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The Cornell 7: They Assign Essays When They're Embarrassed · You're Not Too Much

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They make you write essays when they're embarrassed that you
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did what they taught you to do.
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Cornell should be absolutely ashamed.
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They deserve everything that they're getting right now and more.
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Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken Network, a podcast
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about how you're not too much, they're not enough, space expands, so let's fill it.
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I remember a thing, like maybe a seminal moment in your life that
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you didn't realize was a seminal moment in your life at the time.
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Maybe we don't usually realize at the time, but like years later, I'm
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remembering that this happened and how it impacted me and what it made me think
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at the time, and also like the wrinkles it may have left in my brain for my
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later rejection of male mediocrity.
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But it took me a long time.
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I just didn't remember, I didn't put the pieces together that
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these things had happened.
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And I wanna be clear about something.
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This, this is gonna be a little chaotic.
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This storytelling is gonna be chaotic, but I promise there's a point.
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I promise there is a really important point on the other side that will bring
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it all together, and just bear with me.
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Okay?
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So when I was a senior in high school, we had a teacher who
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was a part-time history teacher.
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He was also a lawyer, and he made us call him Dr. Last Name, and I just assumed
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that it was because he had gotten his doctorate in something, but he insisted
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on going by Dr. Last Name, right?
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I never thought about it at the time.
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It didn't come up, and that's only important because of the true
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just self-importance of it all.
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But as I said, he was a lawyer, and he taught part-time because
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he liked teaching, I guess.
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I had him for US government in my senior year.
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He was the teacher who taught the AP US government class.
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On the very first day of class, or some similar day, he made it very clear that
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we were not gonna be using the textbook.
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He asked us all to go out and get a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History
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of the United States, and that was the textbook that we were gonna be using.
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Even though the district had a textbook, even though the teachers were required
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to use it, he didn't care, and he insisted that we use Zinn instead.
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He was very, very liberal, not a complaint.
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He focused, his mission in life was to take high school seniors and get
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them thinking critically, to get them questioning their government,
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to get them questioning authority, to get them asking questions and
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researching things to figure out why.
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Why we did things, how we did things, where did this come from?
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And truly, that combined with what eventually became my journalism education,
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those things really were impactful in my brain, and I very much remember him saying
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on many, many different occasions, like, "If you don't like the way something is,
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you find out why, and if the why isn't good enough, you work to change it."
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It was something he brought up literally every single class.
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I remember we were all basically turning 18.
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None of us had ever voted.
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It was during the 2004 election.
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He literally had us meet him at the polling station, which
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was not at our high school.
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It was the first period of the day.
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Not tell anybody that we were gonna be there.
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And then we just walked back onto campus afterward for a completely
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unsanctioned field trip, which he could have gotten in a ton of trouble for.
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Basically, his thing was like, "Are you gonna tell them?" "No."
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"Am I gonna tell them?" "No."
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"We'll come back with coffee.
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It'll be great." And we didn't get in trouble.
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We literally did not get in trouble.
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We just walked onto campus.
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We were with our teacher.
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Nobody said anything to us.
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So that was the kind of thing that he instilled upon us, which is sometimes
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the rules are stupid, sometimes you're going to ignore the rules.
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All right.
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Toward the end of what I think was our first semester class, he was
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out for the day, and he always had the same substitute, and he left
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instructions with the substitute of a test that he wanted administered.
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The test was administered by the substitute.
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She put everything on the desks, and she basically said … And this is a
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person I'd actually known for, like, many years at this point, but she basically
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said, "He wrote the instructions at the top. Read them, fill them out,
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and then do your test." Okay, cool.
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No problem.
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And of course, we'd all studied for the test.
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Of course, we were ready for it.
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It was an AP class.
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We weren't gonna be unprepared for a test.
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But then we read the instructions, and the instructions didn't make sense.
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It said to write an essay.
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It also said to answer multiple choice questions.
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No one knew where the multiple choice questions were.
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There were like four or five contradictions in this
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paragraph of instructions, and we didn't know what to do.
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And so we asked the substitute, and the substitute was like, "He didn't
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leave me any other instructions.
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This is it.
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You're just supposed to do the test." And I'm like, "I literally don't
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know how to do this test 'cause the instructions don't make sense."
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And so as a class, we started talking to each other like, "What do we
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do?" And as a class, we literally decided, let's just not take the test.
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He taught us to question authority and to make decisions on our own and to be strong
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in our convictions, and our conviction was that he did not give us sufficient
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instructions to take this test, and we were potentially gonna do it wrong.
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We didn't wanna do that, so when he gets back, he can clarify,
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and we can take the test then.
