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‘I say this, having been to a school with a heavy drinking culture, having participated in it myself, having seen that literally nothing good came out of any of it. I remember the frat boys across the hall who would come home after the weekly “meetings”, not just drunk but terrifyingly aggressive; screaming, pounding on our door, urinating on our door in one case. At least one of them was a pre-med student. I shudder to think what interactions young women had with him.’

So much of the Cornell 7 thing is bloody obvious. Schools with heavy drinking cultures will probably approach, attain, or exceed
Cornell-level havoc.

Many people are taken completely aback by some of the disturbing details of this case. As someone who lives in this space, I want to specifically underline something:  This story doesn’t happen without substance abuse. The case is an extreme outlier in terms of alleged severity; I’ve not encountered another case in my career involving ketamine, or with four or more alleged assailants over the course of multiple hours. (Though I must note: Despite the prominent use of the chilling phrase the “Cornell Seven,” the lawsuit accuses four of the defendants of having sex with Doe; one of kissing her; and two of snorting drugs off her body.) But the case is par for the course in the sense that everyone on both sides of the allegations was abusing substances, which is a factor in nearly every case I’ve worked on. 

Brainless drunk sports and frats schools will always have rape and plunder. Brainy drunk sports and frats schools will often have it too. Remember the University of Virginia’s drunk lacrosse players, one of whom murdered his girlfriend, also a student there. The killer was a brainless drunk legacy admit.

Margaret Soltan, October 7, 2026 4:38AM
Posted in: demon rum

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
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Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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