Kashmala Khan ’29
Managing Editor
I am tired of watching colleges congratulate themselves for teaching students how to prevent sexual violence while rarely asking the harder question: what happens when prevention fails?
Trinity’s latest Annual Security and Fire Safety Report records 3 reported rapes on campus in 2023, 2 in 2024 and 12 in 2025.
It is relevant to note that number does not, by itself, prove sexual assault suddenly became six times more common. Clery statistics measure reported crimes and changes in reporting can change the numbers. But twelve reports in a single year should make a college stop congratulating itself and ask what in the world is going on.
And I know that we have resources. Yes. We do. We have Title IX. We have Green Dot. We have bystander intervention. We have consent education, prevention campaigns, reporting procedures, support services and policies designed to tell students exactly what to do when something goes wrong. I am not arguing against any of that. I am asking why we so often mistake having something for doing something. A resource is not automatically accessible because it exists. A policy is not automatically meaningful because it is written. A training is not automatically effective because everyone sat through it. Prevention cannot end with teaching students the three D’s (direct, distract and delegate).
You cannot PowerPoint your way out of a culture problem.
At some point, awareness has to become accountability. That means asking what happens after someone crosses the line. Does the person who commits sexual violence actually have something to lose? Are organizations held responsible when their culture enables harm? Are sanctions consistent? Are students willing to report when the accused is their friend, their teammate, their fraternity brother or someone with social power? These are questions administrators must actively ask themselves.
And there is another kind of power I am willing to talk about: money.
Trinity is not economically homogeneous. Roughly 40 percent of its undergraduates receive need-based institutional aid, while the College’s published cost of attendance for 2025-26 was more than $95,000. Students can sit in the same classroom, belong to the same organization and be subject to the same disciplinary code while having radically different capacities to absorb the consequences of being held accountable. That does not mean wealthy students are more likely to commit sexual violence. We should not pretend we have evidence for that. It means something more uncomfortable: consequences do not necessarily carry the same weight for everyone.
For one student, suspension could mean losing an education their family has sacrificed everything to afford. For another, it may feel survivable because there are financial resources, lawyers, connections or another institution to fall back on. That difference matters when we talk about deterrence. A consequence is only a deterrent if it actually feels consequential.
And this is where Greek life deserves more than another mandatory slideshow. The recent Cornell case makes that impossible to ignore. A civil lawsuit alleging that a student was drugged and raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity has triggered renewed scrutiny of Cornell’s handling of the case and the broader role of Greek organizations. Cornell says it investigated, expelled some students and banned Chi Phi from campus; critics have questioned the transparency and adequacy of the response. We should be careful with what that case proves. It does not prove that every fraternity is dangerous. It does not prove that Greek organizations cause sexual assault. And it certainly does not prove that Trinity’s reported rapes were fraternity-related. But research does give us reason to examine Greek environments seriously: recent research continues to identify Greek affiliation as a risk factor for sexual assault among college women, while research on prevention in Greek organizations notes that these students may require approaches specifically tailored to their environments.
So, ask the uncomfortable questions. What happens when an allegation involves someone with social capital? What happens when the accused belongs to an organization with institutional history, alumni relationships and money behind it? What does a fraternity actually stand to lose? And does the disciplinary process carry enough weight that a student who thinks their parents will handle it is forced to reconsider? Because accountability cannot depend on how much protection someone has outside the institution.
We have become very good at the language of safety at Trinity. We know how to say consent. We know how to say bystander. We know how to say survivor. We know where the Title IX office is. Now I want to know whether we know how to hold someone accountable. I say keep the trainings. Keep the resources. Keep teaching consent. Keep giving students ways to intervene. But stop measuring progress by how many programs we can list. Measure it by what those programs actually change.