To the editor: At the beginning, the blanket suspension of all Cornell College fraternity events and actions via 2027 ought to have been the administration’s speedy reflex motion, not a delayed response to the snowballing public outrage over gang-rape allegations involving seven college students (“Cornell suspends fraternity parties, gives state police role in investigating campus assault reports,” Oct. 13). In any commonplace disciplinary set-up, an alleged perpetrator is suspended pending a full investigation. Ready till now to droop associated exercise is a large administrative failure.
Moreover, for a college with tens of 1000’s of scholars, a strong employees of certified case managers ought to have been in place from the start, not scrambled collectively mid-crisis.
The scenario additionally highlights a systemic flaw: Whereas campus police possess full regulation enforcement powers, they’re finally managed by the college reasonably than a municipal or state authorities, which dilutes enforcement to guard the victims and their rights within the first place.
A proactive method to stopping campus sexual assault and a inflexible impartial mechanism to deal with reporting should be carried out in any respect college campuses by default — not deployed as a scientific damage-control maneuver after a criminal offense has been perpetrated.
Atul M. Karnik, Woodside, N.Y.
