Content note: the second half of this episode talks about sexual assault.

Senior year. AP Government. A teacher who was also a lawyer, who made us call him Doctor, and who told us in literally every class to question authority.

So one day, we did.

The test he left made no sense. We talked it through as a class, decided not to take it until he could clarify, and left him a signed note explaining why.

He came back furious. Threatened to fail all of us. Gave us a presentation on groupthink. Then assigned us two five-page essays.

It took me years to understand what that was.

They assign essays when they're embarrassed that you did what they taught you to do.

Which is why I can't stop thinking about Cornell, where a lawsuit filed this month says a woman was sexually assaulted by seven fraternity members in 2024, and that some of them were allowed to write an essay to keep their place at school. Cornell says essays weren't anybody's only consequence. I'd love to see the rest of the list.

The two stories are miles apart. The intent behind the punishment is the same.

This is cultural. It's not an accident. And an essay is not a punishment.

Since I recorded this, the Tompkins County District Attorney has reopened the criminal investigation and says the case is going to a grand jury.

00:00:00 Cold open

00:00:19 Welcome to You're Not Too Much

00:00:33 The teacher who made us call him Doctor

00:04:05 The test nobody could take

00:06:38 He came back the next day

00:08:48 About that doctorate

00:11:47 The point: Cornell and the essay

00:14:37 This is cultural, not an accident

00:15:24 Miles apart. Same intent.

00:17:52 Cornell should be ashamed

If this brings anything up for you, RAINN's National Sexual Assault Hotline is free, confidential and open 24/7. Call 800-656-4673, text HOPE to 64673, or chat at rainn.org.

More at yourenottoomuchpodcast.com · Leave me a voicemail at yourenottoomuchpodcast.com/voicemail

They make you write essays when they're embarrassed that you

did what they taught you to do.

Cornell should be absolutely ashamed.

They deserve everything that they're getting right now and more.

Welcome to You're Not Too Much from the Different, Not Broken Network, a podcast

about how you're not too much, they're not enough, space expands, so let's fill it.

I remember a thing, like maybe a seminal moment in your life that

you didn't realize was a seminal moment in your life at the time.

Maybe we don't usually realize at the time, but like years later, I'm

remembering that this happened and how it impacted me and what it made me think

at the time, and also like the wrinkles it may have left in my brain for my

later rejection of male mediocrity.

But it took me a long time.

I just didn't remember, I didn't put the pieces together that

these things had happened.

And I wanna be clear about something.

This, this is gonna be a little chaotic.

This storytelling is gonna be chaotic, but I promise there's a point.

I promise there is a really important point on the other side that will bring

it all together, and just bear with me.

Okay?

So when I was a senior in high school, we had a teacher who

was a part-time history teacher.

He was also a lawyer, and he made us call him Dr. Last Name, and I just assumed

that it was because he had gotten his doctorate in something, but he insisted

on going by Dr. Last Name, right?

I never thought about it at the time.

It didn't come up, and that's only important because of the true

just self-importance of it all.

But as I said, he was a lawyer, and he taught part-time because

he liked teaching, I guess.

I had him for US government in my senior year.

He was the teacher who taught the AP US government class.

On the very first day of class, or some similar day, he made it very clear that

we were not gonna be using the textbook.

He asked us all to go out and get a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History

of the United States, and that was the textbook that we were gonna be using.

Even though the district had a textbook, even though the teachers were required

to use it, he didn't care, and he insisted that we use Zinn instead.

He was very, very liberal, not a complaint.

He focused, his mission in life was to take high school seniors and get

them thinking critically, to get them questioning their government,

to get them questioning authority, to get them asking questions and

researching things to figure out why.

Why we did things, how we did things, where did this come from?

And truly, that combined with what eventually became my journalism education,

those things really were impactful in my brain, and I very much remember him saying

on many, many different occasions, like, "If you don't like the way something is,

you find out why, and if the why isn't good enough, you work to change it."

It was something he brought up literally every single class.

I remember we were all basically turning 18.

None of us had ever voted.

It was during the 2004 election.

He literally had us meet him at the polling station, which

was not at our high school.

It was the first period of the day.

Not tell anybody that we were gonna be there.

And then we just walked back onto campus afterward for a completely

unsanctioned field trip, which he could have gotten in a ton of trouble for.

Basically, his thing was like, "Are you gonna tell them?" "No."

"Am I gonna tell them?" "No."

"We'll come back with coffee.

It'll be great." And we didn't get in trouble.

We literally did not get in trouble.

We just walked onto campus.

We were with our teacher.

Nobody said anything to us.

So that was the kind of thing that he instilled upon us, which is sometimes

the rules are stupid, sometimes you're going to ignore the rules.

All right.

Toward the end of what I think was our first semester class, he was

out for the day, and he always had the same substitute, and he left

instructions with the substitute of a test that he wanted administered.

The test was administered by the substitute.

She put everything on the desks, and she basically said … And this is a

person I'd actually known for, like, many years at this point, but she basically

said, "He wrote the instructions at the top. Read them, fill them out,

and then do your test." Okay, cool.

