Published on: October 8, 2026
A Tip of the Week by the TNG Partners
There are so many words being written about Cornell right now. It’s overwhelming. Which to read? Everyone wants to debate what happened. We want to write about what we should learn as a result of this terrible situation. We are not here to condemn Cornell, men, women, prosecutors, police, governors, or lawyers. There will be time to determine where responsibility belongs. For now, we are navigating the conflicting waves of public opinion, assumptions, and emotions associated with this complex and difficult situation. Our purpose in writing is to frame what needs to change so that this never happens again, and it really isn’t about Cornell at all. It’s about a culture that promotes, tolerates, and condones harm and how we change that norm.
#MeToo 2.0
We’ve been wondering if and when #MeToo 2.0 would land. The Cornell case may be the other shoe dropping. When #MeToo 1.0 first became part of the cultural zeitgeist in 2017, much of the public attention focused on bad men behaving badly. Some of us tried to shift the focus to culture, rather than individual misdeeds, but those calls for culture change never gained the same traction. #MeToo 2.0 needs to include recognition that people can behave this badly when the conditions surrounding such acts are conditions of toleration, not condemnation. This moment/movement, #MeToo 2.0, finally seems to be embracing that larger context, and demanding change to the attitudes, environments, and excuses by which sexual violence and harassment are permitted to persist. Cut down the numbers of bad actors, and new bad actors will come along. You can’t make a real dent in sexual violence and harassment through enforcement or condemnation. You must attack the context in which sexual violence and harassment are normalized, minimized, or unrecognized. In short, we must shift the culture to influence behaviors. Prevention-based approaches are key to that shift.
Prevention is Perplexing
As people who investigate sexual violence and harassment for a living, we are dismayed to see that the effects of #MeToo 1.0 were not enduring. We were not surprised when things quieted down for a few years, and then bad actors went right back to acting badly, as if nothing had changed. Because nothing had changed. We jailed a few bad actors. Canceled more than a few others. But we stubbornly refused to re-examine the conditions that gave bad actors the power, freedom, and opportunity to act as they did. If the Overton Window has opened—meaning we are primed now for the larger, change-based cultural and political conversation—what should it look like? For years, we’ve tried to train and educate college students to raise awareness, in the hope that doing so would lead to prevention—lasting cultural and behavioral changes that minimize the risk of sexual violence and mitigate the environment that supports or tolerates such conduct. We’ve tried empathy induction, consent education, social norms messaging, environmental management, bystander intervention, and various public health-based approaches. Much of the outrage directed at Cornell right now is rooted not only in the alleged conduct, but also in what members of the Chi Phi Snapchat group reportedly saw and how they responded or failed to respond. Last week, Cornell’s president promised a renewed emphasis on prevention education, but what will that look like? What should it look like? What is effective to truly prevent this behavior and change toxic attitudes?
It depends on whether Cornell (and any other institution that takes this on meaningfully) wants to Band-Aid this problem with a #MeToo 1.0 bad actor approach or really wants to shift its culture. Shifting culture is much harder, but a bad actor approach alone won’t have the efficacy needed; absent a cultural shift, we’ll be visiting this crisis again in the forms of #MeToo 3.0 and 4.0, etc. Let us illustrate the Band-Aid versus shifting culture.
Cornell might logically focus on bystander intervention within its prevention framework. This field of study examines why people who are aware of harm, crime, and risk choose not to act in the face of a reasonably obvious need to do so. Prevention experts use this research to inform a variety of motivational approaches that catalyze intervening rather than bystanding in the face of harm. They teach students to recognize what harmful scenarios look like and train on a variety of ways to intervene, such as direct confrontation, creating a distraction, calling police, etc. Some approaches focus on motivating students to act, whereas others rely on the research that shows that if you teach the tools, students will be more likely to use them without any particular motivating component. Fifty-seven men received a message about “free p*ssy,” raising questions about whether they recognized a risk of harm and, if so, what they could or should have done in response. As far as we know, none intervened in the moment. And, it is likely that at least some of those men received bystander intervention training either before or during their time at Cornell.
