Ex-Kamala Harris aide: Cornell wanted my voice. I gave it to Jane Doe

I was scheduled to speak at Cornell University this fall. Students there had planned a thoughtful visit, and I was genuinely excited that an Ivy League school wanted to hear from me. I withdrew because, in good conscience, I couldn't show up on a campus facing serious questions about failing to protect its young women.A young woman, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, has alleged that seven fraternity members gang raped her. According to her lawsuit, some of the men made crude jokes about her in a Snapchat group, and not one of them did anything to help her.

The allegations are horrifying. But what made my decision was what came after. Where are the institutions that are supposed to protect us? What I and many students see is them protecting themselves, their reputations, their donors and their power.

My decision had nothing to do with the students who invited me. It was about a crucial promise the university appears to have failed to keep. When I was a resident adviser in college, I was the person whose door students were supposed to be able to knock on at 2 a.m. I remember meeting parents on move-in day who dropped off their daughters believing the school would keep them safe. Jane Doe says Cornell didn't keep that promise.

Cornell wouldn't be the first university to fail a survivor

I've seen how rarely consequences come on their own. In 2016, I was on the advance team for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign when a 2005 recording surfaced of Donald Trump bragging about touching women, in a way most of us took as sexual assault.

I remember waiting for the consequences. They never came. In 2023, a federal jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. The next year, he was elected president again.

So what's the lesson for young people watching? You can hurt women and still rise to the top. And if you're one of the men standing by, you can stay quiet, and nothing will ever be asked of you.

If Jane Doe's allegations prove true, Cornell won't be the first university to fail a survivor. I think about Chanel Miller at Stanford University, and about all the women who told the truth only to watch people decide it was easier not to hear it.

Cornell's owes Jane Doe a complete investigation

Universities work hard to win over the people around them. They want speakers who bring credibility, alumni who give and families who trust them with their children and their tuition. That gives all of us leverage, and we rarely use it. Speakers can weigh their invitations. Alumni can ask what their university is doing for survivors before writing the next check. Parents can ask on the campus tour what happens when a student reports an assault. We get to decide which rooms we lend our names to, and we should expect more of the institutions that want them.

Pressure works. This past week, Jane Doe's criminal case has been reopened, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has taken over as special prosecutor. I believe that happened because people refused to look away, like the brave student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun who had the courage to pursue this story.Cornell owes Jane Doe more than silence. The university owes the former student an independent investigation, something which it has agreed to. That investigation should include how Cornell handled her report, public findings and a clear plan so that the next student who comes forward is protected, not managed.

This isn't only an American problem. In India, where my family is from, a string of recently reported sexual assaults in and around Delhi has been met with calls for more women-only train cars and buses.

Here in America, we tell women not to wear short skirts, to carry pepper spray, to share their live location. Everywhere, the answer is for women to shrink. When are we going to ask men to be better, and ask the same of the institutions entrusted with our daughters?

I believe Jane Doe. The rest of us get to decide whether we'll hold Cornell, and every institution like it, to the promise it made.Opal Vadhan is the founder of Opal Office, a strategic advisory firm. She was a senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton's trip director.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ex-Kamala Harris aide: Cornell wanted my voice. I gave it to Jane Doe

Reporting by Opal Vadhan, Opinion contributor / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published October 3, 2026 at 2:05 AM.