Cornell 7: Our Pivot From The Love Hypothesis

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2:01At the Los Angeles Film School, it's all about you. Your ideas, your vision, your future. The world is waiting for you. Are you ready? Learn more. Visit lafilm.edu. Welcome to Chive to Dark Everyone. I'm Shepnam, and today I'm here with my co-host, Homa, as usual. And we're going to talk about a pretty serious topic today, the Cornell 7. So we wanted to provide a trigger warning in the beginning and just let everyone know that this episode is going to cover topics of sexual assault, so if you're not comfortable with that, please skip this one. Homa, I want to turn it over to you to talk a little bit more about how we were going to do Love Hypothesis and we changed our mind.

3:02Yeah, thank you, Shepnam. So yeah, originally the plan was to do Love Hypothesis, which is a romantic comedy film that was recently released on Amazon Prime. And it was going to be a fun, lighthearted episode. Love Hypothesis, the movie is based on the book The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. And the structure that we were going to take was, you know, I'm the reader. And so, you know, a reader's perspective on the film versus a non-reader's perspective on the film. And as Shepnam and I were preparing for that episode, all of this information about what happened at Cornell was coming out slowly. Well, in a rush, actually, not even slowly, was just kind of like a mad overflow. And increasingly growing within me and Shepnam was just this feeling of discomfort that we were going to dedicate this next episode to this really light, not completely light

4:03in frothy film, but more or less, you know, a romantic comedy. And inadvertently actually what happened was while I was watching the movie, and this is a spoiler alert for anyone who has not seen the movie or has not read the book, because what I'm going to describe next is a pretty pivotal scene for both the movie and the book. So I was watching the movie for the episode and the scene with Olive and Tom Benton. Olive is the protagonist and she is an academia, she's a PhD student. And Tom Benton is the professor to whom she has presented her material to her studies to and she's trying to work under him in order to pursue her pancreatic cancer study. And she needs access to his lab. And Tom Benton is also the close friend of her love interest, her fake boyfriend in the movie Adam. Yeah. And so, you know, watching this movie and I read the book so I knew what was coming. And when Tom says that he will take Olive into his research group, he says to her that

5:08he admires the relationship that she has with Adam and that he hopes that they have an equally close relationship and then he gives the salacious once over and said, you're going to let me and then I'll let you in my lab. So even though I knew that was coming, it jared me. And then what he said after that was even more jarring. He said, report me, tell Adam. And this will be the thing that follows you everywhere, every school, every lab. This will be your reputation. This scene literally, like I'm watching it and I think I had just gotten off of, you know, social media and reading about the Cornell 7 case. And you know, Shabnam and I are going to talk about, you know, micro and macro sexual aggressions and where this falls in the spectrum. But that was, I think, the point of pivot for me. I did not think that knowing who Shabnam is as a person, knowing who I am as a person,

6:12when this is going on in the world, because this is a worldwide problem right now, the emphasis is on the Cornell 7 case, but there are other cases going on. It would seem very untrue to who we are to go into a light frothy episode. And frankly speaking, even the love hypothesis, but you know, it's a lot of the process. Yeah, even a frothy, lighthearted movie, like the love hypothesis has this as a part of its very integral part of its plot. And so, and the fact that he basically threatens her with trying to get any accountability for his actions, the fact that he's so comfortable with that in the fact that he's a man and the fact that he works at the university and the fact that, you know, she needs something from him in that moment. It's something I think a lot of people have had to deal with unfortunately. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we're going to talk a little bit more about what's going on from a societal

7:14and cultural perspective, and we're going to bring in our professional backgrounds and discuss the psychological and legal perspectives and whatnot. This is an ailment. This is a malignancy in our global society. Yeah. And it trickles down into multiple facets of life because you know, Shabnam, while I was thinking about, you know, the love hypothesis and, you know, we have like a series of points that we want to talk about, I was even thinking about there was another romantic, like a TV series based on a romance novel series called Off Campus. I don't know if you got a chance to watch Off Campus, but that also has themes of sexual assault in it. And that is also, it's supposed to be like a light, not completely lightweight, but you know, it's supposed to be a feel good TV series. Yeah. And so, yeah, Shabnam is going to give us a little bit more details on the Cornell 7 case. Yeah.

