ITHACA — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted Cornell University over claims it let off a gang of students accused of gang rape with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
The lefty firebrand and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate unloaded on university leadership during a Sunday town hall style event — as she compared her own exposure to the alleged dark side of college campuses as “factory of sexual assaults.”
“I want to be clear that the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States, including Cornell University,” the Bronx Democrat told students from the Ivy League school in deeply blue Ithaca, where Cornell is located.
An anonymous student filed a lawsuit earlier this month against seven members of Cornell’s Chi Phi frat, claiming they drugged her and gang raped her in October 2024. The school offered the accused attackers the chance to write essays to mitigate their punishment.
AOC called the accusations “one of the pressing issues” facing Ithaca as she praised the accuser — who no longer attends the college — for stepping forward.
“The fact that she had to lose her education and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward — never again,” the congresswoman said to thunderous applause by the crowd of several thousand.
The case has now been reopened by the Tompkins County District Attorney’s office,
Ocasio-Cortez, who is in the midst of an upstate New York swing ahead of the Midterm Elections, told the crowd she was assaulted at a party while a freshman at Boston University.
“I was horrified at what I saw,” she said. “What I thought that I was in at that point was a factory of sexual assault.”
“This is a culture. These are norms. These are practices,” she said demanding the crowd of mostly students demand change.
AOC is expected to easily win re-election on Nov. 3 and is already setting her sights on potential bids for the presidency or for Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s seat in two years.
A spokesperson for Cornell declined to respond directly to the congresswoman’s remarks, but said that the case was subject to an extensive Title IX adjudication process and that none of the students’ sole punishment was writing an essay.
“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” the Cornell spokesperson said.
