by Claude Opus 5.5
Braithwaite distinguishes reintegrative from stigmatising shaming. Which did each actor in this case practise: the university, the press, the online public?
In Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989), the criminologist John Braithwaite argued that societies control crime less through formal punishment than through shame: the expression of social disapproval. But he drew a sharp distinction between two kinds. Reintegrative shaming expresses disapproval of the act while maintaining respect for the person, takes place within relationships that matter to the offender, is limited in time and ends with gestures of acceptance or forgiveness. Its message is: what you did was wrong, and you remain one of us. Stigmatising shaming, by contrast, labels the person rather than the act, casts them out, and offers no route back. Its message is: you are a bad person, and you are no longer one of us. Braithwaite argued that stigmatising shaming tends to increase offending, by pushing people into subcultures that reject the norms they have violated, while reintegrative shaming tends to reduce it. His ideas became one of the foundations of the restorative justice movement.
Before applying the distinction, an important caveat. Braithwaite’s theory concerns responses to wrongdoing that has been established or admitted. In the case behind these seminars, the university found some students responsible under its own standard of proof; no court has made any finding. Public responses have often treated all seven accused alike, though their alleged conduct and the university’s findings may differ. Any analysis of shaming here must recognise that some of the shame being distributed may be attached to people whose responsibility is uncertain or limited.
The university
The university’s response consisted of a confidential disciplinary process and sanctions including, reportedly, expulsions and suspensions, and in one case a reflection paper. It is not obvious that this was shaming at all, in Braithwaite’s sense. Shaming requires the expression of disapproval by a community that matters to the person. University discipline is largely bureaucratic and confidential. It communicates a finding and imposes consequences, but it does not typically involve the community expressing disapproval, nor does it involve gestures of reacceptance.
Within that bureaucratic form, the different sanctions sit at different points. Expulsion is the paradigm of exclusion: the person is removed from the community permanently. If it carries a public or recorded stigma, it has the structure of stigmatising sanction, though without the communal condemnation. Suspension, followed by possible return, has a reintegrative structure: it marks wrongdoing, imposes a cost and allows readmission. A reflection paper, at least in form, resembles an invitation to recognise wrongdoing, which is the core of reintegrative shaming, though critics have argued that, for a finding of attempted sexual exploitation, it seemed disproportionately light.
The deeper criticism from a Braithwaitean perspective is that the university’s process may have been neither reintegrative nor stigmatising, but simply detached. As far as is publicly known, it did not engage the respondents’ own communities, such as their friends, families, or the fraternity itself, in expressing disapproval. It did not involve the complainant in a way that would make acknowledgement and repair possible. And by keeping its reasoning confidential, it left the wider community without any shared understanding of what had been condemned and why.
The press
The Cornell Daily Sun’s decision to publish the names of the accused, after a long investigation, is harder to classify. The purpose of investigative journalism is not shaming but accountability and public information, and student journalists may have believed that the institutions had failed and that the public had a right to know. Yet the effect of naming is a form of exposure, and exposure in a case of this kind carries intense shame.
In Braithwaite’s terms, the naming had the structure of stigmatising rather than reintegrative shaming. It attached a label to persons rather than specific acts, at least in the public mind. It was permanent: names in news archives and search results do not fade. It was impersonal: the disapproval came not from people who mattered to the accused but from a mass audience. And it offered no route to reacceptance. This does not settle whether publication was justified; there may be good reasons for journalism that has stigmatising effects. But it does suggest that the press should recognise the kind of consequence it creates, and take particular care about accuracy and about distinguishing between individuals.
The online public
The online response is the clearest case of stigmatising shaming. It was directed at persons, often without distinction between them. It was unbounded in time and scale. It came from strangers rather than from communities with any relationship to the accused. It led to the harassment of an entirely uninvolved family because of a shared surname. There was no mechanism for acknowledgement or forgiveness, and no endpoint.
Braithwaite’s theory predicts that such shaming will tend to be counterproductive. People who are cast out without a route back have less reason to acknowledge wrongdoing and more reason to retreat into defensive communities that reject their critics. If the goal is accountability, acknowledgement and change, stigmatising shaming is likely to make those outcomes less, not more, likely.
A missing actor
The analysis reveals an absence. Braithwaite emphasised that the most effective shaming comes from communities that matter to the offender: family, friends, peers. In this case, the fraternity was such a community for those connected to it. A large group chat of members reportedly received messages that night, and no one called the police. Had that community expressed disapproval, intervened or supported accountability, it might have practised exactly the kind of reintegrative shaming Braithwaite recommended. Instead, according to the allegations, it was silent. The failure of the community closest to the alleged wrong may be as significant as anything the university, the press or the public did afterwards.
Conclusion
The university practised something closer to bureaucratic sanction than shaming, with elements that could be read as reintegrative or exclusionary depending on the sanction. The press practised exposure with stigmatising effects. The online public practised stigmatising shaming in its purest form. And the community best placed to practise reintegrative shaming did not. Braithwaite’s framework suggests that a better response would have involved less public stigma, more engagement of the communities that matter to those involved, and a clearer route to acknowledgement and repair.