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And our substitute was like, "I think you need to take the test." And I was
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very vocal at this point, and I was like, "He literally tells us all the time that
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questioning authority is the only way to fix things, and he's the authority here,
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and he gave us something that doesn't make sense, and we can't get ahold of him."
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And so she said, "That's your choice. Okay." And so I think we just, I don't
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know, read for the hour or something.
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Really by the time we got done discussing it, I think most of the class was done.
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But went about our day honestly thinking he was gonna be so proud of us for having
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the conversation, discussing it, weighing the pros and cons, making a decision as
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a group, and leaving him a literal note.
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We wrote him a note that we printed out and put on top of it, signed it as
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the class and just said, "We weren't able to take this test because the
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instructions weren't there, and we didn't wanna do it wrong, and we weren't sure
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what you were looking for." Literally thought it would be zero problem
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because we were doing what he taught us.
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Well, he came back the next day and all of us were in trouble.
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Every last one of us were in trouble.
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He was pissed.
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He was so unhappy with us.
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He said we were all gonna fail the test.
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He was gonna give us all zeros unless we named the person in front of everybody
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else whose idea this was, that he was getting administration involved, our
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graduation should be in jeopardy, and that he was so disappointed in us for being
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so disrespectful as to not follow through with the instructions that he provided.
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Now, mind you, the instructions that he provided were illogical.
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They were impossible. But I was dumbfounded.
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I really thought that this man, who had spent every single class period, and
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we saw him every day, who spent every single class period teaching us… He
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was a civil rights attorney, teaching us about how to question authority, how to
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make different decisions, how to stand up for yourself, how to look at a situation
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that doesn't make sense and ask the things that get you the information so
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that you can figure out the rest of it.
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I genuinely thought that he was gonna be like, "You're right. I
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provided insufficient instructions, and we'll fix this." Instead,
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he threatened to fail all of us.
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He tried to out the, quote-unquote, "ringleader." And I'll be honest, I
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was probably one of the ringleaders.
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I've always been one of the ringleaders.
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But it wasn't, like, malicious.
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It was, "Yo, dude, you screwed up. Can we wait until you're here to fix this?"
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And then last but not least, he gave us a presentation to the whole group
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about groupthink, and how we pressured each other, or we pressured people
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into making a decision that they didn't wanna make by implementing groupthink.
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This was, like, shocking to me.
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This was completely shocking.
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I went home and I told my parents, and at this point, my parents were
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basically treating me as an adult, so it wasn't like they were coming
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into the situation to parent me.
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They let me handle it, and I didn't need their help.
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But I said something to my dad about it and showed him the materials
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that he gave us on groupthink.
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And he said, "You know who does this? An asshole. An asshole does this."
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Now, for important context, please recall that earlier I said that this
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person asked to be addressed as Dr. Last Name, and all of us just did it
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because we assumed he had a doctorate.
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Well, it turns out that he did have a doctorate, but he had a juris
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doctorate, and he decided that as an attorney, because his degree was
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juris doctorate, that he should be addressed as Doctor all the time.
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He made people think that he had a title that in our culture we don't use.
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Everybody thought that he had gone back to school and gotten a doctorate in
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law or some additional education in law beyond his law degree, and that wasn't it.
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He just decided that he was Doctor.
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So we were all punished for this, and the punishment was two five-page
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essays on the two questions, the test was only two questions, on the two
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questions that we didn't answer, and we would get half credit for them.
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Now, mind you, I had literally never been in trouble, not once.
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I was sassy and irreverent even then, but n- I had never gotten in trouble.
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It was always within the boundaries of… Like, my teachers in general liked me.
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So, um, the only teacher I can think of who really didn't like me was one
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whose only mission in life was to get her daughter, who was in the same
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grade as me, to be valedictorian.
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And anybody who was in, like, the top 10 of that class, she had it out for,
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up to and including penalizing me for something that didn't get turned in
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that was already done 'cause my dad had emergency heart surgery, and I
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was out of school for a little while.
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And I remember taking it to her and saying, "I didn't get credit for this,
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and it's right here, but I think it was due on the day that my dad got
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sick, and so can I turn it in now?"
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And she said, "No, you should have turned it in already." And
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I said, "Okay, but I wasn't here that day, and I forgot about it.
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Can we do something?" And she said, "No, and you're giving me attitude, which
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is really rude because I was really, really nice to you when your dad was
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sick." You acted like a human while my dad was having open heart surgery.
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I'm supposed to be reverent to you for that just because you
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did the bare minimum human thing?
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Anyway, that's not what we're talking about.
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So the punishment for this thing was two five-page essays that we were
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gonna get half credit on, and he was going to tank all of our grades.
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The entire class was gonna have basically failing grades because we failed this
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test, and that was the punishment for it.
