Students stage 150 walkouts nationwide over the Cornell sexual assault case

More than 150 protests across 40 states. That is the scale of what happened Thursday, a coordinated national walkout over a single university's handling of a sexual assault case.

The #StopSexualViolence day of action was organized by Women's March and me too International in response to a lawsuit filed September 16 alleging that a student was gang raped at Cornell University's Chi Phi fraternity in 2024 and that the university failed her afterward. Demonstrations were planned at more than 50 campuses, from Cornell's own grounds in Ithaca to Foley Square in New York City, with students demanding policy overhauls and naming what they call a culture of institutional protection.

Cornell responded Tuesday by retaining former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to review its policies and handling of sexual misconduct cases. Yates, who served briefly at the start of the first Trump administration and became a prominent figure afterward, gives the review a name that cuts through the usual campus committee language. Whether the review changes anything is the question the walkouts are really asking.

The protest lands inside a larger season of campus reckoning. Louisiana State faces its own sexual assault case drawing national attention, and the organizers deliberately linked the campus protests to a broader demand for accountability that has been building since the Yates announcement. A day of action with 150 protests is not a fringe event. It is the women's movement showing it can still fill a street, or fifty of them, on a Thursday.