Comedian turned talk show host Bill Maher savaged his alma mater, Cornell University, and called for the entire Greek system to be abolished in the wake of a former student’s lawsuit allegation that she was gang-raped at a fraternity house.
He revealed his alumnus status Friday on “Real Time with Bill Maher” before launching into a takedown as he joined a growing number of celebrities who have spoken out about the issue.
“Now that everyone is talking about Cornell, stop asking me about it just because I went there,” the 70-year-old deadpanned, quipping, “First of all, I graduated almost 10 years ago. How would I know?”
Then he got seriouser.
“What I do know is this alleged gang rape at the Cornell Chi Phi frat house is deeply disturbing,” Maher continued. “But since it’s my alma mater, where I walked those hallowed halls for four years with so many memories, I don’t want to let my personal feelings get in the way because they’re all bad. Cornell sucks and I hated it, and I’m glad to see them eating a s–t sandwich.”
He did say he got a good education there, “the kind they don’t do anymore,” and pointed out that the alleged assault could have happened anywhere that fraternities exist.
“Any place that’s all male, no girls allowed, just doesn’t function without depravity,” Maher continued. “Ask the Catholic Church. Ask the Taliban. Human nature is bad, and the best we can do is create institutions that don’t make it so easy to be worse. And a great place to start would be getting rid of Greek life.”
For starters, “everything that’s inherently bad about men gets worse if you put them in a fraternity,” he said, naming drinking, cruelty, the treatment of women, peer pressure, and “just general a–holery,” among other ills.
Maher also called out sororities, noting that the “Jane Doe” who is suing the school, the frat members now known as the Cornell 7, their Chi Phi Fraternity, and the bar that served the then-underage 20-year-old drinks is also suing the Cornell chapter of the sorority she belonged to, Delta Delta Delta (known as Tri Delta). Doe was with sorority sisters at the bar before heading off, alone and drunk, to the Chi Phi house to meet a friend.
As for Chi Phi’s purported mission to “build better men,” Maher questioned use of the word “gentlemen,” noting how often it crops up in fraternity mission statements.
“Well, in this current Jane Doe case, a young woman made a bad decision, as 20-year-olds do, when she went to a frat house drunk and did ketamine,” he said. “And for that, she claims to have paid a price no woman should have to pay.”
Acknowledging the conflicting accounts, he said he was sure of one thing: “But I do know what a gentleman is,” Maher said. “A gentleman, gentlemen, is someone who in that situation doesn’t exploit the woman. He saves her. That’s a gentleman.”