8:14Did you want to go into that or should we talk about it? Sure. Yeah, go ahead. What happened was on October 19th, 2024, a 20 year old woman, Jane Doe, was served alcohol at an establishment. So she was under age. It was called Moonies. And she went to visit her friend at a frat. At that point, there was a party going on there. And she was allegedly raped by seven men over seven hours. She reported it to campus police who apparently investigated it. A campus police investigator led the interview of her, which was also attended by Title 9 investigator, a victim advocate, and student advisors. They took her statement, which she apparently worked on with them. It was a six page statement signed and finalized on November 15th, 2024, meaning it was completed within the first few weeks of this traumatic event. So I want to put that out there that is very soon after.

9:19She, you know, I'm not the psychiatrist amongst us, but I don't think some few weeks is enough time to process a trauma. And she worked on it apparently with the campus police. And so again, that's also, I don't know how I feel about that, honestly, but the title investigation proceeded. I know how I feel. The VP of University Relations, Kyle Kimball asked a panel of trained faculty and staff to review the evidence over multiple days. And they issued a range of sanctions to the men, including expulsion for a couple of them and suspensions. And the civil lawsuit also states that there was a couple of men who also just only received essays. The right. And I would honestly love to see those essays. I think they should release them from wherever in the world they are. Additionally, the Chi-5 Fratt was shut down in 2024.

10:20And it remains barred from Cornell campus. So in 2026, so just shy of two years later, she filed a civil lawsuit through a civil attorney. And that's where this started to come to light. But it was actually the son article, the whole newspaper, the son. They wrote an article that raised this issue. And basically, the group of editors there, a bunch of women, one hijabi woman, go Sofia Desar, I have to say. And then also, Ceres Cuspa is another integral member of this. They both had an interview on CNN. And they stated that they have the right to feel safe on campus. And the school should be transparent. And they felt the school's consequences were education based and not as harsh as they should have been for these men. They should have suffered more real world consequences. I'm kind of elaborating a little bit there, but that's what I gathered from what their

11:20interview stated. And so that brings us to today. That's where we are right now. We're not going to go into the details of this case because every day more details come out. And I want to respect her and this process and her civil suit and whatever the criminal process is trying to do now that maybe they should have definitely the DA should have done more to start with. But rather than going into the details, we're going to talk a little bit more about the social issues surrounding it. So Huma, you wanted to talk a little bit about trauma reporting. Tell us about that. Yeah. And I think in the context of not just this case, but in almost all cases of campus-based violence and campus-based sexual assault, the trauma response is really important to understand because it's often weaponized against the victim.

12:24On my personal Instagram, they did a little educational carousel on what is known as rape myths. And we can post it on J. If we need to. But there's these falsely held beliefs on how a rape victim should behave, how a rape victim should think, how a rape victim should react that have been scientifically studied. These are not just, oh, we think this is what people think rape is. There's been systematic reviews and that these beliefs that people have of what a rape victim, how their trauma response should look like, how it directly impacts the type of care they're going to get, how it impacts even legal recourse, like what jurors and the police officers who are investigating these cases, their biases that they are bringing in. In terms of a trauma response for a sexual assault victim, I'm going to ask everybody to

13:25just maybe put yourselves in those shoes. In whatever capacity I would say on, he's speaking, Shabna, most women have experienced some level of sexual aggression, whether it's on a micro level or on a macro level. So I'm going to use a personal example, something that's happened to me in order to illustrate how variable, how complex the response can be. This was not like sexual assault in the sense of rape. I was, I don't know, 18, 19 years old. I was a student in Pakistan at King Edward Medical University. I was wearing a lab coat and this man comes up to me and the hospital, which is affiliated with KE, King Edward, it serves the underserved. So this man, he looked like a patient or he looked like the relative of a patient. And he comes up to me and it is after school hours, there's still people around. It's an open campus. It's not unsafe.

14:25There's, it's still daylight out. I didn't feel unsafe. And he comes up to me and he's like, you know, Dr. Syba, you know, I'm going to translate here, but you know, can you help me? And so I'm a little student here and I'm like, oh, he's calling me Dr. Syba and I want to be very humble and, you know, just, you know, yeah, I want to do the right thing. And I'm like, yeah, of course I can help you. And I, like, it kind of like towards like the periphery of my brain, I could see he was doing something with his hand, but it didn't really, I didn't clock it. I didn't register it. He whips it out. Then we can all, you know, when I say it, he whips it out. And in Urdu, he says, which means is this enough? I froze. Yeah. I didn't yell. I didn't scream. I didn't start cursing. I think the home of today might have, but 18, 19 year old home, I did not. I didn't even know what I was looking at initially.

