Seven women are suing Dartmouth College for sexual assault, harassment and discrimination that they say they experienced from three prominent professors who, according to the suit, turned a human behavior research department “into a 21st-century Animal House.”

For over a decade, the professors — Todd Heatherton, William Kelley and Paul Whalen — “leered at, groped, sexted, intoxicated and even raped female students,” according to the court papers, which were filed Thursday in federal court in New Hampshire.

The lawsuit, which seeks $70 million in damages, says this behavior went back as far as 2002, and it accuses the college administration of looking the other way for more than 16 years.

Dartmouth, an Ivy League university in Hanover, N.H., announced in October 2017 that it was conducting a sexual misconduct investigation of the men, who were tenured professors in the school’s psychological and brain sciences department. After that inquiry, as the college began the seldom-used process required to fire tenured professors, Mr. Heatherton retired and the other two resigned. They have been barred from campus events and property and from ever working for Dartmouth again.