On the night of April 17, 1993, when I was a student at Pomona College, Travis Landry raped me. It has taken me 33 years to say his name.
I was a second-year student at Pomona, class of 1995. He had been admitted to Pomona and was visiting as a prospective student during the college’s admitted students weekend. I never made it to 1995, dropping out soon after he raped me. He went on to Brown University, and later became a full professor and Associate Provost at Kenyon College.
To give voice to survivors, I’ve talked and written publicly about the devastating impact his assault and the subsequent treatment by the District Attorney’s Office and Pomona College had on me. But I’ve never said his name: Travis Landry.
The fear he instilled in me that night became lodged in my being. It has remained lodged in me even as I posted my own Jane Doe story on social media along with the 1993 TSL news article that reported my rape. After posting it, I deleted it minutes later. I was afraid of what Landry would do. 33 years later, I was still afraid of him.
Finally, with the encouragement of a friend, I posted it again and this time left it up.
Afterward, I was overcome with anxiety. I spent most of that day in bed under the covers with my dog. Would I have to relive the nightmare yet again? I have. Would the panic attacks resurface? They have. Would I be questioned about that night just to have institutions protect him instead of me? That is something only Kenyon College can answer.
Despite all of this, I don’t regret saying his name, and I would do it again. It took me a long time to move from being a victim to thinking of myself as a survivor. Now I am something more. I have taken the justice that was denied me into my own hands. In doing so, I have reclaimed my power over Landry and men like him. I have taken the power out of the hands of institutions like the District Attorney and colleges who have protected men countless times. I no longer place my expectations in institutions that have failed me, us, repeatedly.
That’s liberation. My own liberation, and if the Jane Does continue to speak up, it will be all of ours. What I have learned in these 33 years is that silence will not save us.
In saying, Travis Landry, now Associate Provost and Professor at Kenyon College, raped me, he can no longer hide. I will no longer hide him. I’ve had to live with what he did to me for over 30 years, starting that night in April. Now he must live with it too.
That night, after he raped me, I went back to the party we had been at and told my best friend what had happened. I vaguely remember pulling her into the bathroom and sitting in the shower as she stood over me. She walked me over to a friend’s dorm room where other friends gathered. I think they called Landry’s hosting student and told him not to let him go anywhere, then they called the police. I watched and heard everything happening around me, but I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I was in a haze, probably in shock. I just sat there and followed directions. During the rape kit exam, I just lay there in the hospital bed. Other people told me what to do, where to go. The nurses and doctors asked me questions that related to sexual acts that, at 19 years of age, I didn’t understand.
I decided to file charges. I had some hope, however naive, that by doing so I would perhaps make sure he never did this to another woman again. That I would be able to hold him accountable, to obtain some form of justice. That wouldn’t be the case.
My best friend accompanied me to be questioned by the District Attorney, to provide me support. They refused to allow her to accompany me into the interview. A man in a suit took me to the back, and I followed, alone. In a small office that felt claustrophobic, he, along with another male prosecutor, proceeded to question me. I sat there and answered their questions the best I could. I’m sure I wasn’t very coherent or very compelling. I couldn’t feel my body; it felt disconnected from my brain. I can’t even remember what they asked me or what I told them; it felt like the prosecutors were speaking a foreign language. When I think about the night of the rape, what I remember most is lying on my back and looking up at the trees as it happened. As I tried to recount that night, I felt like I was watching a movie of myself.
As I was leaving, the prosecutor stopped me and told me that Landry and his family had hired a private investigator. I heard the words they said, but I didn’t totally comprehend them until later as I walked around campus and began to find myself looking over my shoulder and suspecting everybody was tracking me.
When my friend called a rape crisis center, they urged me to do the interview again and said that this time they would accompany me. I went again. I relived the trauma for what felt like the 100th time as I answered the same prosecutors’ questions. They went through the motions, but it was clear they had made up their mind. I was reliving my nightmare, and the outcome was not going to change. Before I walked out the door, they told me they wouldn’t be filing charges. They hadn’t interviewed my best friend or any of my other friends who saw the state I was in that night. I don’t even know if they interviewed Landry. After posting bail, he was allowed to leave the state and flew back home to Texas. At the elevators, I fell into my best friends’ arms and cried for the first time. I was broken.
When anyone asks you why survivors don’t go to the police, why they don’t file charges, share my story with them. I was traumatized and left powerless, once by Landry and a second time by the District Attorney.