15:29Like I literally was like, what is going on? And he was slapping away at it. So to speak. Okay. I was holding it. And I just, I just, I froze. I didn't even know what to say to him. I just was like, I backed away slowly, right? Yeah. And a lot of people could have said to me at that point, why didn't you take your shoe off and beat the shit out of him? Why didn't you yell? Why didn't you say something? I didn't. And I just didn't know how to register it. So I backed away and I walked around in a days and I found a classmate. This was a friend of mine. It was, it was, it was a male student of a local colleague who I, who I, who I trusted. And he could see the look on my face like I'm dazed and confused and he's like, what's wrong? A shabnam, I was so ashamed. Yeah. Even though this is, this is a very open-minded colleague, he would have, he wouldn't have judged me. That all I could say was there's somebody who did like, you see me, but the museum

16:32at Isatagi, which means like someone was, how do you roughly translate that? Someone was naughty with me. Someone was just like, yeah. Not a, you sound, not a, not the right word of that. Not a, not a, not a, not a right word. Someone was misbehaved. Yeah, misbehaved or uncut. Someone misbehaved with me, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because I was too embarrassed and he made around, around the university, around the, like, the area that we were and he said, well, I don't see anybody. He's like, what happened? And I was like, I didn't want to tell him because I didn't want him to view me differently. Now my, do this man did not try to grab me? He didn't touch me. When I backed away, he did not follow me in terms of sexual aggression. Yeah. This is not on the level of what's happened to other women in this world. Yeah. Yeah. I sat there afterwards thinking, did I give off an inappropriate air?

17:33Was there something about me that beckoned him? Did I have an inviting face? What was it about me that made him think it was okay to do this? And I have told this story and I've laughed about it. You know, I've, I've made body jokes about it. There is a defense mechanism, right? And I could see someone be like, oh, Homo's laughing about it. That's not a big deal. And that's not true to this day I feel violated. Yeah. But the human brain compartmentalizes these incidents in the way that it best knows how to handle it. So a woman who is being sexually assaulted and this from, from rain, which stands for the rape abuse incest national network, 70 to 80% of sexual assaults are committed by someone who the victim knows. So again, I'm going to ask everybody, put yourself in a victim's shoes. This is a person who you have a relationship with. It might be a very significant relationship.

18:33Someone you view as a protector. Someone who are maybe in a loving relationship with maybe it's someone who is a friend. Maybe it's, it's the guy that you see every day passing in the hall, but you know him, right? Yeah. But when you're talking about in the moment, the trauma is occurring. There can be freezing, a phenomena that we call tonic immobility, which includes paralysis like your muscles freeze up. They could go limp. There is an inability to speak. You could disassociate. If it's a person that is much more powerful than you, there could be even a piecement like if I do this minor sexual act, minor, maybe I can get away with not doing the business bigger one. Maybe that's all they'll want for me or something. Yes, maybe that's all they'll want for me. There can even be, and this is one, this is one that I think is so sad is a rewriting of the history because your brain doesn't want to think that someone who you trust, someone who you think would protect you could ever betray you in such a sense.

19:37So you will internalize the shame, rewrite that history and try to make it okay. That's what I was going to bring up is I think when people talk about betrayal, whenever they talk about it, it's because they've processed it and recognized it as betrayal. But the part about it that people don't talk about enough is the surprise of it. It's betrayal because you didn't see it coming. It's a surprise. And I feel like anytime you're taken by surprise, like you thought you were going to help that man with a medical problem. Right. Yeah. Whenever you're taken by surprise, you almost have to gather, you have to process the situation more and understand what's happening. And especially if it's a surprise and a break of trust because then you have to come to terms with both of those things, I feel like. Yeah. There's roll adjustment there too, right?

20:37Yeah. Like in my particular case, you know, I was going in with this benign authority, right? I am the doctor. This is a patient in this hospital or on the campus and he's lost. I'm the caregiver in this role. I'm going to help him in a different types of sexual assault. If it's a romantic, if it's friends, right? There's got to be the now there's a role adjustment. And oftentimes rape victims, it takes some time to even recognize that it was rape because your brain just doesn't want to go there for a myriad of reasons. It's not. And just, you know, there's compartmentalization and maybe just kind of like I need to get through this because also remember, if 70 to 80% of these people who are committing these acts are people that you know in the aftermath, there is a high likelihood that you are still in the room with you're a salient. Mm hmm. Who they are probably acting like nothing is happening. Nothing wrong happened. Nothing is happened, right? Yeah. And if you have been able to maybe internalize it as holy shit, I just got assaulted.