Training alone didn’t work. Why? Training isn’t a panacea, because it addresses conduct at the surface, not its motivation or environmental and cultural roots and causes. Bystander work focuses too often on reacting to harm, rather than creating an environment in which it is widely known and accepted that harmful conduct isn’t tolerated and is culturally disincentivized. In a sense, many bystander intervention efforts are limited because they rely on individual willingness to act, even though we know one of the main reasons that people don’t intervene is because of the diffusion of responsibility. It’s someone else’s role, and people wait to see if others recognize the harm too, second-guess whether their recognition is accurate, and are more comfortable intervening once someone else takes a step forward. Additionally, intervening, even indirectly, can feel socially unsafe in a culture that does not champion intervention-based actions. But, if no one steps forward, collective inaction reinforces the very attitudes and behaviors that prevention efforts are intended to change. Part of the problem is that we are siloing the training, rather than shifting the culture.
Moving from Bystander Intervention to a Culture of Engagement
If we tell students that bystander intervention is about rape, we are creating a silo. Maybe they will act on a situation when they become aware of it, maybe they won’t. Cornell has taken a half-step in the right direction. Its existing bystander initiative focuses pro-socially, meaning that it invokes the need for intervention not just with sexual violence, but with hazing, bias acts, mental health concerns, and substance abuse. That effort attempts to un-silo intervention from a context that is only about sexual violence, but as long as it remains part of an initiative—rather than becoming interwoven into the culture—it won’t have the efficacy needed to make it likely that a Chi Phi Snapchat thread like the one involved in this case is met with steady, strident, and insistent condemnation and intervention, when needed.
Instead, every school, college, workplace, hospital, and institution or organization that is likely to experience sexual violence or sexual harassment needs to become a Community of Engagement. In such a community, members feel both privileged and obligated to hold each other accountable, to safeguard the humanity of all members of the community, and to say something when they see something, because that is what they do and who they are. The community expresses and lives its values. It trains to reinforce those values, but the training is a reminder of a constant expectation that winds like an inexorable thread through the community. Bystander intervention is too often viewed as an isolated act rather than an expected norm. That’s the shift that could become the emblem of #MeToo 2.0, if we take current calls for culture change seriously.
What Happens in a Community of Engagement?
Go along to get along. Keep your head low. Mind your own business. Those anti-snitch mottos pervade American culture. We are not a culture of interveners, nor do we prize intervention. In fact, we demonize interveners with derisive nicknames like “Do-gooder” or “Karen” and catchy catechisms like, “snitches get stitches.” Against the pithy threat of stitches, pro-social mottos like “See Something, Say Something” seem tepid by comparison. These examples show how we actively discourage intervention as a societal norm. Empowering intervention is thus like pushing a boulder up a hill, because our default is not to engage. A Community of Engagement reverses that norm. We are all each other’s keepers. And, the community likes that, appreciates that, values that, rewards that, and ultimately, expects that. The result is that engagement becomes the norm. Community members don’t need a specific program or initiative to tell them when to act. They know that regardless of what the harm or risk may be, action is expected. A mental health spiral. A risk of a school shooting. Financial fraud. Academic misconduct. Worries a friend is being abused by a significant other. Sexual violence. Racism. Microaggressions. Bullying. Complex communities are full of harm. We must counter that with a cultural norm that believes in the collective power to reduce harm. We are all do-gooders, just hopefully not the annoying kind. We’re already doing bystander training; this is an evolution that transforms intervention from an action to a belief system.
How is this meaningfully different from current efforts? It’s systemic. Culture is a product and mirror of the stories we tell about ourselves, our communities, and who we are. Bystander intervention is often run as a series of programs, or doses. Being a Community of Engagement is immersive. The community is the program, and the program is the community. Engagement is everywhere. The institution’s president talks about it. A lot. It’s part of various academic curricula, social marketing messages, awards, athletic programs, student organizations, and even criteria for advancement in employment. The community celebrates engagement by sharing the stories of those who engage, those who are helped by engagement, and yes, even those whose behavior prompts others to engage. It becomes a norm to be engaged, and failure to engage becomes the anomaly. Lowering the barriers to intervention is transformative.
In 2008, John Quinones created an ABC series called, What Would You Do? It is still running today. This entire series is, in many ways, a social experiment in catalyzing communities of engagement. Yes, it’s entertaining, but the real value of the show is rooted in social science research that shows you are more likely to be willing to intervene, and to actually do it, after watching positive intervention by others. We can retell versions of those stories as they play out in our own communities, where they become even more real, salient, and catalytic.
