Cornell responds to Jane Doe’s letter saying she felt disbelieved, unsupported by school president

The former Cornell student known as Jane Doe has sent a letter to the school saying she “felt unsupported and disbelieved” by the university’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, after she accused multiple men of sexually assaulting her at a fraternity house in 2024. 

In a statement Tuesday, Cornell disputed her account of Kotlikoff’s comments. 

The letter, obtained by CBS News, was sent earlier this month to Cornell’s Faculty Senate as it considers a no-confidence vote in Kotlikoff’s administration. In the letter, Jane Doe describes what she calls “a second-hand account” of a conversation between Kotlikoff and the then-president of Cornell’s Tri Delta sorority chapter.

“After the conversation she shared with me, with concern, that President Kotlikoff’s initial response was along the lines of, ‘Why did she wait so long to report it?'” wrote Jane Doe in the letter. “She interpreted his question as an expression of doubt in the veracity of my story.” 

Jane Doe reported the alleged assault to campus police on Nov. 8, 2024, about three weeks after she said it took place at the Chi Phi fraternity house.

The university said in its statement Tuesday that her description of Kotlikoff’s comment in the letter is “incorrect, based on a documented first-hand account.”

“The question ‘why did it take so long for the assault to be reported’ was directed at bystanders who did not use Cornell’s anonymous tip line, despite ongoing social media activity about the incident in October 2024,” Cornell said. “He was not questioning Jane Doe’s reporting.” 

In her one-page letter, Jane Doe wrote that hearing of the comment “diminished my confidence in the administration’s ability to approach my experience with the understanding, sensitivity, and fairness I had hoped for and expected from what had been my dream school.”

She added, “I am sharing this account now because, to my knowledge, only a few individuals are aware of the conversation; I do not know if you or other members of the Faculty Senate are among them.”

How Cornell and its leadership handled Jane Doe’s original report of the alleged assaults is one of the issues raised in the civil lawsuit she filed last month against the university, the Chi Phi fraternity and seven of its then-members, and others including her sorority at the time, Delta Delta Delta.

CBS News has reached out to the seven former fraternity members. All have denied wrongdoing. None of them has been charged with a crime.

In a court filing Tuesday, a former president of the Chi Phi fraternity was dropped from her lawsuit. His attorney, Eric Bernstein, told CBS News in a statement that his client wasn’t serving as president of the fraternity at the time of the alleged assault.

“We’re not validating or commenting on the charges or the allegations themselves but they had the wrong guy here. We’re happy with the outcome,” Bernstein said in the statement.