21:41I just got raped or whatever. Mm hmm. Maybe your next thing is how am I going to get out of here without this person killing me or doing it again? Mm hmm. So when you're looking at a trauma response, what I would encourage people is to remember that it doesn't look the same. It doesn't mean that there isn't patterns. There are patterns. These trauma responses are studied. But it is not, I would say as what people might always traditionally think it is, like the girl fights back and then she runs away and she knows right away that she was violated and she goes to the police and she gets the rape kit done. I would say more often than not, that's not what happens. Yeah. And I almost wonder, you know, sometimes I would think, I mean, I can't thankfully say that I've been in this type of situation, but I've been in situations where there's betrayal. Right. And it's like you then kind of take the other person's temperature when you happen to

22:43see them in daily life and you, and they act like there's nothing going on and it's almost like gas lights you more like where you're like, yeah, did so nothing happened, you know, and you start, it takes you have to process it, you know, you have to process it and then reality begins to set in. If it's a person who has power or authority over you, like what Tom said to her that this will be your reputation forever, you'll never get into a lab. If it's your, you know, like in, and I would say in our DC culture, like are we going to ruin the reputation of our families? Mm-hmm. You know, if in terms of college kids, social acceptance, being labeled as the slut, yeah. You know, having the fingers pointed at you, why did you wear that? Why did you drink that? Why did you do those drugs? Right. So, it's, it's not a straightforward process and, you know, I strongly believe that there

23:45needs to be a societal shift on a global level, on a global level to how we approach victims of sexual assault coming from a cultural family dynamic. And then extrapolating that to a legal process. Yeah. And I'll let you talk a little bit more about the legal. Yeah. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about how the law defines consent and how New York defines consent, New York law. So basically consent must be given freely without threats, pressure or manipulation. The individual must be 17 or older. Consent can be withdrawn or revoked at any time during sexual activity. And once you withdraw consent, the activity must stop immediately. The absence of a verbal no does not constate to legal permission.

24:45So just because you didn't say no doesn't mean you meant yes, right? Yeah. And then the law says a person is legally incapable of consenting if they are unconscious, a sleep or physically helpless. Or if they're mentally incapacitated due to a medical condition or being drugged without their knowledge. However, the courts have historically interpreted this to mean the person must have been slipped a substance or given alcohol without their knowledge or consent. So if you got drunk on your own, you can still, I guess consent, right? I mean, based on the definition of what consent should be, it's not freely given, etc. It doesn't quite make sense. But in the functioning of the court, you have voluntarily incapacitated yourself and you cannot claim that it's their fault, basically.

25:48This is a dumb law that is in effect in 19 states and surprisingly, some very left leaning ones, which is pretty surprising. I don't agree with any public policy argument on why this type of law should exist. And it's now facing intense legislative scrutiny, which it should. Finally. Yeah. I talk about like on a campus level in these title nine investigations, right? You know, so I did a little bit of research digging into. I know that as medical professionals, you know, if a sexual assault victim comes to the hospital, if anyone has watched season two of the pit, they feature an episode with the sexual assault victim and it's portrayed beautifully on how the nurse handles her. Like medical professionals, you know, they're trained extensively on how to handle and work with the sexual assault victim. Whether we do it well or not is, you know, dependent on the person, but I don't think lawyers are. Well, okay, well, look, that's lawyers, right?

26:49Which even the police and people they should be, they should be. I did a little bit of research and hold on. Let me get this. Okay. There's no federal mandate for police training for man like, like on how to interview a victim of sexual assault. Forty-three states do have laws on the books, but they lack a strict dedicated mandate for trauma informed questioning and it's very low rigor for the most part. Okay. That's police. That's criminal. Okay. Fine. Right. Right. Let's look at title nine. Towards college campuses. Now, Shabnam, I'm going to defer to you here because it's, it's out of not my wheelbarrow here. My understanding is it is the university police who conduct the investigation in title nine

27:53cases on the campus. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's an internal investigation. So there you look that up and this is straight from a Google search for there's a study I can link it later on if people want to. This is a direct quote. Campus police departments are employees at the university creating an inherent conflict of interest critics and civil rights researchers point out that campus police face institutional pressure to minimize public scandal and protect the university from liability or negative press. This is the study and yet we have this consent law that seems to be in my opinion, protects the assailant. And then you have the people who are doing the investigation, who have a massive conflict of interest at play. And then I want to talk. Where did the Epstein class come from? I exactly. They go to these higher institutions of learning. Yeah.

