Is It Really About Liberalism? A Letter to the Columbia Sundial
Content warning: discussions of rape, sexual assault, and coercion
We, the Editorial Board of the Columbia Political Review (CPR), condemn the Sundial’s decision to publish the article, ‘The “Cornell Seven” Is Really About Liberalism.’
While CPR is committed to the dissemination of multipartisan ideas, including those that may be controversial, we also understand that journalism relies on standards of respect and zero tolerance for sexism and sexual assault that have been willingly omitted from the Sundial's piece.
The Sundial’s decision to publish Christina Ma and Nikos Mohammadi's article, which consistently omits relevant definitions of consent and the material implications of rape culture, not only violates standards of integrity, but perpetuates a culture of campus violence, rape, and assault. These editorial decisions have real consequences. In solely focusing on the advent of sexual liberation, the Sundial’s article fails to address the vitriolic culture of rape that permeates American college campuses. We find it concerning that the Sundial allowed its authors to leave out what academic literature and lived experience show contribute to rape on college campuses: fraternities, insufficient disciplinary processes, and a resounding culture of silence and fear.
Not only that, we are alarmed by this article’s sourceless retelling of the history of sexual liberation. Should the Sundial have taken the necessary steps to ensure their authors comply with standard practices surrounding accurate, responsible sourcing and reporting, Ma and Mohammadi’s article would have looked quite different. Let us be clear: the movement towards sexual freedom has always been accompanied by rigorous, robust calls for consent and women’s autonomy. To claim that the “freedom” captured in the phrase “sexual freedom” is absolute—and not contingent on consent—is not only ahistorical, but harmful.
The authors further insinuate that the blame in situations of rape and sexual assault lies only in survivors’ decisions. Not once do they focus on the fact that perpetrators, too, can make decisions, and that these decisions can have drastic, violent consequences.
In their article, Ma and Mohammadi further argue that online discourse around Jane Doe fails to “defend women.” To justify their claim, Ma and Mohammadi reference the arguments of Camille Paglia to show that the outrage surrounding the Jane Doe case is “absolutely infantilizing to women” as it relies “on a rather diminished conception of female agency.” Paglia’s argument notably relies on the false and harmful notion that the decision to be in a certain place at a certain time qualifies as consent to engage in sexual intercourse regardless of subsequent interactions or decisions. In the context of the “Cornell 7” case, Paglia’s insidious logic suggests that Doe, by having “accepted” to go into a fraternity house, consented to every sexual encounter that may have occurred. Ma and Mohammadi’s decision to appeal to Paglia, a scholar who has gone as far as to suggest that rape culture does not exist, and moreoever, that rape is intrinsic to men’s nature, is alarming.
Ma and Mohammadi also make a criticism of “armchair verdicts” central to their case: take “a pause before jumping to wide-sweeping conclusions,” they say; deploy a “rational sense of scrutiny,” they say. How, then, can the authors so definitively say that Doe’s underage drinking, despite Cornell’s hard-alcohol ban, is indicative of her “freedom to make bad decisions?” For authors purportedly concerned with the infantilization of women, they are plenty comfortable making assumptions about what Jane Doe was—or, more importantly, should have been—thinking that night.
It is one thing to discuss a heavily publicized case utilizing personal opinion and view. It is another for an article to guess at the unspoken intentions of someone without doing the journalistic work of supporting their claim, especially when the assumption is rooted in a personal, prescriptive idea of what a woman should think about her own sexual experience.
The article also makes the claim that Ma “knows how tempting it is to look back and reinterpret the sex as coercion, and even rape,” implying that there is some use to claiming rape as a title, whether for internet virality or vindictive revenge against a frat. The CPR Editorial Board unequivocally rejects this notion. To suggest, without substantiating the claim with overwhelming evidence, that Jane Doe—or any woman—would willingly weaponize their vulnerable sexual experience perpetuates a system that consistently silences survivors’ accounts.
Moreover, the article’s use of the word “hysteria” is deeply problematic. “Hysteria,” as a diagnosis, has been historically weaponized against women. The term was originally classified as a mental disorder by Hippocrates to describe erratic behavior due to movement in the uterus, and has since evolved as a term meant to demean women when they express anything other than purportedly measured rationality. By using this word to talk about popular outrage to the “Cornell 7,” the Sundial evokes these historical messages to paint the women supporting Jane Doe as irrational themselves and that it is somehow incorrect for the general public to see themselves in her experience: more than one in five women in the U.S. have experienced completed or attempted rape at some point during their lifetime.
As a student-run publication, we understand our role in protecting our campus and our community. There is an essential difference between guidelines that allow for dialogue and conversation, and those that perpetuate harm. With that in mind, we call on the Sundial to formally re-evaluate their publishing guidelines and their commitment to public safety and publish a response detailing the formal decision-making process that allowed for this article to be released.
As part of our commitment to our publication’s integrity, we take developments in the world around us as an impetus for self-reflection and improvement. Mohammadi and Ma’s article is a reminder of that commitment, and the need to see malpractice as an opportunity for change. As such, we will be taking this opportunity to more clearly restate and redefine what we refuse to publish: any article that upholds or recreates cultures and systems of rape, sexual assault, or violence. We urge all campus publications to do the same.
The Columbia Political Review Editorial Board
Written by Annika Aumentado (BC ‘28), Liane Bdair (CC ‘28), Camilo Choi (CC ‘28), Josh Cohen (CC ‘28), Soumya Kamada (BC ‘27), Ashley Park (CC ‘27), Rohan Sarma (CC ‘29)
This article reflects the majority opinion of the Columbia Political Review Editorial Board. It does not necessarily reflect the views of individual writers, staff members or Columbia University. We condemn, in no uncertain terms, the death threats and harassment directed at the original authors.