By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
In the wake of what’s alleged at Cornell University, we gotta talk.
Seven young men. One woman. A frat house. A Snap that went out bringing more people in. I’m not going to walk you through the rest. You’ve seen it in every paper and on every feed. A grand jury will decide what the law says about it.
But somebody raised those seven. Not that long ago, they were boys in a lunchroom, too.
I have kids. I think I know what’s going on with them, but realistically, I don’t. They’re off in lunchrooms, on playgrounds, on social media, yelling at one another in video games. Kids do their own thing. They’re developing creatures, same as us, even if there’s a little gray in our hair.
When I worked on Bourbon Street, I saw plenty of questionable behavior. People hit the bottle hard down there. But hitting the vodka isn’t a yes, and passing out sure as hell isn’t one. Our boys need to hear that from us.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth. Every one of those young dudes knew rape was wrong. Nobody gets to an Ivy League school without hearing it a hundred times. You get in by being very smart or very rich, and neither one buys an exemption. Knowing wasn’t the problem.
The problem is what happens when the room goes sideways. When a buddy’s egging it on. When the phones are out and the group chat is blowing up. When the cost of saying “no, bro, we’re done here” feels steeper than the cost of keeping your trap shut.
That’s the conversation we aren’t having with our boys. We tell them not to be the bad guy. We don’t teach them how to be the man who walks out, makes the call, or gets between a friend. We don’t tell them that being called a buzzkill isn’t the worst thing that can happen. What happens in that room lasts a lifetime, for her first, and for everyone who was there.
Here’s what I’d ask you to do.
Ask the hypothetical out loud. “What would you do if a friend was in the group chat saying something like that?” Don’t accept “I’d never be there.” Make him walk through it. Tell him standing up is what good men do.
Give him a rule he’ll remember when he’s 19 and three beers deep: if she’s too drunk to drive, she’s too drunk to say yes.
Tell him he can call you from anywhere, any hour, no questions about how he got there. Then mean it. If he’s had too much to drink, that isn’t the night for a lecture. Pick him up. Talk in the morning.
Pay attention to who’s in his ear. Make sure he knows women aren’t props. They aren’t prizes. They’re people.
Our sons need to hear that from us, not just from a school assembly. But they also need to know what to do with it at 1 a.m., when everyone around them has decided otherwise.
“My kid would never.” That’s likely exactly what those parents thought before a harsh reality landed on their doorstep. Now their sons’ faces are all over the internet, and a young woman says she’s been living with that night ever since.
Don’t wait for the doorstep. Have this talk.
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