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She’s not a “shop.” She’s a person.

“Shop still open?”

These three words were reportedly captured in a group chat of members of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity at 1:42 in the morning on Oct. 20, 2024.

Were the young men discussing a 7-Eleven? An all-night pizzeria? The research library the night before a big test? Was this a request for weed, or for the Doritos/Tostitos/burritos genre of munchie that a 20-year-old college student desires after smoking weed?

College students have a lot of reasons to be awake and requiring things, and also texting their friends that they are requiring things, at close to 2 a.m.

The “shop” that this student purportedly spoke of was a young woman. A fellow student, who alleges that in 2024 she attended a party at the fraternity where she was drugged and raped for hours by seven men.

Charges were not originally filed, but the civil lawsuit the woman, Jane Doe, filed this month has prompted prosecutors to reopen a criminal investigation. Nothing has been adjudicated in a court of law. But for those of you who immediately wondered about the veracity of the accusations — those of you who might have remembered, for example, the Rolling Stone fraternity rape hoax that fell apart when it came out that the alleged victim had fabricated the entire thing — there appear to be some key differences.

In that story, centered at the University of Virginia, independent investigations found no record of the fictitious frat party in question, much less the identity of any of the alleged perpetrators. In the Cornell instance, the alleged perpetrators helpfully identified themselves in group texts on Snapchat. The lawsuit includes a photo that says it is from the chat. One of the young men in question, for example, notified everyone else that there was “Free p---y” in the house.

In the ensuing discussion, one fraternity brother responded to that piece of information by writing “I f---ing love Chi Phi”; another either sought or provided clarification, “Like you can walk in and whip it out.”

The assault allegedly lasted, according to the lawsuit, until approximately 5:45 in the morning.

Jane Doe reported the incident to university police in November 2024. The alleged perpetrators were suspended, as was the fraternity itself, while the university investigated whether its code of conduct had been violated. The fraternity chapter remains shuttered.

At least one defense lawyer representing an accused fraternity brother has said that his client is innocent, that he briefly walked in the room when the woman was still clothed and then left. Cornell said in a statement that the university had “investigated and adjudicated the allegations consistent with university policies.” The lawsuit states that when the woman reported the incident to the Cornell police, the alleged perpetrators were temporarily suspended but allowed to “mitigate their conduct” by writing essays.

I don’t know what to make of all this yet. Do we need more discussions about consent? About alcohol? About the usefulness of writing essays when you have been accused of rape? The descriptions of the assault in the lawsuit are absolutely unspeakable.

I do know what to make of “Shop still open?” Which is just as horrifying, in a different way.

I did not review the text exchange firsthand or interview any of the participants in the Snapchat. But an attorney for Jane Doe wrote me that the “Shop still open” exchange, as first reported by CBS, was legitimate. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

“Shop still open?” is a kind of wordplay that requires a little brainpower, especially when made at 1:42 a.m. Your mind may be fuzzy with alcohol or ketamine, but not so fuzzy that you cannot dig out your phone and add a question mark.

The question mark is needed because you do not know whether the woman — a student, just like you — is still there. You are not there, after all. You are in a different room. You are making a premeditated inquiry as to whether you should bother traveling to another part of the house in order to have sex with a woman you have identified as a shop. You have to think about it. You have to press send.

You do not know whether she is conscious or consenting. You are not texting her to find out. She could probably be a better judge of whether she was conscious or consenting, but you have instead decided to group-text your fraternity brothers, entrusting them to be the judge of whether the shop should be open. If you text the shop, you might learn that maybe it never wanted to be open in the first place.

“Shop” brings to mind an assembly line, or the fast checkout lane, not a human interaction. It implies that your interest is less in having sex with a person than walking in and whipping it out. Taking turns with several of your buddies. Or maybe not taking turns; the lawsuit allowed for that possibility, too. In any case, quickly getting back to the party, away from the shop.

When news came out that this case was being reopened, I ignored it. In a previous role, I wrote about gender issues. Now I write about screens, and how they affect and reflect our society. This means I don’t have to parse every difficult sexual assault accusation that suddenly makes the news.

But then the lawsuit included part of the group chat, and CBS included more of it, and suddenly this was on our screens. And the fact that it was on our screens became part of the case.

What insanity, to think that the Snapchats sent on that day would ever remain private. What an unfathomably wrong sense of invincibility. You could imagine being a college-age woman and wondering what was being documented and passed around about you without your knowledge. You could imagine reading those texts as the parent of a daughter you had just packed off to school. As the parent of a son.

The presence of a group text is both gobsmacking and banal. It conveys that whatever was happening in that room — however drunk or drugged everyone was in that room — several people still thought to document the evening in real time. To make it a bonding experience. To make it a party. To make sure everyone got to the shop before the shop woke up or tried to hide under covers or started crying or wished to get out of that room or did whatever else it is that shops do.

“Shop still open?” wrote one young man, and another wrote back, “Yeah.”