What I keep thinking about when I read about the Cornell case is not only what allegedly happened, but what it means to be around something like that and decide not to intervene. The details of the case are still being investigated, and I do not think it is fair to assume that every person in that group chat understood the situation in exactly the same way. But the messages that have come out make it difficult not to think about the people surrounding the alleged assault: the people who were there, the people communicating with each other, and the people who may have had enough information to realize that something was seriously wrong.
I personally believe that knowing that something is wrong and still choosing to remain a spectator is deeply disturbing. Not because every person who witnesses something automatically knows what to do, or because everyone is capable of intervening in the same way, but because sometimes doing nothing is less about not knowing what to do and more about not wanting to deal with what happens after you do it. You might have to confront your friend. You might have to interrupt the situation. You might have to explain yourself to the rest of the group. You might have to accept that the person you have been laughing with, drinking with, or calling your friend has done something that you cannot simply ignore. You might have to be called a “snitch”…
And I think that is where the comfort of neutrality comes in. It is very easy to tell yourself that you are not responsible because you were not the person doing the harm. You didn’t initiate it. You didn’t participate in it. You were just there. You saw something, heard something, maybe thought it was strange, but you did not know exactly what was happening, so you stayed out of it. There is safety in that position because you do not have to make yourself vulnerable by choosing what you believe or what you are willing to do about it.
This is also where I think about the Spanish word tibio and how relevant it is. A tibio person is not necessarily a coward, and they are not necessarily passive in every part of their life. They can be confident, funny, outspoken, ambitious, even fiercely opinionated. What makes someone tibio is what happens to those convictions when standing by them becomes inconvenient. They know when something is wrong, but suddenly there are reasons to wait, reasons to stay quiet, reasons to let somebody else handle it.
Most of us like to imagine that, if we were ever in a situation where something genuinely terrible was happening, we would immediately know what to do. We like to believe we would be the person who says something, who steps in, who refuses to go along with everyone else. But the reality is that social pressure is powerful, especially when the people around you are your friends. It is one thing to have an opinion about something from the outside. It is another thing to act on it when acting means making the people around you uncomfortable.
That is why the people surrounding a situation can matter almost as much as the situation itself. A group creates its own sense of what is normal. If everyone keeps talking, drinking, laughing, or carrying on as if nothing unusual is happening, it becomes easier for each individual person to convince themselves that maybe it is not their place to interfere. You look around and nobody else is doing anything, so you assume there must be a reason. Maybe someone else knows more. Maybe someone else is going to handle it. Maybe you misunderstood. And by the time you have finished convincing yourself of all of that, the moment has passed.
I think we often mistake that kind of hesitation for neutrality. But neutrality only really means something when you have the freedom to choose it without using it as a way to avoid responsibility. If you genuinely do not know what is happening, stepping back can be reasonable. If you are missing important information, waiting can be responsible. But when you already have enough information to recognize that something is wrong and your main reason for staying quiet is that speaking up would be uncomfortable, I do not know if neutrality is the right word anymore.
And this is where tibieza becomes more interesting to me than simple cowardice. A coward might be afraid and know that they are afraid. A tibio person can convince themselves that they are being reasonable. They can tell themselves they are avoiding drama, that they are not taking sides, that they are giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. They can even believe that they are doing the mature thing. Meanwhile, the real reason may simply be that they do not want to risk their place in the group.
The difficult part is that our actions eventually reveal what our words try to hide. Saying that you would never tolerate something means very little if you continue making space for it. Saying that you care about someone means very little if you disappear the moment caring becomes inconvenient. And saying that you are neutral does not automatically make you innocent of the consequences of your silence.
I do not think this means everyone who fails to intervene should be treated as equally responsible for what happened. That would be both unfair and impossible to establish without knowing what each person actually knew and did. What I think is worth examining is the moment when you realize that something is not right and have to decide whether being comfortable matters more than doing something about it.
That moment probably looks different for everyone. Sometimes it might mean speaking up. Sometimes it might mean getting someone out of a situation. Sometimes it might mean checking on someone afterward. Sometimes it might simply mean refusing to laugh along when everyone else is. None of these things make someone a hero. They are just small decisions that communicate where you stand.
That is what bothers me most about neutrality. Not that everyone should always take a side, but that we sometimes use the idea of being neutral to avoid admitting that we have already seen enough to know where we stand. We want to believe that staying quiet keeps us outside of the situation, when sometimes it only means that we have chosen not to interfere with it.
At some point, staying silent stops being simply staying out of it. If you know the kind of person someone is, if you see what they are doing, if you recognize that someone else is being hurt and still choose to protect your place beside them, you are no longer completely outside of what is happening. You may not be the person causing the harm, but choosing to stay close, to say nothing, or to look the other way can make it easier for that harm to continue. Doing nothing is still a choice— and admitting that is uncomfortable. And when that choice is made to protect your own comfort, your friendship, or your place in the group, you have to be honest about what that silence is protecting and encouraging too.
Image Credit: Cordon Press; ‘Simone de Beauvoir‘, 1945