Everyone deserves to feel safe here at Cornell, especially in their living spaces. But when 35% of undergraduate women report experiencing sexual assault on campus and the most common locations are residence halls and off-campus housing, it really is difficult to. Looking to the administration for recourse is often disappointing, and this issue is no exception.

On March 17, the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault announced via email and Instagram the release of a final set of recommendations to address the results of the 2025 Cornell Survey on Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct. Between 2023 and 2025, sexual assault rates for undergraduate women saw a 12 percentage point increase — 23% to 35% — with a mean rate of 25% over six surveys since 2015. That exceeds the national average of 20% reported by the National Sexual Violence Research Center. I saw Cornell Student Life’s Instagram post while sitting (aptly) in my ENGL 3781: “Human Rights in Law and Culture” class. Although there was a long list encompassing the report’s recommendations on the sixth and seventh slides, they decided to highlight the suggestion to introduce a “three-credit class on the concept of ‘sexual citizenship’” in a block quote on the fourth slide. I scoffed, read and agreed with the three disapproving comments left under the post and closed the app with a definitively negative first impression of the task force. Excuse me for being pessimistic, but I would bet that the Venn diagram of sexual assault perpetrators and people interested in a sexual citizenship class doesn’t have much overlap.

Following the posting of the recommendations, the task force held a virtual town........

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