Cornell Faces Outcry Over Handling of Rape Allegations

This article includes descriptions of sexual violence.

A lawsuit accusing Cornell University of failing to adequately respond to an alleged gang rape at a fraternity house in 2024 has ignited an online firestorm as celebrities, lawmakers and others condemned the New York institution.

Cornell defended itself Monday in a statement and said that it supports New York state prosecutors’ decision to reopen a criminal investigation into the alleged attack and “provide an opportunity for the victim’s story in the 2024 Chi Phi fraternity sexual assault case to be heard by a criminal grand jury.” The local district attorney also put out a statement Monday, saying he’s received many calls, voicemails and emails about the case and claiming that the outrage stemmed from “incomplete news and social media coverage.”

The criminal case comes a couple of weeks after the survivor of the alleged rape sued Cornell, accusing the university of failing to prevent and then adequately respond to her allegations. Helped by a scathing editorial in the Cornell student newspaper that accused the university of continuing “a morbid pattern” of failing to protect students and address sexual assault, the case has revived a nationwide conversation about campus sexual violence and the ways institutions respond to such crimes.

“This case in particular is getting such significant attention because it is, I would say, the most high-profile case of campus sexual assault to re-emerge in the post Me Too era,” said Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a nonprofit dedicated to ending campus sexual assault. “It is also happening at a time when there is this broader cultural narrative around male privilege, around survivorship, around accountability and systemic failures for violence.”

The anonymous plaintiff, who has since left Cornell, alleged in her Sept. 16 lawsuit that she was raped in October 2024 by several students while she was intoxicated and unable to consent. In addition to Cornell, she’s suing the seven men she has accused of assault; their fraternity, Chi Phi; and others she holds responsible.

“What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing,” the plaintiff told The Cornell Daily Sun earlier this month. “Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night.”

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said in his Monday statement that the civil suit includes new allegations and that he reached out to the plaintiff’s attorneys after the suit was filed “to understand the discrepancy” between these allegations and the information his office received in 2024.

“One of the hardest but most important parts of a prosecutor’s job is being constrained to consider only the admissible evidence and information provided by a victim and to strictly apply those facts to the applicable laws,” Van Houten wrote. “It is my responsibility to seek justice. At the same time, I recognize the reality that it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them. Seeking justice sometimes requires us to reconsider or reopen cases when we are provided with additional evidence.”

Explaining why his office did not file criminal charges when the survivor, called Jane Doe, first came forward two years ago, Van Houten included more than a dozen quotes and facts from her November 2024 statement, which “did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped.” Her statement also “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual,” Van Houten said.

“My office obviously did not and could not have based our November 2024 decision on the allegations in a civil lawsuit that would not be filed until nearly two years later,” he wrote.

In the complaint, Jane Doe described being propositioned for a threesome by a friend, being forcibly kissed by several male students and being repeatedly coerced or forced into oral and vaginal intercourse throughout the night in October 2024 and into the early morning. She also said she was pressured into taking ketamine, using marijuana and drinking more alcohol despite already appearing incapacitated. The lawsuit includes a photo of a fraternity Snapchat group, “Chi Phi Activities,” in which one of the defendants texted there was “free pussy” in the room where Doe was located. Several other defendants responded with interest.

Doe reported the alleged rape to the campus police on Nov. 8, 2024, and the fraternity chapter was temporarily suspended, the lawsuit states. The defendants were also temporarily suspended and “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays” to Cornell.

In January 2025, the university opened a formal Title IX investigation into the matter, which included “a hearing where a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days,” according to Cornell’s recent statement. The panel issued “a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell.” The university noted in its statement that “none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.” It also stated that the Chi Phi chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.

Doe’s lawyer told CBS News that only two of the seven men she has accused were expelled. University spokespeople did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s questions about how many students were expelled or suspended and how long those suspensions lasted.

That Cornell offered the defendants an opportunity to write essays about their actions has garnered intense criticism online, with some observers remarking that the decision minimizes the severity of the alleged crime. For example, actor Josh Gad wrote on Instagram that the university’s response to the alleged rape sends a “profoundly disturbing message.”

“When we start setting a precedent that our girls and women can be brutally raped, and the resulting disciplinary action is to hand out (checks notes) ESSAYS … about why it was wrong to brutally violate an innocent girl, we have lost our fucking minds,” Gad wrote.

The Cornell spokesperson said, “Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false. A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.”

The university is also receiving blowback from politicians. While speaking at a town hall event at Cornell on Sunday, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised Jane Doe for coming forward and criticized the university’s response to her allegations.

“The fact that she had to lose her education and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward—never again,” said Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat.

On Monday, Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo called for a pause on all Greek life and student group gatherings at the university until Cornell “conducts an accounting of its protocols to prevent and prosecute crimes of sexual violence” and publicly releases new safety standards.

“Despite the severity of these crimes, Cornell University administrators and police failed to contact or coordinate any response with the Ithaca Police Department,” Cantelmo said in a statement. “Furthermore, the University failed to hold the perpetrators to account.”

Impact of Title IX Changes?

Since the Trump administration overhauled Title IX, the law that bans sex discrimination in publicly funded education, in 2020, the university’s hands are “relatively tied in what kind of punishment they can levy,” said Vitchers. The changes made reporting sexual violence more difficult for survivors and incentivized institutions “to let students who perpetrate sexual violence off the hook,” she said.

At campuses nationwide, sexual assault–mitigation efforts have diminished, Vitchers said.

“Essentially since the first Trump administration, we have seen a divestment in primary prevention programming at institutions, and [instead] a focus on pushing what we would define as risk-mitigation programs that enable schools to say, ‘We’re checking the box; 100 percent of our students went through an online course that covers the topics that are required under the [law].’”

According to Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights website, the university offers Zoom training for students on topics like affirmative consent and bystander intervention.

On Monday, the Trump administration formally rescinded Biden-era Title IX regulations and reinstated the 2020 rule. The Biden rule never took effect nationwide and was thrown out in January 2025, and the Education Department has been enforcing the 2020 regulations since.

“We’ve seen this administration time and time again use this narrative of protecting women as to why they need to engage in Title IX reform,” Vitchers said. But “we can see how their Title IX rule directly negatively impacted the safety of not one woman, but … every woman on the campus at Cornell University in the aftermath of this horrific incident.”