Filippa Kindblom: Now everyone's name is Jane Doe

There is a storm in the United States after a young female student accused seven men of drugging and raping her for several hours at the Ivy League school Cornell University in the state of New York.

The suspected gang rape became known to the school and the police already when it allegedly occurred in a student house in the fall of 2024. But the investigation was closed, according to the prosecutor, due to a lack of evidence. After the student filed his lawsuit, which contains additional evidence, the investigation has been reopened.

The student is anonymous - she calls herself "Jane Doe" in the lawsuit. According to her lawyer, since the lawsuit, she has been subjected to threats and there is a hunt for her real identity.

On social media, a movement has therefore exploded, where women and men around the United States, yes, the world, write that they are Jane Doe.

I am Jane Doe. This is my story. Jane Doe's name is Robert. Jane Doe's real name is Michael. I live in Ireland, can I also be Jane Doe?

On the one hand, it is an attempt to protect the identity of the real student, to ensure through thick smokescreens that angry men will not find and hang her out.

With "I am Jane Doe" you want to say: It's not just Cornell, it's not just Jane Doe, it's not just these men

On the other hand, it's an elite university's #metoo. Or generation Z's #metoo, as Hannah Wikforss-Gren wrote in Dagens ETC. Suddenly, stories are flooding in about other women who have been sexually assaulted at elite universities in the United States, and where the schools sided with the perpetrator, the perpetrator's reputation, the perpetrator's education. Where the vulnerable woman finally felt compelled to leave the school, because she did not feel safe.

Much of the massive criticism against Cornell University is about the men not being punished enough by the school. The punishments range from the harshest, where two were relegated, to the lightest, where two had to write "reflective essays" and "study" sexual assault, social media and third-person intervention, according to The New York Times.

But then there weren't just seven of them. Among Jane Doe's new evidence are screenshots from a Snapchat group chat where photos and messages about the alleged abuse were allegedly sent. There were about 50 men in that group. Who did not intervene.

With "I am Jane Doe" you want to say: It's not just Cornell, it's not just Jane Doe, it's not just these men. Things that have been said before. But which obviously needs to be said again. Not least about America's elite universities.