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And I think the end result was the administration was like, "No,
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you can't do that. You can't fail everybody in your class. You have to
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find a way that they can still get the grades that they earned." Okay.
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Anyway, the point of that story is that they assign essays when they
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are embarrassed that you did the things they taught you to do, and I
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say that for a very, very specific reason, and I'm going to repeat it.
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They assign essays when they are embarrassed that you did the
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things that they taught you to do.
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Why is that relevant there?
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It's come out very recently that in 2024, through a lawsuit, that's how
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we found out about this, a lawsuit was filed against Cornell University that a
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girl was gang raped at a Cornell party, Cornell fraternity party, by seven
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different members of the fraternity.
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They put their activities in writing.
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They encouraged other people to come from their fraternity group
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chat to come up and rape this woman.
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They acted like this was no big deal. They were… I was g- actually, I was gonna say
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they were old enough to know better, but everybody is old enough to know better.
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Every single person on the planet is old enough to know better.
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So we have seven people who sexually assaulted, raped a woman, a college-aged
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woman, in a fraternity house at Cornell University, and then an entire group
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text of people who did not intervene and say, "Stop assaulting that woman."
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You would think that's the worst part, and I'm not saying it's not
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the worst part, but I am saying I can't decide what is the worst part.
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I guess she reported it to the university.
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The university, it appears, expelled two of the students, but
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most of the other students got a five-paragraph essay to write in
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order to keep their student status.
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As their punishment, they were given a five-paragraph essay.
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Now, listen, that's disgusting.
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That is absolutely disgusting.
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But this was swept under the rug.
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No criminal charges were filed.
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The police were not called.
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She was dismissed.
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Her life is forever changed.
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Her life will never be the same.
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But similar to Brock Turner, however many years ago that was, they didn't wanna
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ruin the lives of some upstanding young men by penalizing them for something
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they did while at a fraternity party.
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Those are not upstanding young men.
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And going back to what I said earlier, they assign essays
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when they are embarrassed by something they taught you to do.
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This is cultural.
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This is not an accident.
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This didn't happen because a handful of kids decided to be jerks.
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And they're not kids.
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They were grown-ass men.
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This did not happen because a handful of people decided to be jerks.
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This happened because there is a culture that denigrates women, that
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teaches men that women are to be conquered, that teaches men that their
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behavior while intoxicated is always excusable, and that consent is optional.
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And I can't think of a single woman on the planet who would consent to
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being gang raped for seven hours, but you don't become that person
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without, in some way, being taught that it's okay to be that person.
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So the punishment was an essay, and the magnitude of these two, quote-
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unquote, crimes is miles apart.
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But the intent behind the punishment is the same.
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In my case, we were punished by someone who told us over and over
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to stand up to authority, to be free thinkers, to make decisions on our
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own, except when it was against him.
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"No, not like that.
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That's not what I meant.
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Not like that.
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Not to me.
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You don't have to free think about me.
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You just have to think the way I think about everything." And in the case of
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this much more abhorrent, unjustifiable situation, their leadership, their
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school leadership that creates the culture in which they are expected to
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survive created an environment where it didn't occur to any of them that this
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was rape, that this was illegal, that there should be criminal charges filed.
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And when they realized how bad the situation was, they covered their
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asses and made them write an essay because the fallout from this could
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be detrimental to their reputations.
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And it would be embarrassing to them if somebody else knew that they acted
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the way they were taught to act.
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Listen, they are responsible for their own behavior.
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They are responsible for what they did.
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They, meaning the seven individuals who were involved, who all should be
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prosecuted, and in fact, anybody on that text chain who did not intervene and
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call the police and say, "We are not doing this. This is assault. This is
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rape." All of them should be prosecuted.
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But the response from the leadership at Cornell to sweep this under the rug, to
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barely give them punishment, to let them remain students, to think that they're
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gonna, for all intents and purposes, write an apology letter and fix what the fact
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that they have ruined a woman's life, or at a minimum, made a really good attempt.
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You don't do that if you are actually concerned about the behavior.
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You do that if it looks bad that it could be traced back to you.
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And the way that it could be traced back to them is that the culture
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that allowed it was built by them.
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They make you write essays when they're embarrassed that you
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did what they taught you to do.
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Cornell should be absolutely ashamed.
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They deserve everything that they're getting right now and more.
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Proceeding.
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She is suing the school and the seven individuals.
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So I, I hope those essays become part of the public record so that when anybody
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says, "Not all men," we can say, "Yeah, but always a man," and point to those,
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'cause not only did men perpetrate this abuse, but then they were protected by
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other men, and that's just abhorrent.
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Abhorrent.
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I hope this becomes the guidebook of what actual punishment
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is, and it's not an essay.