A sexually charged case that shook Cornell University two years ago has now become a national flashpoint, intensifying the debate over sex, consent and criminal liability in college hookup culture.
Seven former Chi Phi fraternity members are accused in a civil lawsuit of drugging and raping a Cornell student during a night of alcohol, drugs and group sex at the fraternity house in October 2024.
The accuser, known as Jane Doe in court documents, claims the men sexually assaulted her after she arrived intoxicated and was pressured to take ketamine and other substances. The men deny wrongdoing. Some say the sexual activity was consensual, while others deny taking part. None of the seven has been criminally charged.
The controversy centers on sharply different accounts of the night, including discrepancies between Doe’s statements in the weeks afterward, information Cornell police provided to prosecutors and the serious allegations detailed in a civil complaint filed nearly two years later.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University, left, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul with Attorney General Letitia James, right. James has opened an active criminal investigation into sexual assault allegations stemming from an October 2024 incident at the fraternity house. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who initially chose not to bring charges, has said Doe’s sworn statement from November 2024 did not claim that she had been drugged without her consent or gang raped. Instead, he said, the statement characterized her drug use and sexual activity as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
What happened that night?
Doe was 20 and enrolled at Cornell when the events described in the case occurred on the night of Oct. 19, 2024.
According to her lawsuit, Doe started the evening drinking vodka at her Tri Delta sorority house before going to a sorority event at a bar in downtown Ithaca. She later visited a second bar, then left by herself at about 11 p.m. and walked to the Chi Phi house to see a friend who belonged to the fraternity.
Doe’s complaint says she had consumed approximately 10 standard drinks over three hours and was visibly intoxicated by the time she reached Chi Phi.
After she entered the house, Doe alleges that the fraternity member gave her another beer and suggested a threesome with a second member. The lawsuit argues that she was already too impaired to consent.
Doe says she was taken upstairs, where two fraternity members pressured her to snort what they identified as ketamine, a drug she had never used before. She also alleges that they gave her marijuana and high-proof alcohol before engaging in sexual activity without her consent.
The complaint says additional fraternity members entered the room as the night continued. At 1:42 a.m., one member allegedly posted “free p—y” in a Snapchat group for active Chi Phi members, according to a screenshot included in the lawsuit. Doe’s lawyers say the message prompted other members to come upstairs.
CBS News reported Friday that it obtained further Snapchat messages from the group, including a photograph of Doe with another man that was circulated among dozens of Chi Phi members that night. Shortly before the image was posted, one participant wrote, “Like you can walk in and whip it out.” Another later asked, “Shop still open?” and received the response, “Yeah.”
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, is facing renewed scrutiny over its handling of sexual assault allegations stemming from an October 2024 incident at the Chi Phi fraternity house. (TW Farlow/Getty Images)
Lawyers for several of the accused men have rejected claims of criminal conduct. One attorney told NBC News that the lawsuit was “intentionally dishonest,” while acknowledging that his client had sent immature and inappropriate Snapchat messages but insisting he committed no crime. Another lawyer said the public account was “incomplete” and conflicted with evidence gathered during Cornell’s investigation, including statements Doe made herself.
Doe alleges that her impairment worsened throughout the encounters, eventually leaving her “completely incapacitated.” The complaint says the final alleged assault ended at about 5:45 a.m., when she lost consciousness.
What did Jane Doe say afterward?
Texts, interviews and university records from the period show that Doe gave varying descriptions of parts of the encounter in the days and weeks afterward, while also conveying that she was distressed by what had occurred.
When Doe returned to her sorority house at about 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 20, she told roommates that she had taken ketamine and had sex with several men, according to Cornell Title IX records obtained by The New York Times. One roommate said Doe did not initially call the experience rape or sexual assault. Another said Doe appeared “in shock” and seemed not to grasp the seriousness of what she was describing.
The next day, one of the men Doe later accused apologized in text messages, saying he felt awful that he and another fraternity member had been too intoxicated to intervene before events became “way out of hand,” according to messages reviewed by the Times.
Doe replied that “none of the sexual stuff was illegal” and said she had enjoyed being with the two men.
Other contemporaneous evidence suggests Doe was already struggling with the encounter. On Oct. 22, she visited Cornell Health seeking treatment for a urinary tract infection and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, telling a doctor she had contracted the infection “in a traumatic way,” according to the university records.
Doe also became increasingly distressed as word of the encounter spread around campus. A roommate told Cornell investigators that Doe initially described it as a “crazy thing that she had done,” but that her understanding shifted over the following days. The roommate said she discussed portions of the encounter with Doe and told her that some of what she described could constitute rape.
An aerial view of Cornell University. The Daily Sun, the student newspaper, came under fire for publishing an image of a bloodied Star of David and a Nazi “SS” symbol scrawled on the back of a Palestinian person in a recent issue. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
About a week after the encounter, Doe discovered an anonymous online post claiming Chi Phi members had been “gang banging” and that a sophomore had been gang raped. Doe later told Cornell investigators that seeing the post marked a turning point in how she viewed the night.
