My visit to Ithaca, NY to discuss Gang Rape

Amusing screengrab courtesy of the Daily Mail

A local guy in Ithaca, NY messaged me on Signal a few days ago asking if I would please attend last night’s meeting of the Ithaca Common Council, which is Ithaca’s municipal governance body. I would not have known about this meeting otherwise. I agreed and drove the four hours yesterday from NJ to Ithaca.

Before I arrived at City Hall for the 6pm meeting, the guy, Zach, submitted a request for me to speak during the public comment section, in accordance with normal procedures. This entailed writing down my name on a card and handing it to the clerk. Specifically, I was to speak about a resolution proposed by Mayor Robert Cantelmo to impose a moratorium on all Cornell student events requiring a city-issued permit, so as to purportedly mitigate the “significant threat” of student-led Gang Rape to the larger Ithaca Community, as revealed, purportedly, by the now-infamous Jane Doe lawsuit.

Here is Cantelmo’s September 28, 2026 statement demanding this blanket prohibition on student-organized events, which he frames as a “new policy directive” that he supposedly had “no choice” but to declare:

If you notice, Cantelmo summarily condemns the seven defendants named in the Jane Doe lawsuit as “perpetrators” of heinous “drugging and raping” crimes. And because there is such a “significant threat” posed to Ithaca residents by this scourge of unpunished brutal gang rape, he’s therefore going to decree a “moratorium” in the name of emergency rape prevention, and deploy government power to block students from holding any permit-required events for the next month. The nonpartisan free speech organization FIRE denounced this ludicrous measure, which makes zero rational sense from any angle, and I was planning to speak in opposition myself during the designated public comment period. (As far as I could tell, the vast majority of other people who spoke on the measure were adamantly in favor.)

Here is the concurrent resolution Cantelmo introduced to implement his bold “policy directive” to save the frightened people of Ithaca from the hordes of gang-raping Ivy Leaguers, until such time as Cornell gives some vague “accounting” of how it will more aggressively “prosecute crimes” that Cantelmo has decided ought to be prosecuted:

The portion highlighted in yellow is literally just a straight-up copy-and-paste of the civil complaint filed last month by the huckster money-grubbing self-proclaimed “Epstein Maxwell Survivor Lawyer” Thomas Giuffra, who failed to even ensure that his own client was competently anonymized — having screwed up the redaction of her signature on her affidavit, as well as going on TV to announce that Jane Doe was previously a student at the Hotel Administration school at Cornell, which matches the resume she left up on the internet. Among other witless disclosures Giuffra has recently made, which resulted in it being not very difficult to identify Jane Doe. (See a further explanation I gave this afternoon on NewsNation.) Mysteriously, the civil complaint also left out today’s big evidentiary revelation: that around 36 hours after the purported gang rape, Jane Doe told one of the individuals now accused of being her lead gang-rape assailant that she regarded the group sexual encounter as a consensual “gangbang,” and did not “think we should feel any shame... our body our choice.” Nonetheless, the original complaint — though entirely unvetted, uncorroborated, expressly settlement-seeking — is still what Mayor Cantelmo and the council decided to go with, not just in terms of forming their perceptions of the wider Jane Doe hoopla, but now also integrating verbatim into city governance.

The portion of the resolution highlighted above in greenish blue is not just a totally bogus statistic, but a bogus characterization of the bogus statistic. It claims that over one third of all undergraduate female students at Cornell have reported being victims of “non-consensual sexual contact” — a shocking thing to fathom! Over 1/3 of all females at this bucolic Ivy League university have been effectively raped on campus? Huh?

One of the council members, Robin Trumble, who of course went on to vote in favor of the moratorium resolution, repeated this staggering claim aloud for emphasis: that according to Cornell’s own self-administered survey of the student body, “more than one in three undergraduate women reported non-consensual sexual contact involving force, threats, or incapacitation.” (Ironically, this survey was conducted in the aftermath of the initial news of the Jane Doe incident in 2024, to signal the university’s commitment to sexual safety or something — which has now blown up in their faces.)

