The case has placed the University of Chicago, one of the country’s premier academic institutions, at the center of a nationwide reckoning over sexual assault on college campuses, fueled by another reported attack, this one at a fraternity house at Cornell University in upstate New York.
On Tuesday afternoon, University of Chicago issued an alert saying “a person of interest has been identified.” No arrests have been reported.
The woman’s friends said a group of men had tried to block them from entering the bathroom after the men were seen “cheering and appearing to encourage the activity inside,” according to the report.
The group of up to five men initially told the woman’s friends she wasn’t inside the bathroom, the report says. When the two other women pushed forward, a man grabbed one of them by the hair as the other picked the bathroom lock, according to the report.
The 21-year-old woman was “not fully conscious” when she was found inside the bathroom, according to the report, which says she and the man were both partially undressed.
After one of the woman’s friends told him to get off her, “he responded that everything was ‘cool,’ as though nothing had occurred,” the report says.
When the woman and her friends confronted the man outside the fraternity house, one of the men said they “had identified the wrong person” and pointed the women in another direction and then ran off, according to the report.
One of the friends gave chase but stopped when she encountered a university police officer, the report says. A complaint was taken, and the 21-year-old was hospitalized
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