On October 15, New Haven Socialist Alternative helped organize a 150-strong walkout of New Haven high schoolers, Yale students, and workers from local unions, demanding justice for Jane Doe and all survivors. After first hearing of the tragedy and horrific mishandling of the Cornell 7 case, Socialist Alternative members, angry and disgusted, looked to build an action at Yale. As socialists, we point to capitalism and the structures of its money-chasing universities as the roots of sexual violence and misogyny on campus.
After starting to organize at Yale, we coordinated our action with high school students at five different schools—Co-op, Hamden High, Wilbur Cross, Sound, and Hillhouse—who had independently begun plans for their own walkout. This action was the first joint walkout of Yale undergraduates and New Haven high schoolers in eight years. The rally gathered at the New Haven Green, where several students gave passionate speeches about their personal struggles with sexual violence and how their schools consistently fail to properly address their experiences.
Students spoke about their frustrations with the culture of misogyny and patriarchy that creates the conditions for crimes like the Cornell 7 case to occur. One student urged a deeper conversation than “no means no,” calling for a mandatory rape education course for all students. Yale undergraduates from the Yale Women’s Collective described their struggles with losing financial backing from the university. Student leaders of the organization Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán and the Filipino club, Kasama, spoke on struggles with sexual violence in Chicano and Filipino spaces.
The day before the walkout, Socialist Alternative members attended a historic union rally of over a thousand Yale campus workers (from UNITE HERE Locals 33, 34, and 35) coordinating their contract fight on campus. Socialist Alternative members discussed the Jane Doe walkout with workers during the rally and found many workers drew the connection between addressing sexual violence on campus and in their workplaces. As a result of these conversations, many workers joined the walkout the next day. The combined action of students and unionized workers at the walkout demonstrates the importance of working-class solidarity that unites communities to effectively combat oppression.
A Socialist Alternative member spoke at the Jane Doe walkout and emphasized the hypocrisy and injustice that universities like Cornell have displayed in expelling protesters against the genocide in Gaza, meanwhile giving essays as punishment to rapists. Universities, especially elite ones like Cornell, care only about their reputations and bottom lines. This is why they brush sexual assault cases under the rug and refuse to give union workers good contracts.
To eliminate the influence of wealthy donors and their families, we call to abolish ICE and tax the rich to fund free public college, and for universities to be run democratically by students, workers, and community members. If school communities controlled universities, we could fight to bring real justice for survivors, to make college free, to pay workers fairly, and to invest in high-quality public schools. We need to build a socialist feminist movement that ultimately takes aim at capitalism to bring justice for Jane Doe and end all sexual violence.