AOC: "The Culture Of Rape, Sexual Assault, and Pedophilia Is Protected In Elite Institutions," Including Cornell
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2026/10/05/aoc_the_culture_of_rape_sexual_assault_and_pedophilia_is_protected_in_elite_institutions_including_cornell.html

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reacted to the Cornell University gang-rape accusation and spoke about sexual assault on college campuses at a town hall event in Ithaca in late September.

Ocasio-Cortez recalled how she felt that her experience in college was a "factory of sexual assault." Cortez said, "I was 17 years old I had been, you know, really kept from a lot of things like that when I was in high school. And I walked in, and I saw just, you know, incapacitated women, men taking advantage of them, people making decisions and it... I mean it was just horrible."

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Now we're gonna dive right into the Q&A's but before we do that I want to address one of the most pressing issues that we have seen come out of Ithaca just this past week which is the news coming out of Cornell University about what they did regarding a Jane Doe. For those of you who may not know it has just been revealed that in 2024, just about two years ago, seven men drugged and gang-raped a 20 year old woman. They lured her in to a fraternity house, they drugged her with ketamine, they then posted to a group chat that she was incapacitated and seven men took turns gang-raping her for seven hours.

Their fraternity knew, this was reported to Cornell University and after looking into this matter they expelled two of them and made the rest write essays as their form of punishment. I want to be clear that the culture of rape, sexual assault, and pedophilia is protected in elite institutions across the United States and including Cornell University in this instance. It has got to stop.

It has got to stop. This entire country is sick and tired of not just financially corrupt but morally corrupt leadership in every institution and from a federal perspective we're gonna have to zoom out and do a lot of work. There should be and I want to say you know when I was a freshman my first week of college I attended Boston University.

Boston has so many schools in such a small radius. My first week there I came I kind of grew up in a more sheltered household and I first went to a party within within maybe 10 seconds of me walking into a party at a gym at a school facility someone had touched me inappropriately within 30 seconds of my first social outing going in. I turned around I leave.

Then I remember that weekend some friends and I some friends said we heard there's a party at this place at MIT let's go right and this is like the first week everyone's socializing so we go and I was horrified at what I saw. I was 17 years old I had been you know really kept from a lot of things like that when I was in high school and I walked in and I saw just you know incapacitated women, men taking advantage of them, people making decisions and it I mean it was just horrible and what I felt that I was in at that point was a factory of sexual assault. It was a sexual assault factory.

When I read about what happened at Cornell those men posted in a group chat that means it was normal to them. That means it was acceptable to them. This is a culture, this is norms, these are practices and what we must do is understand that we cannot protect those spaces anymore.

We cannot. The fact that Jane Doe that survivor lost her education because you can't stay in school when something like that happens to you. Rape is often used as an act of war.

It is one of the most horrifying violations that a human being can endure. A form of torture. You can't stay in school.

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. Never again.