Cornell Frat House Monitor Drunk on the Job

EVIDENCE / RECORD NOTE

Larry’s central target in the Cornell Seven saga deserves the ridicule: institutions selling elite judgment while relying on students to supervise the party. A sober-monitor rule makes a promise to everyone in that room. The reported drinking account raises the question of whether Cornell could deliver it. Please identify the morons who design, approve, and enforce those arrangements, because a prestigious university ought to manage more than its reputation. Families pay serious money and expect serious supervision. A safety title pinned to a student means little when nobody ensures he can do the work. An Ivy League crest is no substitute for someone capable of answering the emergency call. But since Brown, I guess we should have known better. This piece is “Cornell Frat House Monitor.”

The following is verbatim by Larry Noodles,

Cornell University is considered one of the lower-ranked Ivy League schools. If you can’t get into Yale, Harvard, or Stanford, you end up at either Cornell or the University of Pennsylvania. These are the Ivy League backup schools. And also Brown University, the ultimate safety school. Providence, Rhode Island, most closely resembles earthly hell. Once you get into an Ivy League school, it is hard to get kicked out. I learned it as a teenager: the hardest part is getting it in. Grade inflation is the norm. Kids who can’t handle physics take poetry and get A’s with minimal effort.

Cornell’s Arts Quad. Larry Noodles’s commentary questions whether elite-campus prestige translates into responsible fraternity supervision.

In high school, these Ivy League kids were ruled by tyrannical helicopter parents who made them do their homework every day, followed by violin lessons at night. These kids had no friends in high school. Their only friends were other nerds. They graduated top of their high school class in their little suburban Midwestern towns. They are now headed to the Ivy League for a life of success and fortune, while the kids who laughed at them are headed to community colleges. Revenge of the nerds!

Once these nerds end up at an Ivy League college, they suddenly are free of their helicopter parents and placed in an environment with little to no adult supervision. Too much freedom, combined with uncontrollable hormones, is a recipe for disaster. No college is going to crack down on the party scene and risk losing students. Each student has many dollar signs on his head.

Three years ago, the Cornell Seven frat house Chi Phi got in trouble for hazing, rape, and kids passing out from taking date rape drugs. One kid was found dead in a ditch after a frat party in 2019. Last year Cornell enacted new rules for frat house parties. Each frat house would have a designated sober monitor in attendance at a frat party, not unlike a designated driver. The monitor is supposed to call in the ambulances in case of an emergency and try to keep things under control. The designated monitor at the Cornell 7 frat was a sophomore named Jonathan Newell, from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Newell graduated from a prestigious Florida prep school: Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU) college preparatory program. Newell was one of the ringleaders of the alleged gang rape of Cornell Seven Jane Doe accuser Lucy Craig. Newell, along with Ignalls, another ringleader, was expelled from Cornell.

Text messages between Jonathan Newell and Cornell Seven Jane Doe accuser Lucy Craig the day after her train ride.

According to the New York Times

The monitors, who must regularly complete a training program, are supposed to remain sober and have a range of responsibilities at parties. As of earlier this year, according to an archived version of Cornell’s event rules, the monitors were required to take reasonable steps to prevent overcrowding and underage drinking; prohibit public urination; and stop people from leaving with open containers of alcohol.”

Newell was supposed to be one of the monitors the night of the rape of Jane Doe. How do you trust a lowly sophomore to be a monitor at a frat party? Talk about stupid. Who runs these Ivy League schools anyway? A manager at the local McDonald’s could do a better job running an Ivy League school. According to the NYT, “Mr. Newell said that by the time he showed up to Chi Phi that night at about midnight, he had already been drinking at earlier parties, where he estimated he had two to three beers, several shots, two mixed drinks and a half bottle of a strawberry tequila drink. He was drunk to the point of stumbling down the stairs, he told the investigators.”

Cornell Seven Jane Doe accuser Lucy Craig waiting for her next train.

Source discipline: This article may contain allegations, disputed claims, quotations, and editorial analysis. Follow the linked evidence pages and cited sources to inspect context before drawing conclusions.

Comments & replies