Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School students and faculty staged a walkout protest Thursday in solidarity with Jane Doe, the woman who has accused seven men of gang raping her at a Cornell University fraternity house in 2024.
The woman said the Chi Phi fraternity members assaulted her for hours after pressuring her into snorting ketamine, smoking marijuana and drinking high-proof liquor. She is suing the school, the fraternity and the seven men she claims assaulted her, among others.
At noon on Thursday, hundreds of students marched across campus and lined up along Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, holding signs that said ”Justice for Jane Doe,” “stop protecting rapists” and “educate your sons, end rape.” Motorists passing by honked their horns.
Student William Hoff criticized Cornell’s handling of the case, which allegedly included the school asking some of the accused men to write essays as part of the disciplinary process.
“It’s so obvious what really happened…” Mr. Hoff told the Gazette. “All it could have taken is one person to really stand up, and no one did.”
Several students and staff members were at the protest representing Stand With Everyone Against Rape (SWEAR), the high school’s club dedicated to sexual assault prevention and education. Among them were SWEAR students Griffin Buehler, Aneas Forrester and Duda Rodrigues.
Mr. Buehler said he was stunned by screenshots from the night of the alleged assault that show several of the accused men crudely discussing the opportunity to assault Ms. Doe in a Chi Phi group chat.
“It was honestly just mind-boggling that there were that many men in the group chat and not a single one of them stood up for that girl and just stood up in general for all women,” he said.
Ms. Rodrigues said she is grateful how many men in the school community are willing to push back against rape culture.
“Knowing that there are men in the school that know about all of this, like these guys next to me, that they advocate for standing up and standing against sexual violence … makes me feel a billion times safer,” Ms. Rodrigues said.
SWEAR faculty advisor Amy Lilavois said that members of the club took the initiative to make the protest happen.
“They came up with this. They wanted to do it,” she said. “To just see the outpouring of support for the program and for the cause is pretty incredible.”
Principal Bryan Lombardi attended the walkout and praised the students who participated.
“I’m proud of the students [for] exercising their right of speech [and] becoming politically active to make a statement that shows and demonstrates that their values and characters are in the right spot,” he said.
After the walkout concluded, one student was left standing: senior Audrey Atkins, who held a sign that read, “silence is not consent.” School resource officer Jillian Sedlier-Clarke stood alongside her.
“The problem with these sort of walkouts is we have to get permission from the school in order to do it, which I think is wrong,” Ms. Atkins told the Gazette. “The whole point of a walkout is to make an impact to disrupt school, and us having to have permission for it sort of minimizes our impact.”
She was glad so many students attended.
“Rape culture is so normalized,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to be doing this protest.”