At bottom, the claim could not be more ridiculous garbage — another junk stat in a genre absolutely suffuse with them. First, Cornell’s 2025 “survey” from which this figure derives is publicly available; anyone can read the criteria for its finding that over 1/3 of female undergraduates were effectively “raped,” and it definitely does not require that they were ever subjected to “force, threats, or incapacitation.” Contrary to what the text of the resolution and the council-member asserted. But who’s checking, right? At least as per the radically-expanded, ideologically-driven definition of the word “rape” that’s currently in vogue, all bets are off. And rest assured: whatever your intuitive conception of “rape” might’ve been a decade or two ago, that’s gone completely out the window. Because now it can include the following:

Got that? If, over the course of a consensually-initiated sexual encounter, one partner “goes ahead without checking in,” that would satisfy the criteria for “rape,” such that a respondent could answer “yes” to the survey question these people keep frantically citing. That’s where you get the ostensibly mind-bending claim that 35% of Cornell undergraduate females were “raped” in 2025 — or as the dopey administrators who conducted the survey word it, “experienced nonconsensual sexual contact.” Which, yes, is considered tantamount to literal “rape,” according to the predominant school of thought around this issue — and not merely in the more adventurous academic literature, or among the more politically-exercised activists. Nope: According to the current administration of President Donald J. Trump: “Sexual contact without consent is sexual assault or rape.” Which is just a minorly re-worded tweak of the Cornell survey definition. As to the nature of “consent,” the federal government also employs what is essentially the same “affirmative consent” standard as Cornell does, according to the handy reference guide available at WomensHealth.gov. But of course in a university context, these concepts are then inevitably stretched even further to the limit, and from that springs a “survey” that specifies one sexual partner failing to adequately “check in” over the course of a consensual sex scenario can be designated “non-consensual sexual contact” — also known in popular parlance as “pretty much rape.”

Cornell’s 2026 policy as to “Sexual and Related Misconduct” defines “sexual contact” as:

intentional sexual touching, however slight, as follows: (a) touching of the breasts, buttocks, genitals, or anus; (b) making another touch anyone or themselves with or on any of these body parts; and (c) touching another’s body part (including strangulation) for the purpose of sexual gratification, arousal, humiliation, or degradation.

So again, within these newly-decreed ideological parameters, it’s really no exaggeration that the touching of a buttocks in a manner that is not accompanied by what one party deems to have been sufficiently proactive “checking in” by the buttocks-toucher could be defined as “rape.” PLEASE NOTE: I’m not saying it’s “good” for anyone to touch a woman’s buttocks in manner she does not welcome. Indeed, there are many many imaginable circumstances in which doing so could be legitimately “bad.” However, it’s not “rape” — at least in terms of how “rape” used to be commonly understood until about two minutes ago. Newsflash to Zoomers and whoever else might be confused: something can be “bad,” but also not “rape.”

Perhaps this inflated conception of “rape” might partially explain why there’s now believed to be such an intolerable “threat” faced by the citizens of Ithaca (highlighted in red above) — necessitating that the municipal government swiftly impose a moratorium on all permitted student gatherings, so they can’t all get together and gang-rape one another, or perhaps gang-rape unsuspecting townspeople.

Fear not, though, because Mayor Cantelmo and the Council, in their infinite gracious wisdom, have allowed for an exception involving Constitutionally-protected speech. Meaning if you want to hold a political rally or something, and need a city-issued permit, you can still supposedly get it. Yet… what qualifies as Constitutionally-protected speech? That’s a question that has been debated for centuries, and now this podunk self-righteous Mayor has appointed himself the one schmuck who will personally adjudicate it. What’s to stop a fraternity from holding a “political discussion”-themed party, and therefore in theory bypass the “moratorium”? The dearth of actual reasoned thought that went into this resolution might be what is most amazing. They simply don’t care — they just felt they had to show no hesitation in their principled resolve to inflict “accountability” on whoever, for whatever.

So these are some of the points I was going to try to more succinctly make in my planned three-minute public comment, in opposition to the resolution. Here are the notes I jotted down:

The mayor’s September 28 statement summarily denounced the defendants named in the so-called Jane Doe lawsuit as “perpetrators” of “crimes,” namely “drugging and raping,” on the basis of nothing but a wholly untested civil complaint, from which the corresponding resolution to impose a “moratorium” on all student events simply copy-and-pastes.

It’s frankly appalling any elected official would take at face value the lurid, sensational allegations inserted into a lawsuit expressly designed to extract maximum settlement payouts, orchestrated by a notoriously unscrupulous lawyer, Rober Giuffra, who has failed to even preserve his own client’s anonymity, attempted to issue service on an entirely wrong individual who happens to share a name with one of the seven defendants, and has been recently rebuked over and over again by judges presiding over his similarly fact-impaired lawsuits against the likes of Sean “Diddy” Combs. This the person you’re still taking at face value? Really?