28:53Right. And then I want to talk about a little bit just want to bring up this point because yeah, like, you know, I just started digging. So yeah, I had mentioned earlier like we need a global shift in perspective. And I said global because right now in New Delhi, there's massive protests a few weeks ago, a 17 year old girl, not a woman, was raped by three men who were posing as policemen. And this was amidst, you know, several instances, other examples of rape, you know, as young as 11 years old. And the women who are protesting, they're not just protesting, you know, the patriarchy in that class, since they're saying that there has been a failure of protection, that there needs to be a societal change because what those women were told, the university students, is that they shouldn't go out. They got a curfew put on them. Oh, well. Instead of actually like, hey, let's educate men. Why did they put a curfew on the men? Curfew on the men. Yeah.

29:54And at the same time, right now, there's also a Louisiana State University case going on Kendall Francis. She's a student who was raped by a football player. And in September of this year, she came out on TikTok. She only had a Title IX investigation done. The investigators who did that Title IX investigation never told her. And I didn't even know this until I read this article was that the Title IX investigation has nothing to do with the criminal investigation. She wasn't told that she actually had to go file a police report. Yeah. And Title IX investigators are supposed to be rigorously trained. Would you not think that if a woman is coming or if a victim is coming to you saying that they have been sexually assaulted, that they would sit and tell you, look, this is what we can do. But you want, shouldn't they do that? Criminal recourse. Yeah. Criminal recourse. So the DA in that case, he saw the TikTok or the video and he said, he's not going to be here. He requested from the university that they turn over the investigation.

30:56And that process isn't work. As I understand it, he requested that they turn over all the documents, all of the interviews, all the documents. As I understand this Cornell 7 case, yes, let's contrast that. I'm turning it over to you. Yeah. My understanding is that the DA received some kind of exorps of her statement with legal conclusions and that. I believe, although I could be wrong about that part from the campus police. And it appears he didn't even ask for her full statement to read her full statement himself. Okay. He didn't ask for her full statement. He didn't ask for transcripts of the interview. He didn't know about the Snapchat messages. And I believe her civil lawyer is now saying, no, you had them or we gave them to you, which leads me to believe either he is not being truthful about that or the school police and the school was intentionally withholding things from the DA's office.

31:59And the DA just didn't care enough. And the DA didn't care enough to say like, hey, I would like to actually read her statement. I would like to actually read the transcript of the interview you had with her. Yeah. Because you know, a young woman just comes forward and says she's raped by seven years. And men just for kicks, right? Yeah. Like the DA had to go through a title line investigation because she's bored. Yeah. And this DA had no curiosity, no sense of like a deeper sense of morality that maybe I need to pursue this further. But if it was like, and I don't mean to go on a tangent, but if this was a person of color who had marijuana, I wonder what the DA would have done because we know those cases. Yeah. I mean, we currently have the Nolan Wells case going on. I don't know enough about that case at this time. And this is already such a huge topic about campus assault. I don't think it's fair to go into that. I think it would deserve its own time.

33:01But you know, that plays a huge factor also. I wonder when we're talking about Louisiana. First of all, Louisiana doesn't have this involuntary intoxication like BS law. And then also, I wonder what race was the victim, what race was a perpetrator versus in this one. And the L.S. And the L.S. I want to say, don't quote me on that, but I believe they are. But the perpetrator and that one is to my understanding, like very entrenched in football culture. Okay. And one of the things that's interesting here that the civil attorney for Jane Doe brought up is that she is. She's not from a legacy family. She's not from a family with a lot of resources. This was her dream. She came to school and she was traumatized. And after this alleged rape in October, she asked for a refund on tuition for the remainder of the year so that she could take time off and, you know, take care of herself.

34:05And they refused to give her that. So she continued to go to school seeing these guys every day. So further being traumatized, we traumatized over. Yeah. I mean, after all this title, nine investigation and everything, it's like you couldn't even just give her a break and let her continue next year. I wonder if they did that then that would be an admission of, I mean, they did expel two people and they had them write some essays. All flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy picks all through the store like Maple Leaf Cookies from 365 brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake here for a limited time and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Sip the season with 365 brand cinnamon spice coffee and pumpkin spice creamer while you still can spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. R.P.'s biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough.

35:08It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works covered by insurance. Insurance average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48 day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash a cast.