If You Really Mean it…Put it in Writing
Back up your prevention with policy. And enforce it. In the current case, Cornell held some men accountable through its disciplinary process. In doing so, they used a concept that TNG innovated for the field over twenty-five years ago, a policy on Sexual Exploitation, as distinct from policies on rape and sexual harassment. Cornell reportedly applied this policy to men who were in the room, who watched, but who did not physically engage with Jane Doe as perpetrators of sexual violence. And, it’s important that Cornell did so. If you are in the room where it happened, and do nothing, you have some accountability and culpability for what happened. There must be a cost for that. But, what of the men in the Snapchat chain who recognized what was happening, or recognized a serious risk of harm, and did not act? We need a policy for them, too.
In 2013, TNG published a Model Code of Student Conduct for higher education institutions. It was framed around the concept of how to use policy to reinforce being a Community of Engagement. Amongst other gems, it includes this language:
- Social Justice: University/College students are just and equitable in their treatment of all members of the community and act to discourage and/or intervene to prevent unjust and inequitable behaviors.
When we wrote this language, it was controversial. Colleges balked at adopting this language, given how so many policies are still framed as “thou shalt nots.” We’ve waited many years to see when higher education might be willing to no longer see this as heavy-handed, but as a positive expression of deeply held community values. Any of the men on that Snapchat chain who recognized a serious potential for harm and unreasonably failed to act could have been charged under a policy like this. Inaction has consequences, even if you aren’t in the actual room where the harm is taking place. With a policy like this, we walk our talk. Policy enforcement isn’t a primary prevention tool, but coupled with training and a community-wide ethos, offers a powerful combination.
Today, we might frame a specific conduct code violation something like this:
- College/University/School is a Community of Engagement. Members of the community engage appropriately when they become aware of any situation that a reasonable person would perceive as a serious threat or risk of harm to another or to property.
- An unreasonable failure to engage in some way may result in conduct charges.
- Appropriate engagement may include direct or indirect intervention, seeking assistance, reporting the concern, or taking other reasonable action under the circumstances.
- Community members are not required to place the safety of themselves or others at risk, nor are they responsible for whether their efforts are ultimately effective.
You can and should tie such a policy to your Amnesty policies, if you have those. They go hand in hand, and Amnesty offers an incentive to intervene. If culture change can be represented by a three-legged table, training is one leg of the table. Values are another. Policy is the third. Policy needs to reinforce training, training needs to reinforce values, and all three need to reinforce the culture. A generation ago, the last episode of Seinfeld asked Americans to laugh at the absurdity of legally requiring intervention. Perhaps it is no laughing matter anymore. If your college or school doesn’t have a policy like this, why not?
Conclusion
In a Community of Engagement, we reduce harm by creating a culture of accountability and action. You know you are part of a community that will hold you accountable. You know you are part of a community that will offer aid when there is a risk. You know that calls for help will be answered. You know that unhealthy norms, attitudes, and beliefs will be called out (hopefully appropriately, gently, and constructively) by community members who are well-trained to do so. You know that the community will hold itself accountable to engage and address failures to do so. Failure to intervene is rarely worthy of expulsion, but every failure to engage is recognized as a trespass on community norms and, when appropriate, subject to consequences that are intended to align individual action to community values.
The circumstances giving rise to the Cornell case reflect a tragedy no person should have to endure. It takes courage for the Jane and John Does of the world to speak out. When they do, we need to honor that courage by heeding their call for change. If there is a real legacy of that experience, it will hopefully be movement toward fulfilling the vision of #MeToo to reshape cultures toward health and safety. We do so through heightened vigilance for situations that call for engagement, skill-building around what to do and how to safely engage, and creating an expectation where engagement is the norm, not the exception. In too many organizations and institutions, prevention is an underfunded afterthought. Changing culture cannot be done on the cheap, and it can’t be an adjunct to the academic enterprise. In fact, the academic enterprise can’t be fulfilled without it. There is no question that #MeToo will continue to evolve. The question is, will we?
Ready to move from prevention programming to culture change? Contact TNG Consulting to explore what that could look like in your community.