Actor Josh Gad joined the growing uproar over allegations of a gang-rape at a Cornell University fraternity house, saying it was a “violent and sick criminal act” and there’s no such thing as a “white collar rape.”
A former Cornell student filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the university and seven Chi Pi fraternity members, alleging that in 2024, the men drugged and raped her while she attended a party at their Greek house. The woman, who is identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, alleges she filed a report with the school’s police three weeks after the assault.
The lawsuit alleges that two of the seven fraternity members were expelled and the others received lesser punishments, like having to write an essay.
On Monday, prosecutors in New York reopened the case. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in a statement that when the investigation was originally conducted, Doe did not allege she was drugged or gang-raped and “the evidence did not support the filing of criminal charges.”
Gad’s comments came before the DA released the new information about the case.
“When we start setting a precedent that our girls and women can be brutally raped, and the resulting disciplinary action is to hand out (checks notes) ESSAYS (like it’s Bart Simpson being a lil’ rascal), about why it was wrong to brutally violate an innocent girl, we have lost our fucking minds,” Gad wrote Sunday on Instagram.
He continued: “[It’s] a violent and sick criminal act that doesn’t take a fucking Cornell degree to understand is evil. At this point, it doesn’t seem to matter if a woman accuses a President, a Supreme Court justice, a private university student, or an athlete. There is NO SUCH THING as white collar rape.”
Gad, who is known as the voice of Olaf in “Frozen,” said the alleged rape is not a simple mistake.
“The ‘promising’ young and ‘bright’ Cornell boys lost the right to a future when they stole a future from a helpless young woman,” Gad wrote Sunday in his Instagram post. “That’s not a ‘mistake’ that these ‘aw shucks gee whiz rapist fellas’ learn from.”
He continued: “This isn’t a Oopsie Daisy. It’s the destruction of a life. And we are sending a profoundly disturbing message with our inability to hold anyone accountable that this is OK. Fuck that. Enough.”
Cornell said in a statement last week that administrators “take sexual violence extremely seriously,” and “the Xi chapter of Chi Phi fraternity remains barred from our campus.”
Actor Florence Pugh also spoke out about the case, writing on Instagram that she is “enraged by schools protecting boys.”