It was a Thursday evening on the Columbia University campus, and a group from the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority was wedged onto couches eating takeout, some seated cross-legged on the floor. Two discussed an introductory Chinese language class. One thanked a sister for passing along her résumé for an internship. And then there were a few talking about spring break.

They had gone to Cabo, that cliché of a college pilgrimage in which a once-sleepy Mexican village becomes a hormone-fueled frat row, and you never, ever let your drink out of your sight (and if you do, you dump it). Except the women weren’t recounting drunken hookups or how many shots they’d taken on the beach. They were discussing “toxic masculinity,” the “privilege” that allowed them to be there and the “risk team” they put in place to look out for one another if anybody got too drunk or separated from their group.

When, at a beachside bar, a drunken bachelor tried to playfully bite — yes, bite — one of the women’s arms (“Who does that?” she asked), they staged an intervention. “What makes you think she wants to be touched?” her friend said, girl posse in tow, lecturing him on respectful personal space.

Later, when they stumbled upon a twerking contest on the beach (women twerking, the crowd judging), one in the group couldn’t help herself. “Don’t you find it problematic that there are no men up there?” she said to any stranger who would listen. “I think we felt empowered to speak up because we knew we had each other’s backs,” she recalled, seated on a sorority house sofa.