Bill Cosby has long faced accusations of sexual assault, but as the claims gathered momentum in recent months, several colleges severed ties with Cosby, a longtime benefactor and perennial commencement speaker. Of particular note: Cosby stepped down from his position on the board of trustees at Temple University, ending an unusually close relationship between the comedian and his alma mater. Spellman College, the historically black women’s college and the inspiration for the Cosby Show spinoff “A Different World,” suspended an endowed professorship funded in part by a $20 million gift made by Cosby and his wife Camille in 1988.
These news stories, and the controversy over the Rolling Stone article in particular, prompted many women to tell their personal stories of rape on campus. Here are five:
Rachel Dodes Wortman, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who now works at Twitter, described being drugged and raped when she was a senior at Cornell University. “There are a series of blurry images, like a movie montage: us kissing on the couch, him carrying me to his bed, and then choking me while we had sex. I don’t remember saying ‘No,’ but I also think the issue of consent, in this particular instance, is not really applicable,” she writes.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote in Jezebel this month about having dinner with a “nice Jewish boy” who tried to rape her during the summer between her junior and senior years at college. She told her story, she said, because she was worried that the retraction of the Rolling Stone story would erect a “curtain of silence, where young women feel too afraid to share their truth.”