Cornell President Calls Gang Rape Claims ‘Deeply Disturbing’
Cornell University President Michael I. Kotlikoff has called the alleged 2024 gang rape of a student at a campus fraternity house “deeply disturbing,” acknowledging that the university “must do better” as it faces mounting scrutiny over how it handled the case. The eight-minute video statement, released Saturday, came after a former student filed a civil lawsuit last month and New York’s governor removed the local prosecutor from the criminal investigation.
“What happened to Jane Doe in 2024 is deeply disturbing and will weigh heavily on our community for years to come. My heart aches when I think of what she experienced,” Kotlikoff said, according to NPR. “It raises heartbreaking and troubling issues about sexual assault, dehumanization and aspects of party culture, alcohol and drug use. It also raises questions around the investigations conducted after the allegations were reported.”
What Is Alleged
A former Cornell student, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit on Sept. 14, 2026, against Cornell, the Chi Phi fraternity, seven former fraternity members and other defendants. She alleges that she was drugged — allegedly pressured to take ketamine — and raped by multiple men at the Chi Phi house in October 2024, when she was 20 years old, CBS News reported. The alleged assault is said to have unfolded over nearly seven hours, from roughly 1:42 a.m. to 5:45 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2024.
According to the lawsuit, Doe consented initially to sexual contact with two men she knew while intoxicated but alleges that, as the night went on, more men entered the room and she was drugged and sexually assaulted and could not give consent. A Snapchat group message sent at 1:42 a.m., the suit claims, suggested in crude language that a woman upstairs was available for sex.
Doe first reported her claims to Cornell University Police, university Title IX investigators and the campus health clinic a few weeks after the alleged incident, with her police interview beginning Nov. 14, 2024. In that interview transcript, obtained by CBS News New York, she said she had gaps in her memory and described the initial encounter as something she was “pretty OK with.” Of what followed, she said: “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”
Competing Accounts of the Investigation
The case has centered on a dispute over what investigators and prosecutors knew — and when.
Cornell conducted an internal Title IX investigation, and Kotlikoff confirmed at a Sept. 29 meeting with student government that two of the accused were expelled, two were suspended for at least two semesters, one had already graduated before punishment could be imposed, and two were found not responsible for sexual misconduct. The fraternity chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.
The lawsuit claims defendants were allowed to “mitigate their conduct” by writing essays. Cornell has denied that essays were the sole consequence for anyone and said that “any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false.”
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to file criminal charges in 2024, saying Doe’s sworn statement did not allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped, and characterizing her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.” Van Houten has said he never received the full transcripts of Doe’s interview with Cornell Police — the transcript in which she said she was certain she had been raped. Cornell has said its police department shared Doe’s sworn statement and the Snapchat screenshot with the district attorney’s office, which it described as established protocol.
Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, has questioned how a thorough investigation could have occurred. “It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint,” he told CBS News, adding: “Not one of these guys was arrested. Not one.”
Attorneys for the accused men have denied wrongdoing. Jeremy Saland, representing defendant Scott Kretzschmar, acknowledged the Snapchat messages were “ugly” but said “that doesn’t make my client a rapist.” He said Kretzschmar took a hair follicle test showing no ketamine in his system. Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney for defendant Gillio Lopes, said his client “unequivocally denies the allegations” and that “accusations are not proof.”
A State-Level Takeover
As public pressure mounted, the case was pulled from local hands. Van Houten reopened the criminal investigation on Sept. 28, 2026. Days later, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order naming New York State Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor, removing Van Houten from the case.
Hochul was unsparing in her criticism. “This young woman had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable. And then at every turn, she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her,” she said, according to DW. “In what world does the district attorney not even interview her, or anyone else involved, or even request the full transcript? I want answers. And I want accountability.”
James, speaking at an Oct. 2 news conference, said the matter is now an active criminal investigation. “Every New Yorker deserves to know that when they report a crime, it will be investigated fully and fairly, that they will be seen and heard. That is the promise of our justice system,” she said. “A comprehensive investigation of this nature takes time, but my office is committed to seeing it through.”
Cornell said it supports the appointment and has agreed to bring in outside counsel for an independent review of “all aspects of Cornell’s handling” of the case. Kotlikoff said the Board of Trustees will announce details next week.
Broader Reckoning
The case has renewed scrutiny of a New York legal provision — sometimes called the “voluntary intoxication loophole” — that makes it difficult to prosecute sexual assaults involving victims who voluntarily consumed alcohol or drugs, even if they later became too intoxicated to consent, Al Jazeera reported. Van Houten cited that provision in defending his original decision.
Kotlikoff said Cornell would “lend our full support to legislative efforts to change New York’s sexual assault laws” and would take a “serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities in campus life.” The university created a Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault in 2025, which released its final recommendations in March 2026, and Kotlikoff called on it to “find new ways to do more.”
The case has also reverberated beyond Cornell. Survivors have shared their own experiences using the hashtag #IamJaneDoe, and the editorial board of The Daily Pennsylvanian published a piece headlined “Penn has a Cornell problem, too,” NPR reported. At a student assembly hearing on Oct. 1, several speakers called for Kotlikoff’s resignation, and the assembly passed three resolutions addressing the allegations.
What’s Next
Kotlikoff said the university will not wait for the independent review to act, pledging immediate steps on transparency, prevention and education, and substance-use resources. “There are real legal and privacy limits on what we can say, but we will make a greater effort to explain what we can, to provide context about the actions Cornell has taken and to be more transparent,” he said. “We owe it to Jane Doe and to survivors of assault to get this right.”
James’s investigation is expected to proceed through interviews and evidence gathering, with the possibility of charges being presented to a grand jury. Key questions remain unresolved: what the district attorney’s office received in 2024, whether the case can meet New York’s legal threshold, and how far Cornell’s promised reforms will go.