here's exactly what has to be disclosed, and what each category actually means in practice.
Murder and non-negligent manslaughter. This is the willful killing of one person by another. In a Clery report, this would cover something like a student killed in an on-campus altercation or a targeted attack in a dorm.
Manslaughter by negligence. This is a killing caused by gross negligence rather than intent, for example a death caused by a fraternity hazing ritual gone fatally wrong, which is exactly the kind of incident that connects this category directly to the hazing reforms we'll cover further in this series.
Rape. Defined as penetration, of any degree, of the vagina or anus by any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ, without the victim's consent. This is the specific category theCornell case would fall under if it were ever criminally charged, and it's the category where Cornell reported 23 on-campus incidents in 2024.
Fondling. The touching of another person's private body parts for sexual gratification without consent, including situations where the victim cannot legally consent due to age or incapacitation. This is a separate, distinct category from rape, and Cornell reported 21 on-campus incidents in 2024.
Incest. Sexual intercourse between people related closely enough that marriage between them would be illegal. This category exists in every Clery report but is rarely reported on college campuses specifically, since it typically involves family relationships rather than student-to-student conduct.
Statutory rape. Sexual intercourse with someone under the legal age of consent, regardless of whether the encounter was otherwise consensual in the moment. This matters on college campuses because of dual-enrollment students and campus visitors who may be under 18.
Robbery. Taking property from a person by force, threat, or by putting them in fear, for example a student mugged for a phone or laptop walking back from a library at night.
Aggravated assault. An attack intended to cause severe bodily injury, typically involving a weapon or a method capable of causing serious harm, distinct from a simple physical altercation.
Burglary. Unlawfully entering a building with intent to commit a felony or theft inside, for example someone breaking into a dorm room to steal property while no one is present.
Motor vehicle theft. Taking or attempting to take a vehicle without authorization, a common campus statistic tied to parking structures and student lots.
Arson. Willfully or maliciously setting a fire, or attempting to, whether targeting a dwelling, a vehicle, or other property, including incidents tied to fraternity houses specifically.
Hate crimes. Any of the above offenses, plus larceny-theft, simple assault, intimidation, and vandalism, but only when the offense was motivated by bias against the victim's race, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin, or disability. A dorm room defaced with a slur, for example, gets tracked here even though vandalism alone isn't otherwise a Clery-reportable category.
Dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking, added under the Violence Against Women Act. Dating violence covers violence by someone in a romantic or intimate relationship with the victim. Domestic violence covers spouses, co-parents, or cohabitants. Stalking covers a pattern of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to fear for theirsafety or suffer real emotional distress, for example someone repeatedly showing up uninvited outside a student's dorm or apartment after being told to stop.
Weapons, drug, and liquor law violations, reported as arrests and separately as disciplinary referrals, meaning a school handled it internally rather than involving police. This distinction matters, because a high disciplinary-referral number and a low arrest number can indicate a school prefers handling serious issues quietly through its own process rather than through law enforcement.
Hazing, the newest addition to the law. Starting with 2026 reports, schools must include hazing data in their Annual Security Report, and separately publish a standalone Campus Hazing Transparency Report naming any student organization found responsible for a hazing violation, what happened, what the investigation found, and what discipline resulted. This is the single newest, most directly useful tool for evaluating a specific fraternity or sorority's actual track record, and it exists because of a federal law that only took effect in the last two years.
Where to Actually Pull This Data Yourself
Every school is required to publish its Annual Security Report by October 1 each year, covering the previous three years of data, on its own website, usually through its campus police or public safety office. Search "[school name] annual security report" and it will come up directly.
For a faster way to compare schools against each other, the Department of Education runs a free public tool, the Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool, at ope.ed.gov/campussafety. You can look up any specific school and pull its reported numbers, by category, across multiple years, using the same standardized federal data for every institution in the country. If you're choosing between two or three schools for your daughter or son, this is where you go before you ever set foot on either campus.
What to Do With This Information if Something Already Happened
Everything above is about researching before you send your kid to a school. But if you're a parent reading this because something has already happened, or your student is trying to decide whether to report something, there are two resources worth knowing about right now.
RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, runs the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE, available 24 hours a day by phone, online chat, or text. RAINN also maintains a dedicated page specifically on the Red Zone, with current statistics and a guide called "5 Conversations Before College Move-In Day," built for exactly the conversation this whole series is trying to help you have.
Project Callisto exists specifically to solve the problem this entire section has been about: the fear of not being believed, and the fear of reliving the worst night of your life for a system thatmight not do anything with it anyway. Callisto is an encrypted, third-party platform, separate from the university and separate from police, where a student can create a private, timestamped record of what happened without being forced to immediately decide whether to file a formal report. Its core feature is a matching system: if a second student later documents an incident involving the same person, Callisto flags the match and notifies both of them. That means a survivor can find out they weren't the only one before they ever have to make a public accusation, which is often the exact piece of information that gives someone the confidence to finally come forward.
The Bottom Line
You cannot control whether a school's official numbers reflect what's actually happening on that campus. What you can control is whether you know how to read those numbers honestly, where to find them yourself instead of trusting a glossy admissions brochure, and what a family should do if the worst night of someone's life ever actually happens. That's not paranoia. That's exactly what it means to be a prepared protector.
Sources
Cornell University 2025 Annual Security Report (Cornell Police / Clery Act website)
Cornell University 2023 Campus Climate Survey on sexual assault and misconduct
Cornell University undergraduate enrollment and gender breakdown data, drawn from federal IPEDS reporting
U.S. Department of Education, findings and fine regarding Penn State University's Clery Act violations tied to the Jerry Sandusky case
U.S. Department of Education, findings and fine regarding Michigan State University's Clery Act violations tied to the Larry Nassar case
The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, as amended by the Violence Against Women Act and the Stop Campus Hazing Act
U.S. Department of Education, Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool (ope.ed.gov/campussafety)
RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), National Sexual Assault Hotline and Red Zone resources
Project Callisto, encrypted third-party reporting platform
Prepared, Not Paranoid. Protecting the Most Vulnerable Among Us.
