At 1:42 a.m. on a night in October 2024, a member of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity sent a crude message about a woman upstairs in the house to the chapter’s Snapchat group. That woman, now a former Cornell student, alleges in a civil lawsuit that over the next several hours, multiple men in that house drugged and assaulted her. Lawyers for two of the seven men named in the suit have denied the allegations, and none of the men has yet been charged with a crime.
The woman filed her lawsuit on September 14, 2026. Two weeks later, the Tompkins County district attorney reopened the investigation. Cornell agreed to an independent review of how it handled the case, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor.
What happened that night remains the subject of an active investigation, but the allegations leave a question for every boy or young man. Head of School Mr. Tyler Casertano put that question to our school directly in the October 1st assembly: being a man, he told us, has nothing to do with being macho or tough. It means having compassion, being brave, and standing up for what you believe is right.
“I think that’s spot on,” Dean of Students Mr. Luqman Kolade said.
Head of Upper School Mr. Mark Fifer said the message “resonated with me deeply.”
“I think boys and men get a lot of messages about what they should be and what strength looks like,” Mr. Fifer said. Too often, he said, that strength is “about the accumulation of power and status and wealth, and only looking out for yourself.”
“Honestly, I think it’s so easy to not realize that other people have different lived experiences and might feel things differently than you do.”
Mr. Luqman Kolade
“As a school, and as Mr. Casertano said, we aim to be countercultural in a lot of ways,” Mr. Fifer said. “Real strength is about how you act in service of others.”
Mr. Kolade named one quality first. “Empathy might be one of the biggest ones,” he said. “Honestly, I think it’s so easy to not realize that other people have different lived experiences and might feel things differently than you do.”
Every Haverford student carries a reminder of these values: the Brother’s Keeper card. It opens with one line: “I am my brother’s keeper.” It asks each of us to be “a man of integrity who embodies respect, honesty, and courage.”
Student Body President Mac Brenan ’27 and Mr. Casertano chose “honesty” as the year’s virtue.
Mr. Fifer and Mr. Kolade both said that knowing something is wrong is different from saying it out loud.
“The easiest answer is peer pressure,” Mr. Kolade said. “If I say something, I’m gonna be isolated, I’m gonna be ostracized, people are gonna think I’m a snitch.”
“People say that they do. They think they do,” Mr. Kolade said. “But it’s much harder to be standing up by yourself on an island, or what you think is an island.”
Mr. Fifer described a tension “between loyalty and honesty, or loyalty and standing up for what is right.” He called it “a real tension that students face.”
Honesty is easy to practice when nothing is at stake. It gets harder when the truth could get a friend in trouble. Mr. Kolade put in words what most of us have thought before. “It’s hard for young men to navigate the idea of, ‘Well, I don’t want to get my friend in trouble,’” he said.
According to the woman’s 2024 statement to Cornell police, two people eventually walked into the room and said they were shutting it down, and the group scattered.
Our card has a word for the person who steps in and stands up. If we witness racist, sexist, homophobic, or other oppressive acts, it says, “I will be an upstander and report it.” Mr. Fifer used the same word. He said he hopes students who understand the social pressure around them can “be an upstander, to intervene when they know something is just not right.”
“I’d say listen to your gut,” Mr. Fifer said. “I think most students here know when something is wrong and is just not right.”
“Based on my own experience,” Mr. Fifer said, “you have the greatest regret when you don’t stand up when you know something is wrong.”
Situations do not have to be handled alone. The card tells students to report drug or alcohol use affecting a member of the community to a school counselor and to send reports of oppressive acts to equity@haverford.org.
“Ultimately, everyone here cares about you.”
Mr. Luqman Kolade
Mr. Kolade said students can also go to their advisors, to him, or to Mr. Fifer or Mr. Casertano. “Sometimes it’s as simple as just having someone to talk things through with,” Mr. Kolade said.
He has offered one piece of advice to many students over the years. “If I have a friend who’s in pain, I should tell someone,” he said. “You never want to be the last one to have information.”
“Ultimately, everyone here cares about you,” Mr. Kolade said.
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