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“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she said, according to the university records obtained by the Times.
Doe nevertheless remained in contact with fraternity members and planned to attend Chi Phi’s Halloween party, according to the records. After initially being told she was welcome, the fraternity’s president disinvited her, prompting Doe to accuse the men of “covering your asses.”
By Nov. 3, however, Doe was explicitly describing most of the encounter as nonconsensual. In a text reviewed by the Times, she wrote that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” adding that she had been given more ketamine than she could remember and had felt uncomfortable around people she did not know. Four days later, she went to an Ithaca emergency room and requested a rape kit.
Doe was interviewed by Cornell University Police on Nov. 14 and 15. A transcript obtained by CBS New York shows that she distinguished the initial sexual encounter, which she said she had been “pretty OK with,” from what she said happened later in the night.
“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” Doe told investigators, according to the transcript. She also described later sexual activity as coercive and said she had been “completely and totally incapacitated.”
During those interviews, the campus police investigator prepared a six-page written statement that Doe reviewed and signed. That document — rather than the complete interview transcript — was what Van Houten says his office received before deciding not to pursue charges.
According to Van Houten’s account of the signed statement, Doe said she agreed to the initial threesome out of attraction and “drunken curiousness,” was “pretty ok” with it and voluntarily took ketamine later in the night.
The district attorney said multiple prosecutors and investigators reviewed the statement, assumed Doe’s account was true and concluded that the facts contained in it did not establish a crime under New York law. Van Houten said her credibility was “never in question.”
When CBS presented the full transcript to Van Houten this week, he said it had never been provided to him. “That wasn’t information that I had,” he said, later adding that its existence “changes the landscape for me.”
How the case resurfaced
For nearly two years after the alleged encounter, no criminal charges were filed against any of the men.
The case burst into the national spotlight on Sept. 16, when Doe filed a sweeping 101-page civil lawsuit in New York Supreme Court laying out in graphic detail her allegations about what happened inside the Chi Phi house.
The lawsuit accuses the seven former fraternity members of sexual assault and rape and seeks compensatory and punitive damages. But it casts a far wider net than the seven men.
Doe also sued Cornell University, Chi Phi and affiliated entities, her own Tri Delta sorority and Moonies Bar & Nightclub, among others, alleging that institutions around her failed to protect her before, during and after the events of that night.
The complaint alleges Doe had already become intoxicated while drinking at the Tri Delta house before a sorority house mother accompanied her to Moonies. There, according to the lawsuit, a bouncer marked both of the then-20-year-old’s hands with an “X” signifying she was under 21, but she was nevertheless served alcohol.
The graphic allegations prompted immediate questions about why no one had been prosecuted in 2024. Van Houten said he first learned of the lawsuit on Sept. 18, two days after it was filed, and that his office was subsequently inundated with calls and emails, including threats, demanding answers.
Van Houten publicly defended his original decision. He also reopened the investigation, met with Doe and her attorneys and announced plans to put the matter before a Tompkins County grand jury so it could consider her testimony and any new evidence raised by the lawsuit.
The controversy intensified after CBS reported that Van Houten had never received the full transcript of Doe’s November 2024 interview with Cornell University Police. Van Houten said that if relevant information had been omitted from the signed statement provided to prosecutors, the circumstances should be investigated by someone outside Cornell.
Cornell has separately agreed to retain outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation into the university’s handling of the allegations, according to Hochul. That review is distinct from the criminal investigation now being led by James’ office.
Cornell, meanwhile, reached its own conclusions through the university’s disciplinary process. University President Michael Kotlikoff said two of the accused students were expelled, two were suspended for at least two semesters, one had graduated before discipline could be imposed and two were found not responsible for sexual misconduct.
Those university findings were reached through Cornell’s disciplinary process, which is separate from the criminal justice system and applies different standards and procedures.
Cornell has rejected allegations that it imposed only minor consequences, saying its Title IX process resulted in expulsions and suspensions. The university said no student was offered the opportunity to write essays as the sole consequence for their involvement and called suggestions that it failed to impose consequential punishment “false.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James attend a press conference regarding an investigation into alleged sexual assault at Cornell University, in New York City, US, October 2, 2026. (REUTERS/Jeenah Moon)
Cornell said in a statement to Fox News that it “fully support[s] the appointment of a special prosecutor” and is committed to “an independent external review of all aspects of how Cornell has handled this case.”
The case has also drawn renewed attention to Cornell’s campus climate after more than 35% of female undergraduates responding to a 2025 university survey reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact involving force, threats or incapacitation, up from 23% in 2023, although Cornell said 926 of 6,000 students invited to take the survey responded, a participation rate of about 15%.
Gov. Kathy Hochul intervened Thursday, signing an executive order appointing the Office of the Attorney General as special prosecutor in the case.
James said her office would lead an investigation guided by “the facts and the law.”