No problem.

And of course, we'd all studied for the test.

Of course, we were ready for it.

It was an AP class.

We weren't gonna be unprepared for a test.

But then we read the instructions, and the instructions didn't make sense.

It said to write an essay.

It also said to answer multiple choice questions.

No one knew where the multiple choice questions were.

There were like four or five contradictions in this

paragraph of instructions, and we didn't know what to do.

And so we asked the substitute, and the substitute was like, "He didn't

leave me any other instructions.

This is it.

You're just supposed to do the test." And I'm like, "I literally don't

know how to do this test 'cause the instructions don't make sense."

And so as a class, we started talking to each other like, "What do we

do?" And as a class, we literally decided, let's just not take the test.

He taught us to question authority and to make decisions on our own and to be strong

in our convictions, and our conviction was that he did not give us sufficient

instructions to take this test, and we were potentially gonna do it wrong.

We didn't wanna do that, so when he gets back, he can clarify,

and we can take the test then.

And our substitute was like, "I think you need to take the test." And I was

very vocal at this point, and I was like, "He literally tells us all the time that

questioning authority is the only way to fix things, and he's the authority here,

and he gave us something that doesn't make sense, and we can't get ahold of him."

And so she said, "That's your choice. Okay." And so I think we just, I don't

know, read for the hour or something.

Really by the time we got done discussing it, I think most of the class was done.

But went about our day honestly thinking he was gonna be so proud of us for having

the conversation, discussing it, weighing the pros and cons, making a decision as

a group, and leaving him a literal note.

We wrote him a note that we printed out and put on top of it, signed it as

the class and just said, "We weren't able to take this test because the

instructions weren't there, and we didn't wanna do it wrong, and we weren't sure

what you were looking for." Literally thought it would be zero problem

because we were doing what he taught us.

Well, he came back the next day and all of us were in trouble.

Every last one of us were in trouble.

He was pissed.

He was so unhappy with us.

He said we were all gonna fail the test.

He was gonna give us all zeros unless we named the person in front of everybody

else whose idea this was, that he was getting administration involved, our

graduation should be in jeopardy, and that he was so disappointed in us for being

so disrespectful as to not follow through with the instructions that he provided.

Now, mind you, the instructions that he provided were illogical.

They were impossible. But I was dumbfounded.

I really thought that this man, who had spent every single class period, and

we saw him every day, who spent every single class period teaching us… He

was a civil rights attorney, teaching us about how to question authority, how to

make different decisions, how to stand up for yourself, how to look at a situation

that doesn't make sense and ask the things that get you the information so

that you can figure out the rest of it.

I genuinely thought that he was gonna be like, "You're right. I

provided insufficient instructions, and we'll fix this." Instead,

he threatened to fail all of us.

He tried to out the, quote-unquote, "ringleader." And I'll be honest, I

was probably one of the ringleaders.

I've always been one of the ringleaders.

But it wasn't, like, malicious.

It was, "Yo, dude, you screwed up. Can we wait until you're here to fix this?"

And then last but not least, he gave us a presentation to the whole group

about groupthink, and how we pressured each other, or we pressured people

into making a decision that they didn't wanna make by implementing groupthink.

This was, like, shocking to me.

This was completely shocking.

I went home and I told my parents, and at this point, my parents were

basically treating me as an adult, so it wasn't like they were coming

into the situation to parent me.

They let me handle it, and I didn't need their help.

But I said something to my dad about it and showed him the materials

that he gave us on groupthink.

And he said, "You know who does this? An asshole. An asshole does this."

Now, for important context, please recall that earlier I said that this

person asked to be addressed as Dr. Last Name, and all of us just did it

because we assumed he had a doctorate.

Well, it turns out that he did have a doctorate, but he had a juris

doctorate, and he decided that as an attorney, because his degree was

juris doctorate, that he should be addressed as Doctor all the time.

He made people think that he had a title that in our culture we don't use.

Everybody thought that he had gone back to school and gotten a doctorate in

law or some additional education in law beyond his law degree, and that wasn't it.

He just decided that he was Doctor.

So we were all punished for this, and the punishment was two five-page

essays on the two questions, the test was only two questions, on the two

questions that we didn't answer, and we would get half credit for them.

Now, mind you, I had literally never been in trouble, not once.

I was sassy and irreverent even then, but n- I had never gotten in trouble.

It was always within the boundaries of… Like, my teachers in general liked me.

So, um, the only teacher I can think of who really didn't like me was one

whose only mission in life was to get her daughter, who was in the same

grade as me, to be valedictorian.

And anybody who was in, like, the top 10 of that class, she had it out for,

up to and including penalizing me for something that didn't get turned in

that was already done 'cause my dad had emergency heart surgery, and I

was out of school for a little while.

And I remember taking it to her and saying, "I didn't get credit for this,

and it's right here, but I think it was due on the day that my dad got

sick, and so can I turn it in now?"

