OCTOBER 16, 2026 RAPE CULTURE GROUNDCOVER NEWS The Cornell seven are not an isolated incident: rape culture at the University of Michigan JAY COOPER Groundcover contributor Content warning: Rape, sexualized torture. Campus rapes, like mass shootings, are so common in the united snakes of amerikkka, and so much has been done to silence survivors and sweep crimes under the rug until the news cycle moves on rather than address the underlying causes, that the rampant abuse feels inevitable. It's a great trick of corrupt systems: the more that wealthy, powerful people commit crimes free from accountability and justice, the more those crimes appear to be unstoppable, inevitable parts of the fabric of our society. Outraged students at Cornell University have drawn national attention to the disparity between how peace activists are arrested and/or banned from campuses for years and rapists are given short-term suspensions and/or an essay to write. On May 1 of this year, Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff attacked two members of Students for a Democratic Cornell with his car as they attempted to talk to him about persecution of free speech on campus. The board of trustees created an ad hoc committee that unsurprisingly cleared Kotlikoff of wrongdoing and declared the students had been acting “inconsistent with university policy.” Cornell is but one instance among many; rape culture is the same here in Ann Arbor. Cornellseven.com is compiling a report on the Cornell gangrape case bringing this discussion to the fore, and Cornell's assaults on peace activists have been well reported in the Cornell Daily Sun and elsewhere. This article is about the University of Michigan. This is about the deeper disease from which these abominations fester and how it manifests locally: the way the University of Michigan protects rapists rather than those who have been raped, and how their cover-ups and hush-money ensure the epidemic of campus rapes persists. From July 2023 through June 2024 (the frame of the most recently published misconduct report as of October 2026), the University of Michigan received 313 reports of sexual assault, and 353 reports of sexual harassment, amongst 983 total Title IX reports including stalking, partner violence, sexual exploitation and gender discrimination. On September 9, 2026, 16 former U-M Hockey players filed a 72-page legal complaint against the University and its regents with Detroit's federal court. The complaint details ritualized sexual torture as part of U-M's athletic culture, as experienced by U-M Hockey players between 1984-2001, committed by upperclassmen against freshmen athletes, facilitated, directed and maintained by athletic many, and nearly all of those that came forward in the lawsuit, playing hockey was mandatory for their education. The boys were told this was normal, that this was team-bonding, rather than sexualized abuse. In the Cornell Seven rape, rapist staff including former coach Red Berenson. Abuses described include restraining and stripping freshmen, shaving and cutting their genitalia and anuses, burning their pubic hair with a blowtorch, tying and pulling their genitalia with skate laces, and anal penetration with objects and fingers. Hockey players were not the only abusers. Wrestlers, football players, athletic staff and sorority sisters also participated in the abuse. Survivors of the abuse described being forced to inflict the abuse the next year as sophomores. This abuse was not secret. Coaching staff oversaw stripping, shaving and testicle torture each year. When one player attempted to report the abuse to then-Assistant Coach Mel Pearson, Pearson told him, "Keep your head down, don't piss them off, and just get through it." U-M illegally did not keep records of complaints about the torture, and players were retaliated against for defending themselves, and/or not silently accepting the abuse. This abuse was widely reported as early as 1980, when five freshmen hockey players were "stripped, shaved, covered in jam, eggs, and cologne and left outside in near-freezing weather for 90 minutes." After the story broke, three student abusers were suspended for two games. It's believed Coach Giordano put the sexualized torture on hiatus for the rest of his tenure until Red Berenson took over in 1984 when the torture resumed. When made aware players were tackling, restraining, stripping and shaving freshmen outside athletic facilities, Red Berenson directed players to keep these abuses within Michigan Hockey facilities. Berenson directed players to shave freshmen "from the neck down" so the evidence could be hidden under clothes. "U-M Maintained a policy, practice and custom of indifference to sexual abuse …" - Doe v University of Michigan, Board of regents (2:26-cv-13420) complaint It was made clear to these teenage boys, some 17, frequently fed toxic amounts of alcohol, that enduring this sexualized abuse was mandatory for playing hockey for Michigan. For Johnathan Newell said in the fraternity group chat "free pussy in alum pu" in reference to the young woman he'd paralyzed with ketamine. As various frat members celebrated, rapist Scott Kretzschmar included "the alumni shit is not a bit. first person pov not a bit," meaning he was witnessing rape in real time and confirming to the group that it was really happening. This isn't about a few bad apples. This is about culture. This is about young men who see a woman who can't fight back and say "free pussy." This is about coaches and staff who hear the complaints of boys traumatized by sexualized torture and tell them "be a good teammate." For decades, talking heads have balked at the concept of rape culture with the insistence that horrific abuses are freak anomalies perpetrated by isolated monsters, rather than the inevitable outcome of a sick culture that protects abusers and silences survivors. Here it is in the words of U-M Hockey rapists: “Every class before you went through this. This is what Wolverines do." When it takes thousands of reports to get U-M to acknowledge a rapist athletic doctor (whose abuse was so well-known that athletes called him "Dr. Drop-your-drawers") after decades of him sexually assaulting more than 1,000 people, the narrative is that U-M "failed to act." Dozens of administrators at U-M knew about Dr. Anderson’s sexual assaults. You don't get 36 years of Dr. Drop-your-drawers through "failure to act" – it comes through willful ignorance and cover-up. It comes from silencing people who reported him, from ignoring the evidence presented, from rape culture. A woman was raped by then-U-M Football athletic staffer LaTroy Lewis in 2024. When the Detroit Free Press asked her lawyer about the $1.2M settlement U-M paid to make the case go away, she said: "The terms of the settlement do not allow me to comment. I think it speaks for itself." This is hush money. This is U-M silencing survivors. This is facilitating the culture of rape at U-M. Three U-M Football players participated in the drugging and raping of two young women in the summer of 2018; one of the women never recovered from the incident and overdosed in 2021. USA Today didn't report the names of the rapists, but said one transferred, and two remained at U-M, remained playing U-M football. I'm sure they've graduated now, maybe they work in the athletic department as so many former players do. It's disturbing to know there are rapists around and not to know their names, their faces, but it's also apropos. U-M football’s team culture is one of rape, same as the hockey team, same as Greek row, same as the administration. After all, "This is what Wolverines do." To all the sorority sisters out there, when you see men’s athletic teams abusing freshmen in your sorority house for the entertainment of your sisters, ask yourself, do you think those sisters poking and laughing at abused 17-year-old boys won't hand you over to those same athletes to be drugged and raped? To all those frat brothers in a group chat where drugged women are referred to as "free pussy," do you think those rapist frat brothers wouldn't drug and rape you as well? The disparity that's brought this conversation to a fevered pitch across the country is the difference between how campuses treat rape versus how they treat protests of Israel's genocide of Palestinians. This disparity is infuriating, but it isn't shocking to anyone who knows anything about Israel and the University of Michigan, Cornell or any of the other universities deeply invested in Israel's genocide. Israel is currently the most mask-off rape culture on earth. While many rape cultures exist, none are more dogged in defending their right-torape as Israel. When Israeli reserve officers were arrested for getting caught on camera raping prisoners with iron bars in Israel's Sde Teiman concentration camp, there were protests to have the rapists released. The rapists went on Israeli TV and justified their rapes, demanded gratitude from the public and called for the raping of Palestinian prisoners to be made state policy. Israeli polling showed only 28% of Israeli respondents wanted the rapists to be criminally prosecuted, though more than half of people Israel labels "Arab" did. It must be clarified that Israel as an apartheid ethnostate has weaponized see ASSAULT page 13 7
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