Pomona College, meanwhile, was busy trying to protect its reputation and assure parents that it was a safe place to send their students. In the TSL article that reported on the rape, the Dean of Admissions at the time, Peter Osgood, expressed concern “over the effect this incident might have on other students considering Pomona.” Not once do any of the administrators in the article express concern for me. The then Dean of Students, Ann Quinley, is quoted as saying: “It’s a personal tragedy but not a policy issue.” Rape is not just personal. It is systemically supported, or at the very least tolerated, if not addressed properly.
Did Pomona address my rape properly? Did it review its policies afterward? Quinley’s comments suggest it didn’t. I don’t remember much of Pomona College’s response or lack thereof in the days and weeks following. Talking to people from the college afterwards, they didn’t seem real, none of it seemed real. I wasn’t in any state to know what I needed, let alone ask for it. Meanwhile, they told me not to worry, that Landry was going to be attending Brown University instead of Pomona. As if the nightmare ended with him, and not also the campus on which he had raped me.
Like Cornell University’s Jane Doe, and so many Jane Does before and after me, I decided to leave Pomona College. I left behind the full scholarship I had worked so hard for. I left behind the dream of being the first in my family to attend and graduate from college. I left behind my father’s dream of working his whole life to ensure that his daughter would have a better life than he did. I walked away. I couldn’t bear being in the place where I had been raped, a place where I felt unsafe, unsupported, where my nightmares haunted me, day and night.
Meanwhile, Landry went on to attend Brown University.
I eventually returned to school and graduated from UCLA, with honors and with student debt. My parents and my young daughter were at my graduation. But the wounds of that night never fully healed. I struggled to integrate into student life, feeling safer living off-campus and only coming to campus for classes.
I have only begun to deal with the trauma directly in the last few years, as the harm it had done to me could no longer be ignored. The harm he inflicted turned into self-harm, depression, anxiety, isolation, dissociation. In fact, the trauma of that April night made me vulnerable to future sexual assaults. I was assaulted four more times in the years after Landry raped me.
That is what rape did to me. There are countless stories like mine.
And there are countless stories like Landry’s too. Men who have raped women, left us broken, and moved on to positions of power and prestige without anyone knowing what they had done.
I don’t know if Brown University was aware of his arrest when they admitted him. I also don’t know if Kenyon College was aware of his arrest for rape when they hired him and promoted him. But now they know.
Will Kenyon protect him? Will they allow him to continue as before? The college recently opened an investigation into Landry and put him on leave: but is this investigation real, or is it just a way to protect his and Kenyon’s reputations?
I have no illusions that Kenyon College will hold Landry accountable. I don’t expect Pomona College to reflect on their response.
Justice will not be provided to us. It must be created by us, the Jane Does.
Not much has changed from Pomona College in 1993 and Cornell University in 2026. What has changed is us, the women impacted. We are taking liberation by our own hands.
We will publicly name our rapists. We will no longer shield them.
In the process, we will heal ourselves, we will deal justice to rapists ourselves, ensure not one more man gets away with it and ultimately, that not one more woman is raped.
Travis Landry raped me. I said his name and I will continue to say it. I act despite my fear. Join the other Jane Does and me in saying their names. Don’t protect them any longer.
There is nothing more powerful than a woman who acts despite her fear. And there is nothing that should strike more fear in men than that.
Let them fear us now.
Editor’s note: Paulina Gonzalez first posted Travis Landry’s name on social media on Oct. 4. On Oct. 8, Kenyon College released an internal statement informing the Kenyon community that the college has engaged an independent investigator and placed Landry on administrative leave while the investigation takes place. In an email statement to TSL on Oct. 16, a Kenyon College spokesperson reiterated that the investigation is currently taking place, and stated that the college hopes to complete the investigation both expeditiously and thoroughly. In an email statement to TSL on Oct. 20, Landry stated that in the hours and weeks after April 17, 1993, he fully cooperated with law enforcement’s investigation, and that the investigators independently decided not to pursue charges against him. He stated that no further action was ever taken. In an email statement to TSL on Oct. 21, a Pomona College spokesperson stated that the resources available to the Pomona community through the Title IX Office have expanded in recent decades, and emphasized the college’s current commitment to handling reports of sexual harassment and sex-based misconduct on campus through a trauma-informed framework.
In the editing and publication process for this Opinion article, TSL reviewed archival records, interviewed firsthand witnesses, and contacted relevant parties in order to corroborate the article’s claims. TSL is currently in the process of conducting further research in order to publish a thorough news investigation into the circumstances surrounding Landry’s arrest in 1993.
Students seeking resources can contact the 7C EmPOWER Center, a violence prevention and advocacy center. Students can locate specific resources, including each school’s Title IX office, at the EmPOWER Center.
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