New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office is reviewing Cornell University’s initial response to allegations by a former student that she was drugged and gang raped for hours inside a fraternity house in the fall of 2024.
A lawsuit filed by the former student in New York State Supreme Court earlier this month detailed the events the woman, identified as Jane Doe, alleged took place inside Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house on the evening of Oct. 19, 2024. The filing has stirred nationwide outrage and fresh scrutiny over how the university and local prosecutors initially handled Jane Doe’s allegations, which were first reported to campus authorities on Nov. 8, 2024.
Matthew Van Houten, the district attorney for Tompkins County, where Cornell is located, said in a statement Monday that his office is reopening its investigation and considering whether to bring criminal charges related to the alleged incident. A spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case, said the office is reviewing Cornell’s initial response to the case but has not launched a formal investigation into the university at this time.
Jane Doe is suing more than a dozen defendants, including the seven current and former Cornell students who she alleges sexually assaulted her while she was unable to consent; the Chi Phi fraternity and former president of Cornell’s chapter; her former sorority; and a local bar. The lawsuit is seeking damages from the defendants over allegations of negligence, sexual assault and battery, severe emotional and psychological distress and violations of New York’s Human Rights Law.
None of the seven Chi Phi fraternity members have been criminally charged in the case.
According to the complaint, then 20-year-old Jane Doe was an active member of the Tri Delta sorority’s Alpha Beta Chapter when the alleged assault took place. She began the night by drinking vodka at the campus Tri Delta sorority house before taking an Uber to a sorority event hosted at Moonies Bar & Nightclub, a bar in downtown Ithaca named as a defendant in the lawsuit. It was there, the lawsuit says, that Jane Doe was served more alcohol despite being designated as underage by the bouncer and appearing clearly intoxicated.
Moonies Bar & Nightclub said the establishment hosted a private Tri Delta event from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m that evening, but it denied serving Jane Doe any alcohol because she was underage.
After consuming about 10 alcoholic drinks, Jane Doe went alone to the Chi Phi fraternity house to visit a friend, a defendant in the lawsuit who was one of the fraternity members at the time, the lawsuit says. The friend propositioned Jane Doe with having a threesome sexual encounter with him and another one of his fraternity brothers, another defendant, according to the lawsuit.
Jane Doe was “incapable of consenting” due to her incapacitated state, prompting the friend to take her to a private room in the house, where she was pressured to snort the drug ketamine, which she had never done before, and offered marijuana and high-proof rum, the lawsuit says. According to Pfizer, which manufactures ketamine, the drug is known “to cause double vision, motor incoordination, delirium, hallucinations, irrational behavior,” among other side effects.
The friend and his fraternity brother then began engaging in sexual acts with Jane Doe without her consent, the lawsuit says.
A third fraternity member later joined in without Jane Doe’s consent, the lawsuit alleges. At around 1:42 a.m. that night, one of the defendants allegedly sent a message to a Snapchat group for active Cornell Chi Phi fraternity members, saying there was “free p—-” upstairs, referring to Jane Doe. Four more fraternity members, all defendants in the lawsuit, joined in the alleged assault at differing times throughout the night, Jane Doe alleged.
The seven defendants named in the complaint poured ketamine on Jane Doe’s body and snorted it before taking her to another, smaller room, believed to be the fraternity president’s office, according to the lawsuit.
It was there that she was commanded to snort more ketamine until she was completely incapacitated, the complaint says. The encounter continued until about 5:45 a.m., per the complaint, when it ended after a total of seven hours.
With the encouragement of her friends, Jane Doe said, she reported the alleged gang rape to Cornell University Police about three weeks later. The Chi Phi fraternity chapter was placed on a temporary suspension for alleged violations of the university student code of conduct, and several members accused of participating in the assault were suspended. Some were offered the opportunity to “mitigate their conduct” by submitting essays to Cornell, according to the lawsuit.
In a statement Monday, Cornell denied the essays, saying “none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement. In addition, the involved fraternity chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.”
Cornell launched a Title IX investigation into Jane Doe’s complaint in January 2025, which included at least 12 hearings and the establishment of a sexual assault task force. In a statement, Cornell said those proceedings resulted in a range of sanctions against the alleged attackers, which included expulsions and suspensions.
Cornell has not released their names, citing federal privacy laws. But a scathing editorial piece published Sept. 21 by The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper that first broke the news of Jane Doe’s lawsuit, names all seven men. The piece is titled “Cornell Won’t, We Will.”
Some of those men have issued statements through their attorneys denying criminal wrongdoing.
Nana Jiraphanphong, a third-year Cornell student who spoke with MS NOW on Wednesday, described a “tense” and “hostile” campus environment as students grapple with news of the lawsuit.
She said there’s “distrust between … whether it’s just like student to student or like student and administration. She added that “not everyone is like that, but you never know, you know. … you gotta, like, put your guard up for now.” Jiraphanphong said that she no longer attends fraternity parties because of “everything that’s been going on.”
Trey Robb, interim executive director of Chi Phi’s national organization, said in a statement to CBS News on Wednesday that the Cornell chapter voted unanimously to remove the accused members from its rolls three days after Jane Doe filed her initial police report.
“The chapter also recommended that our national fraternity permanently expel them, and our Grand Council did so at a subsequent meeting,” Robb said. “These actions went beyond anything the law or Cornell University required of us.”
Van Houten defended his office’s decision not to seek criminal charges at the time in his statement Monday, saying, “Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November of 2024 did not allege that she was drugged against her will or gang raped.”
“On the contrary, Jane Doe’s statement 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.”
The attorney general added that Jane Doe’s lawsuit gave new details and information not previously known and that he has reached out to Doe’s attorney to ask about the discrepancy between the original statement and the lawsuit’s allegations.
On Tuesday, CBS News reported details from what it said was a transcript of the alleged victim’s interview with Cornell University Police. A campus police investigator led the questioning, while a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate and Jane Doe’s adviser were also in the room during the first day of the interview. According to the transcript, CBS said, Jane Doe told investigators, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.” However, that did not make it into the signed statement campus police handed over to Van Houten’s office. MS NOW has not seen the transcript.
Doe’s lawsuit has captivated the country and ignited discourse about the problem of sexual assault on college campuses, along with demands for accountability and answers from Cornell and prosecutors about their initial handling of the incident.
“The allegations in the Cornell University sexual assault case are nothing short of horrifying,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote in a post on X Tuesday. “For any student to come forward after an experience like this takes extraordinary courage. No student should ever be left wondering whether the institutions meant to protect them will listen and act.”
Hochul said she supports Van Houten’s decision to reopen the criminal investigation, but she added there are “serious questions about Cornell’s campus culture and its systems for prevention, reporting, and response.” She called for an outside counsel to conduct an independent review of the university’s response.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed Hochul’s demand for a “thorough investigation that leaves no stone unturned” in a statement Wednesday.
“There must now be a truly independent and exhaustive investigation — not only into what happened, but into how this case was handled from the moment she came forward,” he said.
The university on Tuesday sent an email to students about the allegations, offering an FAQ to answer questions about the case.
“We take those questions seriously and strive to be as transparent as we can within the bounds of federal law,” the email said.
“I think consequences are finally happening, and that’s a good thing,” Sydney, a third-year Cornell student who declined to provide her last name, told MS NOW. “It’s unfortunate [it] had to take so long, but better late than never. I mean, I don’t think it’s that big of a secret that like sexual assault happens at Cornell, especially because there’s a lot of fraternities, and that’s just kind of the party culture here.”
Fallon Gallagher and Casey Gannon contributed to this report.
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