Cornell Agrees to Independent Investigation of Alleged Rape

Cornell University has agreed to an external investigation into its handling of a 2024 sexual assault allegation from Jane Doe, an anonymous former student who sued the university last month, alleging she was brutally raped by seven men at a campus fraternity.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul—who on Tuesday called for an “independent review” of the Ivy League university’s response to the alleged rape—said in a video posted to X Wednesday evening that she had spoken to Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff, who agreed to the investigation and “understands the importance of this.”

The news follows nearly a week of mounting pressure from students, faculty members and politicians who have called on the university to be more transparent about how it handled Doe’s complaint and reform the way it responds to reports of sexual assault.

Hours before Hochul’s announcement, New York Senator Chuck Schumer joined the chorus, calling on X for a “truly independent and exhaustive investigation—not only into what happened, but into how this case was handled from the moment she came forward.”

“Every fact must be uncovered. Every failure must be examined. Wherever wrongdoing occurred, there must be accountability,” Schumer wrote. “[Doe] had the courage to come forward. No survivor should have to summon that courage—and then fight the system to make it respond.”

The Cornell Student Assembly is also demanding more detailed answers from university administrators. On Tuesday the elected student body directly criticized a Monday statement from a Cornell spokesperson who said the university ultimately “issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions” in response to Doe’s allegations. In a statement posted to Instagram, the assembly wrote that Cornell “has failed to provide meaningful transparency about what disciplinary actions it took or against whom.”

“Vague references to ‘temporary suspensions’ and ‘other restrictive measures’ are inadequate given the gravity of the allegations,” the students wrote. “If students accused of participating in or witnessing sexual violence received lesser sanctions, Cornell should explain why.”

The assembly is scheduled to hold a public hearing on Thursday for students to “voice their concerns directly” to the group, The Cornell Daily Sun reported.

Rape and sexual assault is a problem at Cornell, according to the university’s own survey data, which shows that in 2025, 35 percent of undergraduate women reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact at some point during their time at the university, up from 23 percent in 2023. A USA Today analysis of 1,216 sexual assault, dating and domestic violence and stalking incidents reported to Cornell’s Title IX office between 2018 and 2024 found that the university filed disciplinary charges against an accused student or employee in 162—or about 13 percent—of those cases. An accused student or employee was found at fault in 51 of them, and “most of those found responsible received minor sanctions that allowed them to remain on campus, such as probation or training,” USA Today reported. Fourteen cases ended with a suspension. Only seven cases—0.6 percent—resulted in expulsion.

Further Finger-Pointing

The growing public scrutiny of Cornell’s disciplinary decisions comes as Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Guiffra, has made additional allegations about how the university treated her after she reported the alleged rape. In an interview with CNN, Guiffra said Doe “wanted to leave the university and go home and heal.” But when her parents sought a refund on her tuition, “Cornell said, ‘No, you have to stay in school.’”

“So she spent an entire semester on the campus where she saw these guys on a fairly regular basis, and that is just horrifying to me,” Guiffra said.

In response to Inside Higher Ed’s question about whether Doe was refunded her tuition, a Cornell spokesperson said Wednesday that the university “works with students who wish to take a leave of absence or withdraw. The university regularly refunds payments if students are no longer enrolled.”

The university has released little information about its investigation into the alleged rape since the Daily Sun broke news of Doe’s allegations and her lawsuit last week, but on Tuesday night, Cornell published an FAQ that included some new facts. The university says the Cornell University Police Department provided the district attorney’s office with the screenshot included in Doe’s lawsuit—of a defendant advertising “free pussy,” referring to Doe, in a Chi Phi Snapchat group—along with all other “investigatory information.” This contradicts what Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten told ABC News on Tuesday: that his office never received the Snapchat image, a “critical piece of evidence.”

Van Houten also told CBS News he didn’t receive the transcript of Doe’s interview with campus police. In the transcript, obtained by CBS, Doe told campus police, “I can say with 100 percent confidence I was raped.” She also said she was “completely and totally incapacitated” and that she had been “physically hit very, very hard.”

“If she had said those words, we certainly would want to have explored that more,” Van Houten told CBS. “Like I said, that wasn’t provided to me.”

Trey Robb, interim executive officer of Chi Phi Fraternity, the national chapter of the fraternity the seven defendants belonged to, released a statement Wednesday condemning “sexual assault and drug and alcohol abuse in the strongest possible terms.” He also said that three days after Doe filed her police report, members of the Cornell chapter—which has since been banned from campus—“voted unanimously to remove the accused members from its rolls” and asked the national fraternity to permanently expel them, which it did.

“In this case, our national headquarters acted consistently with Chi Phi’s values and governing documents. Our role is to educate members about the standards and ideals of our fraternity. It then falls to each chapter and its members to comport with those standards. Headquarters does not have day-to-day operational control of our chapters, which manage their own affairs, and we rely on their reporting to keep us informed. That is exactly what happened here,” Robb wrote.

Not everyone on campus sees Chi Phi and other fraternities as standing up against sexual violence. In an op-ed for The Cut, Kate Manne, a moral philosophy professor at Cornell, described an event last spring that featured Chanel Miller, the writer and activist who was raped by Brock Turner on the Stanford University campus in 2015. Fifteen percent of the members of each Cornell fraternity were required to attend, and while Miller spoke, the men “scroll[ed], bored, on their phones,” Manne wrote. Later on, Miller told the crowd, “This has been my hardest gig, because they didn’t turn down the house lights. I’m not sure how you professors do it, because it’s so hard looking out at this sea of mildly disgruntled faces.”

As a professor at Cornell, Manne said, she’s had “many, many victims in her office” talking about their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. Unconvinced they would be taken seriously, many didn’t report their experiences to the police, she wrote.

“There’s a prevailing sense that campus culture is rape culture, especially in fraternity houses: It’s a deeply embedded feature of life here that is widely known but rarely protested,” Manne wrote. “At the very least, the university owes Jane Doe and the community more than a dubious insinuation that anyone demanding accountability here is somehow the real problem. ‘A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible’ and ‘will make survivors feel less safe and supported,’ wrote Kyle Kimball, vice president for university relations. I can think of larger and more systemic reasons for such a feeling in this moment.”