And she said, "No, you should have turned it in already." And

I said, "Okay, but I wasn't here that day, and I forgot about it.

Can we do something?" And she said, "No, and you're giving me attitude, which

is really rude because I was really, really nice to you when your dad was

sick." You acted like a human while my dad was having open heart surgery.

I'm supposed to be reverent to you for that just because you

did the bare minimum human thing?

Anyway, that's not what we're talking about.

So the punishment for this thing was two five-page essays that we were

gonna get half credit on, and he was going to tank all of our grades.

The entire class was gonna have basically failing grades because we failed this

test, and that was the punishment for it.

And I think the end result was the administration was like, "No,

you can't do that. You can't fail everybody in your class. You have to

find a way that they can still get the grades that they earned." Okay.

Anyway, the point of that story is that they assign essays when they

are embarrassed that you did the things they taught you to do, and I

say that for a very, very specific reason, and I'm going to repeat it.

They assign essays when they are embarrassed that you did the

things that they taught you to do.

Why is that relevant there?

It's come out very recently that in 2024, through a lawsuit, that's how

we found out about this, a lawsuit was filed against Cornell University that a

girl was gang raped at a Cornell party, Cornell fraternity party, by seven

different members of the fraternity.

They put their activities in writing.

They encouraged other people to come from their fraternity group

chat to come up and rape this woman.

They acted like this was no big deal. They were… I was g- actually, I was gonna say

they were old enough to know better, but everybody is old enough to know better.

Every single person on the planet is old enough to know better.

So we have seven people who sexually assaulted, raped a woman, a college-aged

woman, in a fraternity house at Cornell University, and then an entire group

text of people who did not intervene and say, "Stop assaulting that woman."

You would think that's the worst part, and I'm not saying it's not

the worst part, but I am saying I can't decide what is the worst part.

I guess she reported it to the university.

The university, it appears, expelled two of the students, but

most of the other students got a five-paragraph essay to write in

order to keep their student status.

As their punishment, they were given a five-paragraph essay.

Now, listen, that's disgusting.

That is absolutely disgusting.

But this was swept under the rug.

No criminal charges were filed.

The police were not called.

She was dismissed.

Her life is forever changed.

Her life will never be the same.

But similar to Brock Turner, however many years ago that was, they didn't wanna

ruin the lives of some upstanding young men by penalizing them for something

they did while at a fraternity party.

Those are not upstanding young men.

And going back to what I said earlier, they assign essays

when they are embarrassed by something they taught you to do.

This is cultural.

This is not an accident.

This didn't happen because a handful of kids decided to be jerks.

And they're not kids.

They were grown-ass men.

This did not happen because a handful of people decided to be jerks.

This happened because there is a culture that denigrates women, that

teaches men that women are to be conquered, that teaches men that their

behavior while intoxicated is always excusable, and that consent is optional.

And I can't think of a single woman on the planet who would consent to

being gang raped for seven hours, but you don't become that person

without, in some way, being taught that it's okay to be that person.

So the punishment was an essay, and the magnitude of these two, quote-

unquote, crimes is miles apart.

But the intent behind the punishment is the same.

In my case, we were punished by someone who told us over and over

to stand up to authority, to be free thinkers, to make decisions on our

own, except when it was against him.

"No, not like that.

That's not what I meant.

Not like that.

Not to me.

You don't have to free think about me.

You just have to think the way I think about everything." And in the case of

this much more abhorrent, unjustifiable situation, their leadership, their

school leadership that creates the culture in which they are expected to

survive created an environment where it didn't occur to any of them that this

was rape, that this was illegal, that there should be criminal charges filed.

And when they realized how bad the situation was, they covered their

asses and made them write an essay because the fallout from this could

be detrimental to their reputations.

And it would be embarrassing to them if somebody else knew that they acted

the way they were taught to act.

Listen, they are responsible for their own behavior.

They are responsible for what they did.

They, meaning the seven individuals who were involved, who all should be

prosecuted, and in fact, anybody on that text chain who did not intervene and

call the police and say, "We are not doing this. This is assault. This is

rape." All of them should be prosecuted.

But the response from the leadership at Cornell to sweep this under the rug, to

barely give them punishment, to let them remain students, to think that they're

gonna, for all intents and purposes, write an apology letter and fix what the fact

that they have ruined a woman's life, or at a minimum, made a really good attempt.

You don't do that if you are actually concerned about the behavior.

You do that if it looks bad that it could be traced back to you.

And the way that it could be traced back to them is that the culture

that allowed it was built by them.

They make you write essays when they're embarrassed that you

did what they taught you to do.

Cornell should be absolutely ashamed.

They deserve everything that they're getting right now and more.

Proceeding.

She is suing the school and the seven individuals.

So I, I hope those essays become part of the public record so that when anybody

says, "Not all men," we can say, "Yeah, but always a man," and point to those,

'cause not only did men perpetrate this abuse, but then they were protected by

other men, and that's just abhorrent.

Abhorrent.

I hope this becomes the guidebook of what actual punishment

is, and it's not an essay.