36:12That's growtherapy.com slash a cast. Growtherapy.com slash a cast. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. I don't care what it's an admission of. If a student is struggling mentally for any reason, right? Why be facetious? No, I know what you're saying, but I'm saying like, the moral depravity of what has happened and what happens is so it's so beyond and it's so. I feel like it's a cruelty upon a cruelty because you couldn't even give her that. No. It's, yeah. And you know what the thing is, you're really sad, Shabnam, is this has been studied. Campus sexual violence has been studied. So does some statistics for you guys in a 2026 studies psychological trauma by Kate Walsh? They took a random sampling of 3,000 U.S. undergrads with 683 people responding.

37:15Among the respondents, 24.5% reported experiencing campus sexual violence. That is roughly one in four. Yet less than one in four, about 23.4% of survivors saw any type of service. So my point is to say this, and I'm not going to call it an epidemic and like the true scientific sense of the word, but this epidemic of campus sexual violence is not an unknown entity. It is known. The people in higher office are aware of this. Parents sending these people to these higher institutions of learning. They are aware of it. This isn't coming out of the blue. This has been well studied. Yeah. So to that point, I want to just explain a little bit about a Title IX investigation. Yes, please. The formal institutional inquiry conducted by a federally funded school or university.

38:18So they're getting federal funding, which is why you have a Title IX investigation, only at federally funded schools and universities, into allegations of sex, based discrimination, sexual harassment or sexual assault. The standard of proof, which also, I have some feelings about sexual assault and rape and whether that should be dealt within the same manner as like sex, based discrimination or sexual harassment, but you know, those lines, I guess, are tough to draw as well. The standard of proof is preponderance of the evidence, which is much lower than beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a criminal standard, right? So that means in this Title IX investigation, they had to prove by a preponderance of the evidence what happened that night. Go ahead. I just want to clarify just to make sure the people who are conducting the Title IX investigations, the federal funds are going to the universities. Yeah. And these are usually police officers employed by the university. Okay. All right. Just want to put that just don't want anyone to forget that.

39:20Yeah. I mean, look, this is a societal wide problem. We have HR at companies that are all the HR employees are paid by the company. So I mean, isn't that like an open secret that HR is not on your side? Yeah. And no one tells these kids that about I'll be honest. I didn't know that that the Title IX investigation is done by the campus police who are hired by the campus. Like, I had this idea that, oh, yeah, I'm not going to really trust the university to always do the right thing because that might affect their bottom dollar. Did I kind of know that? Yeah. Did I know that the investigators that are given federal funds? Yeah. Are employed directly by the university? Did I know that? I did not know that. I consider myself a somewhat well educated woman, but completely ignored about that. I didn't know that the Title IX investigation doesn't automatically trigger a, but that at the

40:26very least, I just assumed that if a student, you know, is undergoing a Title IX investigation, someone's going to sit down and tell her, hey, you know what, if you want to press criminal charges, you're going to have to go to the police police. We might not automatically do that for you. I didn't know that. Yeah. I think they should. I don't know procedurally what they're required to do and not, but if they're not required to, they should be required to explain that. I'll send you the article on what happened with the LSU student. Yeah. So this, so yeah, Title IX, they fall under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which is a federal law, which legally protects student education records and personal information from public discourse. So the Title IX investigation is to protect these students and their records from the public, which is why the Title IX investigation is not public right now. And journalists have brought out some things, which I am assuming they got through like

41:28first hand accounts of some sort. And then if there's a lawsuit and the details are released due to legal proceedings, then they can get released that way. Which I hope they do. Yeah. Yeah. I hope they do too. I hope they do too. Because, yeah, this is not a good situation. What do you think about frat culture? Yeah. Let's, let's pivot a little bit to that. It sucks ass. That's my opinion. I think Jen Alpha should phase out frat culture, just like Gen Z faded out alcohol. That's my two cents for the world. So I did a little bit of digging into frat culture. Frat culture, yeah. And I want to make sure that I can get a little spiel while you're making sure you get it right? Yeah. Or if you want to start. Yeah. No. Okay. I give this spiel. Yeah. My biggest issue with this culture, frat culture and Greek life, which I don't know if it

42:28has anything to do with actual Greek culture or it's just the letters, I'm going to assume not at this point. But like actual like like Greece. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. I don't think so. The process of hazing, right? Like we've all seen the Alabama rush was a big thing a few years ago, right? So the process of hazing teaches group think and it teaches especially the lower class men don't question authority, even if you're uncomfortable, even if you have to do something you don't want to do, you suck it up, you do it, you don't question authority. And then you know, you couple that with excessive, partying alcohol drugs in these parties. And it's not a good recipe, you know, and I think this is a foundational part of this culture. I don't think it's a good thing. I don't know why anyone would be excited for someone they love to go to college and be part of a fraternity. I mean, that I can see why. I mean, the social connections, a sense of community, solidarity, like it's instant

