British historian Peter Frankopan said in Kardamyli last week that every rise in global temperature brings a rise in antisemitism. His confidence in connecting surprising things like this set my mind wandering about the connection between the sexual assaults at Cornell and the drunken homecoming weekend at the University of Guelph last month and in previous years at Queen’s University in Kingston.
Frankopan’s claim is, at best, true-ish. But it makes sense that large groups of college students getting drunk on weekends are a factor, if not the factor, in increased rapes on-campus. (While women victims often get blamed for getting drunk and causing their own rape, the actual blame rests entirely on men.)
You may recall that three Saturdays ago, thousands of students packed a strip of student housing near the University of Guelph. By nightfall, 60 of them had been treated at Guelph General Hospital for intoxication, lacerations and head wounds from flying bottles. Guelph’s Mayor Cam Guthrie called it “probably the worst” in the history of homecoming parties and said he’d once sent the university a bill for the mess, which it ignored.
What was odd was that no sexual assaults were reported. I even asked AI to scan the media and Guelph police statements. Lots of alcohol-related offences, of course. Even a rogue’s gallery of faces police want to match to their owners. But nothing about sexual assault.
The same held true for Kingston, home to Queen’s University and in 2023 the undisputed capital of Homecoming parties that turned into near-riots. The Kingston Police’s post-mortem on Queen’s 2023 Homecoming counted 8,000 students in and around Aberdeen Street, and its follow-up report counted 241 open-liquor tickets, 15 underage drinkers, and exactly one arrest, not for sexual assault.
This isn’t to say there were no sexual assaults on those homecoming weekends either at Guelph or Queen’s. It says that rape rarely happens on the street, but behind a bedroom door at 2 a.m. And victims rarely rush to report their rape to police right after it happens. It often gets reported weeks later, if ever.
So let’s look at the best data available. It’s not perfect or current, but it’s a good place to start.
In 2015 three economists matched 22 years of police records to 96 American universities where football was the lynchpin to homecoming weekends. On home game Saturday nights, the incidence of rape among women age 17 to 24 jumped by 41 per cent. On Fridays, they rose by 19 per cent.
This brings us to Cornell whose 161-year-old reputation was shredded last week with allegations about a gang rape in 2024.
A 20-year-old sorority member, “Jane Doe”, arrived at the Chi Phi house having had, by her lawsuit’s count, about ten drinks in three hours.
She claimed that seven fraternity brothers gave her more alcohol, then ketamine. Then they assaulted her until 5:45 a.m. Her own statement to police describes the men being so drunk they were dry-heaving and struggling to stay conscious. In 2024, the District Attorney decided not to lay charges. He reopened the case last week. Meanwhile, Cornell’s own 2025 survey found 35 per cent of undergraduate women and 52 per cent of sorority women reported nonconsensual sexual contact with undergraduate men.
We keep getting this next part backwards. When a woman is raped after drinking, we ask how much she drank. What we should be asking is, how much he drank. Antonia Abbey of Wayne State University has spent three decades studying this. When the victim drinks, the perpetrator almost always does too. In her study of 107 perpetrators, the heavy drinkers used more force and committed more severe assaults. To repeat: a woman’s drinking doesn’t make a man a rapist. All we can say is that a man’s drinking makes him a more violent one.
It’s tempting to think this is all about binge drinking. It is, but not just binge drinking. Maria Testa at the University at Buffalo studied 992 freshmen over five semesters for signs of sexual assault. It turns out that binge drinking alone didn’t really predict assault. What did was parties. In semesters when a man went to more parties than his own average, his odds of committing sexual assault rose.
To me, the irresistible inference is that universities should ban homecoming weekends, not because students get drunk, or at least not just because they get drunk, but because a 5,000-person house party is a machine for putting drunk, predatory young men next to drunk young women, out of sight of anyone who would see them, let alone stop them.
I have two requests not only of Guelph’s president, Rene Van Acker, who promises it “cannot happen again”, but of every university president. Cancel homecoming weekends. Find a safer way to remind their alums that it’s just not the same without them. Then ask police and campus safety to publish, every year, the number of sexual assaults reported in the week after homecoming.
The best thing I’ve read about the whole sorry mess at Cornell comes from the mother of a 6-year-old boy she hopes will go there some day.
Meanwhile….
1. Annals of apology. The Stephen Galloway defamation trial began in Vancouver this week. His accusers are now piling on with their apologies. There’s even a Galloway Apologies website with 9 craven apologies and counting, for accusing the former UBC Professor of sexually assaulting a student. The #MeToo movement brought about some good things and exposed some bad people, but it also caught some innocent men in its fierce fervor. As Galloway’s lawyer said: “It’s hard to imagine the nightmare one lives through of being accused of being a rapist.”
2. Canadians aren’t unproductive sloths. We’re not the disaster we’ve been told. Plus Mark Carney, the classicist, and John Ralston Saul on the return of the consequential political speech. And why Canadian physicians don’t think they’re paid enough. Plus, the top countries Canadians visited, and why our basements are the best.
3. Ah for just one more time, I would take the Northwest Passage. In August 2028, Jean and I are taking friends on a trip across the top of the world. 20 days, one expedition ship, two helicopters, expert speakers. Read all about it here — and learn all about it at our information receptions on Oct. 14 and 21. Book by Oct. 31 and save $2,700+ per person.
4. The Dude. Gustavo Dudamel, the New York Philharmonic’s new conductor, is almost single-handedly making classical music cool. Plus, conducting with a bassoon and singing the old-fashioned way.
5. Stings. Another Nigel Farage sting scandal proves some politicians just talk too much. Plus how the Manchester City soccer scandal went down. And Ronan Farrow on how companies profit from your annoyance.
6. His life is a highway. The great Cree playwright-author-musician Tomson Highway is the subject of a feature documentary by Cree-Metis filmmaker Barbara Hager. For tickets to the Toronto premiere on Wednesday, Nov. 11 at 6 p.m. at TIFF Lightbox, click here.
Another launch: Torontonian New Yorker writer Eli Burnstein launches his new book Phrased & Confused on Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Type Books, 883 Queen St. West. You’re invited. No RSVP needed.
7. Winners isn’t just a store. Here’s this year’s comedy wildlife awards. And the winner of Fat Bear Week. And women setting endurance records. And what exactly did this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine winners win for?
8. Seeing music. A compelling visualization of Vivaldi’s Winter from The Four Seasons. Plus what’s driving the rise in autism diagnosis? And 125 things you can tell Siri to do, and why Elon Musk thinks we need to put a million people on Mars. And why Bill Gates thinks AI is dangerous.
9. A good education. The number of Cambridge students claiming extra time for exams because of ADHD triples. Plus a new online course on how to track organized crime. And a forgotten forest experiment 30 years later. Plus Normal Tools, a free collection of 193 single-purpose tools for all kinds of random small tasks, including calculators, color pickers, image resizing, and file conversion. And finally, a long essay (13,000 words) on education in America: “The main reasons elite schools have different outcomes is they just pull from different pools of people: they only admit those already poised for success and then take credit for that success.”
10. Sound smart; read people. How to read anyone in 6 seconds. Plus words to make you sound refined. And a word of caution in a world of abundance. And why family estrangement has been complicated for centuries. Plus six selfish reasons to have kids (and grandkids), and why there’s no adventure without risk, by Yvon Chouinard. And last but very least, car safety tips.
11. What I’m Reading. This full-throated defence of mental disorders as the sole criteria for Medical Assistance in Dying, which Ottawa kiboshed on Wednesday. They seem to think mental pain is somehow less than physical pain.
Guaranteed 100% written by Bob Ramsay, human.