What happened at Cornell University is not an aberration.

Last month, the Cornell Daily Sun the Cornell Daily Sun reported on Jane Doe’s lawsuit against the university, which alleges that she was gang-raped at the Chi Phi Fraternity house in 2024 and that Cornell mishandled the case.

It is tempting to watch and read from a safe distance, convinced that Bowdoin’s culture is somehow different. It is not.

According to the Clery report released last week, there was an apparent decline in reported rape cases at Bowdoin from 2023 to 2025. Yet, there have been four sexual assault cases reported this year, and since the start of the current semester, there have been two reported cases of rape or attempted rape. And this is without taking into account the systematic underreporting of sexual assault across educational institutions, fueled by dismissive attitudes and widespread impunity.

Many of us only hear about campus sexual violence when it becomes impossible to ignore, moments so egregious and inescapable that they breach public consciousness. We read, we share, we shake our heads and we forget until the next headline forces us to remember.

But the ability to forget is a privilege and a luxury. Survivors of sexual assault cannot move on so easily. They are left with trauma that takes years to make sense of, much less to heal from.

And for those conditioned to live in fear and taught paranoia to survive, each story is a terrible reminder of their worst nightmare.

Even then, the majority of sexual violence does not make it to newsrooms. And at Bowdoin, no facade of campus friendliness can hide what goes unsaid. We cannot conceive of ourselves as special or separate from this violence, because in doing so, we become complacent.

According to the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, at this point in the semester, many students are still in the “red zone,” the first few months of college “when the risk of sexual assault is especially high.” One in six women experiences sexual assault their first year of college. And while Cornell has sparked renewed attention on the issue, sexual violence is a constant threat. More than 800 people experience sexual assault every day in the U.S.

The Sun’s Editorial Board said it best: “Safety is not adjacent to the educational mission—safety is, in fact, its precondition.”

Sexual assault and harassment are happening on our campus. They are in our parties, our residence halls and our academic spaces.

We are appalled and disgusted. While we may be physically distant from the Cornell case, we are not removed.

We shouldn’t have waited for a headline.

This editorial represents the majority opinion of the Editorial Board.