To approve such a rash, ill-considered resolution would be a rank capitulation to mob hysteria and threat inflation, a validation of irrational vengeance mentality, as well an affront to basic civil liberties — including but not limited to the First, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth amendments to the US Constitution. There have been no remotely adjudicated “victims” or perpetrators in this matter, and yet you, Mayor, have conclusorily impugned seven individuals as “perpetrators” of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. GANG RAPE? Seriously? That you would even consider such a resolution is a disgrace, and you, Mayor, should resign.

But then I was mysteriously not called upon, even though the guy who invited me, Zach, submitted a speaker-request card for me through the normal process. Mayor Cantelmo claimed my card was nowhere to be found when Zach objected — Zach then insisted he’d handed the card in without incident. I frankly assumed Zach must’ve screwed something up, and stuck the card in his pocket by accident, or dropped it, or something. But then, in desperation, Zach scoured through the trashcan next to the clerk’s little table, and eureka, discovered that my speaker request card had actually been crumpled up and tossed in the trash! Wow! Was my name recognized by someone, and therefore my speaking request surreptitiously blocked, given all the crazed TikTok and Instagram videos lately proclaiming “I am Jane Doe” in defiance of me, Michael Tracey? I don’t know. The card-trashing culprit has still not been identified.

Regardless, I chose to speak anyway. First I attempted a parliamentary motion, since that is theoretically how these proceedings are governed — motion to interject, on the ground that I had been improperly denied an opportunity to speak. Mayor Cantelmo replied I was not eligible to speak. I replied that I was asserting eligibility. He ignored and moved on with the meeting agenda. Eventually I wound up just ignoring his dumb little dictates and spoke unsanctioned — the acoustics in the room were perfect for it anyway.

Apparently a brave Cornell Student Reporter on hand recorded a partial clip of my contemptible remarks. Notice these Student Reporters describe me as an “online commentator,” rather than “journalist,” since they’ve now been anointed as the new Guardians of Serious Journalism, ever since they “blew the lid off” the Jane Doe Gang Rape scandal — by taking at face value the civil complaint filed by a notoriously unscrupulous plaintiff’s attorney. They also published an editorial, melodramatically entitled “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” which named the seven young men as gang rapists. (If they’d bothered to actually read the lawsuit they were courageously cribbing from, they would have known it’s not even alleged that all seven of the men engaged in any sexual activity. So their incredible journalistic acumen caused these Cornell Daily Sun staffers to impugn, by name, multiple young men as gang rapists, who are not even alleged to have made any sexual contact whatsoever with Jane Doe.)

Zach went back to City Hall after the meeting, and one of the council members, Pat Sewell, suggested to him it was not a city worker who tossed my speaking request into the trash — he instead indicated that over the course of the five-and-a-half hour marathon deliberations, my request card ended up in the trash can by some other means, perhaps an Act of God. I called/texted Sewell today to request any further information he might be able to share, and he still wouldn’t tell me who threw the card in the trash. I also tried council member David Shapiro, to no avail — at one point during the meeting, he had stood up and ushered me into the hallway, claiming that he personally would hear my statement, since the Mayor was refusing. I said uh, OK, and joined him in the hallway, where I weirdly recited a version of my comment to him one-on-one. Afterwards, however, I decided to just go back in the main room and speak to the entire assembly, given that my speaker request card had just been found deposited in the trashcan by an unknown perpetrator, and because I wanted to address Mayor Cantelmo, so I could call on him to resign. Which I did. And then left.

The resolution ultimately passed 9-1, with the lone dissenter objecting largely on technical grounds, rather than to the substantive purpose of the resolution. So that should give you some insight into the current political climate in Ithaca — they have barred all student-organized events that require a city permit under the auspice of some vague pretension to “accountability,” with no one really caring to spell out whom is actually being held “accountable,” and for what. Instead, they frame it in terms of generic “safety,” of course, as if collective punishment of all students is the most obvious way to go about curtailing an alleged epidemic of Ivy League Gang Rape.

One moratorium-supporting council member, Kayla Matos, thanked the mayor for “taking the needed steps and holding Cornell University accountable for their complacency in Jane Doe’s case, and the rape culture that is among [sic] the campus.” She added that the imposition of this moratorium would somehow demonstrate that some collective “we” is “done normalizing, and even rewarding, reprehensible behaviors — forcing survivors to be brave while their abusers get away scot-free.” Another council member, Jorge DeFendini, declared his support for the moratorium on the ground that something had to be done to non-specifically punish Cornell for allegedly fostering “a culture of domination and entitlement” that “trickles down all the way to fraternities that assault women.”

Again, these people live in some blinkered alternate universe. Anyway, here’s a version of my unsanctioned remarks I found on the city’s livestream:

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