43:33friendship in one way, like especially when you're looking at, you can get that through clubs, you can get that through other activities where I think there's something very insidious about the culture of fraternities that and and some of this toxicity and some of this toxicity you see it carry over into the corporate world. And we have some of these same problems in the corporate world. And you like you're saying these connections people build and they bring it into the workforce and it sucks there too. Yeah, but I will say like, Shabna when you're like 18, 19 years old, right? And if you're a legacy kid and even if you're not, and especially even if more if you're not a legacy kid, right, like if you have to make friends all on your own, fratts and sororities, they're built in companionship, right? You're going to go live in the house together. You're right, you can maybe do it through clubs and whatnot. But it's not going to be the same type of experience when you're, you know, sharing a room, you're getting up together, right? You're throwing parties together, you're whatever that process is called rushing, I guess, yeah, together.

44:34I mean, I can see how seductive that is. And then there's a lot of fraternities and sororities that there's a generational aspect to it. Like, you know, my dad, my granddad, my great granddad was a part of this frat or this story, or my grandma was a part of this story already. I can see the appeal to somebody. I can't see the appeal too, but I think I can see it. But I also think then if you're a grandma, a mom, and a dad, and you've been through this and you know, okay, there's maybe these perks, like these connections, but there's also like a deep darkness. Why would you want that for your next generations? Well, I will say sometimes there's that I got through it, you can go through it. I know in residency, a lot of older doctors, the, you know, back in the day, I don't know if they still call it, you know, when you got grilled and publicly humiliated by your attending on rounds that they would call that pimping.

45:35And you know, while you were a resident and going through it, it could chatter your world, right? But it was argued and then the vigorous hours where you're literally sleep deprived and you're driving home sleep deprived. The idea behind it was we're toughening you up and the older doctors who had actually gone through this process, they were like, you know, I hated it when I was doing it, but it made me a better doctor. You know, it'll toughen you up, it'll make you stronger. And then they perpetuate the same eye personally. I think it's abusive. I think they're much better ways to educate me. I am very against this, but I think it is the same. I think it is similar mentality, right? And then at the end of it, like in terms of like residency, you get a really, you get a good, a good doctor. You get someone who can on the surface with stand pressure, I say on the surface because doctors have a very high burnout rate and a high suicide rate. But on the surface, they can do a 24 hour call and then eight more hours of hospital

46:36rounds, right? On the surface, you've, it's a surface thing, right? I get it, but, but then I think just as you're saying that, this is a right of passage to train you and make you accustomed to the way of the world for this world that you're entering and to perpetuate that same culture. Right. And if that's the way that these universities and these frats look at this type of behavior, that is disgusting and criminal and that should not be compared as disgusting and abusive as a difficult residency could be. Yeah, yeah. The fact that like I think that's the problem that we do think about it the same way that it is a right of passage that they are, yeah, yeah, yeah. A customing people to the real world. No, the real world should not be that way. Yeah, this is, but this is a real world that continues to serve the same people.

47:38Yeah. Right. So, a little bit about what the studies show. Okay, let's keep it somewhat fact based, right? And the studies are limited actually. And I want to say this really carefully, because I do believe in nuance and trying to be as accurate as possible. There is a correlation with fraternity membership and increased sexual aggression. Okay. They did a longitudinal meta-analysis from two studies, 570 participants. So it is somewhat limited in scope. Okay. And they found that fraternity membership was associated about associated guys not caused. Okay. So, correlation association is not causation with about 165% greater likelihood of subsequent sexual violence perpetration. Okay. So, when they kind of looked at it a little bit deeper, what they found was that people who are already kind of predisposed to, quote, aggressive tendencies like binge-drieking and having

48:40these, getting angry or, you know, angry drunk kind of thing. Well, at least like I would say, I mean, this is my word. They, like, a, more of a, a cavalier attitude towards sex, more, the word that they use an unrestricted attitude towards sex, they are more likely to gravitate towards this type of culture. However, when they controlled that, like, when they took, when they weeded out the people who did not have these views coming into the fraternity, right? Well, they found that then when they controlled for that, that fraternity members then, after that, had a 62% higher likelihood of sexual aggression during the first two years of college. Membership was also associated with an increase in binge drinking and an increase. This is really important. An increase in perception that peers were sexually aggressive. And I think that last one's really important because it creates this permissive attitude, this, this idea that she wanted it, she was okay with it, consent was there. He don't really need consent because, you know, she, everybody wants it.

49:46Yeah, yeah, you know, and so fraternity membership has also been associated with more, what they call rape supportive attitudes. There was a meta-analysis of 29 studies and there was a moderate association with rape supportive attitudes. And so, so basically I was right. I'm just kidding. I mean, so like in terms of like, you know, we were talking about groupthink also. The guy who originated the theory of groupthink, the way he had theorized it, that actually hasn't lived up to scientific scrutiny. Right. So, but groupthink conceptually does have a lot of like, I would say, like lightweight evidence before in favor of it, but in terms of like a vigorous scientific study, no, not really.

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51:53That's growtherapy.com slash a cast. Growtherapy.com slash a cast. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. All flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy picks all through the store, like Maple Leaf Cookies from 365 Brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake, here for limited time, and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Sip the season with 365 Brands Cinnamon Spice Coffee and Pumpkin Spice Creamer while you still can, spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. Surprisingly enough, I think what happens more is that it's psychologically somewhat intuitively makes sense, right? But I think one thing that people don't want to think about is, most people are attracted to people who somewhat think along their own. Yeah, they're their values, right? Then you get a bunch of them. Now your values might not be 100% aligned, right?

52:57But you're in that general sense, right? Or you admire something in them, or they have some authority over you for something else or like less personalized attest, like Muslims, right? Like you'll have progressive Muslims, conservative Muslims and whatnot. Like we're somewhat like we're in the same group. But then you know, you can have like a group of Muslims who maybe we all believe in the five pillars of Islam, right? We believe in the basic tenets of Islam. We all go to the mosque, we all pray, et cetera. We fast together, we celebrate eith together. But there's a lot of eidics that we might disagree with. And you might not have the person who might be more progressive, the person who's more conservative. I would say it's usually the person who's more progressive. They might not as rigorously defend their ideas when they're in that group. So what I'm saying is that initially they were attracted to the group because there is a lot of similar values.

53:58But then once in the group and everyone else is kind of taking one perspective, it becomes harder to speak up. But the studies do show that is in order to kind of like bring about some of the societal change, speaking up does matter. Good, yeah. And people should do it more. People should do it. Yeah, I did want to say that the legal system, unfortunately, it requires a lot on the victim. It requires a hell of a fight for the victims. And so people that do come forward like this and that fight for themselves and really fight for all the women in society, they're taking a lot on and they're taking a lot on for us. And we should just recognize that, appreciate that, support that, whatever way that we can. I agree. And to circle back, I think to, you know, for our listeners, Shabinam and I discuss a

55:03lot, especially when it's a more serious topic, such as this about what we're going to talk about, you know, the research that we put behind it. And I'm going to bring it right back to the love hypothesis to a discussion that you and I were having about how in the love hypothesis, Adam, all of you know, fake boyfriend who does well in love with her in the movie and in the book, he, you know, quote comes to her rescue, right? Right. And you and I in one of our discussions, you brought up that it's sad that he has to come to her rescue, right? Yeah. And society shouldn't, society should be protecting women. We shouldn't have to be finding one good man that can do it for us. Yeah. And I'm going to take a, take that point one step further. Maybe should be made of good men. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. It shouldn't be one good man who's rescuing a victim.

56:04It should be good people who are preventing these crimes from happening. Yeah. And then when they do happen, they do justice by the victim. They are there and they support them because the victim cannot do it by themselves. Yeah. And so, yeah. It's not one good man. We need more good people. Yeah. So, 100%. Okay. On that note, everybody, take care of yourselves and take solace in your good relationships and take solace. And, yeah. Yeah. Take breaks, take breaks. I know a lot of people have been talking to me about this. They're, you know, they're doing deep dives. They're getting triggered. There's a lot of victims of sexual assault who it's really hard for them to look at social media from psychiatric therapeutic perspective. Guys, please take breaks. Please find your people. You know, the people that will hold you, the people that will support you.

57:06We will be posting like a bunch of numbers and resources for victims of sexual assault on our Instagram page. But you know, this is, it's so, there are no words. Yeah. Well, you can find those numbers at GIFTRADARK on Instagram and Threads and follow us there. Find us on all podcast platforms. And if you liked what you heard, if it moved you or helped you in any way, give us a rating right as a review. And we hope I'm proud of being able to hopefully do an episode or two or three that are meaningful and that give people some kind of comfort and feeling of community. So I hope that that came through. I hope so too. Our platform might not be large, but we do have a platform so we should use it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Take care everyone. Good night.

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