Cornell University has suspended all fraternity parties following serious gang-rape allegations made by a former student.
The ban on parties at fraternity houses affiliated with the Ivy League university will remain in effect through the end of the academic year, Cornell said Tuesday.
The decision follows a civil lawsuit filed by a former student identified as Jane Doe, who alleges that seven Chi Phi members raped her and pressured her to take drugs during a Hawaiian-themed party in 2024.
Doe claims the alleged sexual assault continued for seven hours, beginning at about 11 p.m. and lasting until approximately 5:45 a.m. the following morning.
Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff said: “We must meet this moment by acknowledging where we have fallen short and taking meaningful action.
“Cornell must be a place where safety is not an open question.”
In addition to suspending fraternity parties, Cornell said it will add experienced sexual-assault investigators to its police department. The move comes as scrutiny grows over whether the university’s handling of the allegations went far enough.
After the alleged gang rape at the Chi Phi house in 2024, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten declined to bring charges against any of the seven men.
Cornell’s Title IX office later conducted an extensive investigation in 2025, resulting in a combination of expulsions and suspensions for some of the men.
Cornell said Tuesday that its ban on parties at affiliated fraternity houses will continue until the end of the academic year
Doe says the evening began with a threesome involving Matthew Ingalls, left, and Jonathan Newell, right
She alleges the evening changed after Newell posted in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was “free p***y” upstairs
Doe filed the civil lawsuit in September, detailing her allegations from the night and prompting shock across the Cornell community and beyond.
Van Houten reopened the criminal investigation after the lawsuit became public. The case has since been taken over by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The men named in the lawsuit are Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar.
None of the seven has been criminally charged, and all deny wrongdoing.
In a written statement to Cornell police, Doe said she went to the fraternity house after taking several shots of alcohol with her sorority sisters and ordering a mixed drink at a bar in downtown Ithaca, New York.
Bar staff had marked her hand to indicate that she was under 21, but Doe said she was nevertheless able to purchase a mixed drink containing roughly two shots of alcohol. The bar has denied wrongdoing.
Newell was identified as a sober “safety monitor” that night, as was Doe, although Doe said her monitoring responsibilities were ultimately handed to another member.
Doe told police that she briefly stopped at another bar with a friend before arriving at the Chi Phi house after 11 p.m. She said she was “about a five out of 10 level of intoxication” at the time.
The accuser submitted a six-page written statement to campus police. Students are pictured walking past Cornell Police headquarters
The fraternity chapter has since been banned from campus following the school’s investigation
Protests swept the country after Jane Doe’s allegations went public. Demonstrators are pictured at a Stop Sexual Violence protest at the Washington Monument last Thursday
On Friday, the Cornell Concert Commission, a student-run organization, announced that it has canceled its annual homecoming concert amid the controversy
It was at the frat house that she said she started dancing with Matthew Ingalls, one of the defendants she now accuses of rape, sometime after midnight, at which point she said he proposed they have a threesome.
Doe said she accepted because she was attracted to him.
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At that point, Doe alleged that Ingalls led her to a room, where defendant Jonathan Newell was sitting. Together, she said, they took ketamine, smoked marijuana and drank liquor before engaging in a threesome.
But the interaction then spiraled as more fraternity members, the other five listed in her civil complaint, entered the room.
By 1.42am, Newell allegedly posted in a fraternity Snapchat group that there was ‘free p***y’ upstairs.
In the aftermath, Doe said she recalled two other men entering the room, grabbing and kissing her, with one of the men then also engaging in another threesome with Doe and another man.
She even eventually confided in Ingalls, ‘I don’t know who any of these people are,’ but claimed he simply laughed off her concerns and asked if she wanted to do more ketamine.
She explained in her written statement to police how she felt ‘super isolated’ and like she ‘didn’t matter as a person to these men.’
‘I had become extremely uncomfortable with how this night was turning out and so my thought was, “If I do ketamine again, maybe I will pass out,”‘ Doe confided to police in her written statement.
‘My thought was that if I passed out and these men had sex with me, then they could be charged with rape,’ she recounted in her statement.
Meanwhile, at around 2.30am, more members of the fraternity’s group chat started to question what was occurring in the room – to which Ingalls reportedly replied: ‘Boys, come whip it out.’
Back inside the bedroom, Doe said men started snorting drugs off of her body while she was ‘feeling extremely tired’ and covering her face with her hands.
Later, she said, one man who lived in the bedroom with another man entered and said ‘something like “OK we’re shutting down whatever the f**k this is”‘ after which ‘the group of men all began to scatter.’
Still, she said, two of the men ushered Doe upstairs to what she said she thought was the fraternity president’s office, where the three indulged in ketamine.
Doe said she then felt ‘extremely high’ as the two men ‘were asking me to have sex so many times that I finally gave in.’
‘To me, that felt like coercion,’ she told police. ‘Also, I felt like due to my intoxication, they should have known how intoxicated I was based on how I was slurring my words.’
The sexual encounter was said to have lasted until roughly 5.45am, when Doe went to sleep in one of the rooms at the fraternity house.
When Doe eventually returned to her sorority house, her sisters asked what had happened to her at the party – to which Doe said she uttered a one word response – ‘ketamine.’
Later that day, Doe said in her statement, she discovered that what had happened to her the night before had been broadcasted as public knowledge after members of Chi Phi bragged about having an ‘eightsome’ with her.
‘It was now obvious that everyone knew it was me that this had happened to,’ Doe recounted in her written statement.
In the aftermath, she said she went to Cornell Health to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
At that appointment, she told her doctor she contracted a UTI in a ‘traumatic fashion.’
Yet Doe apparently downplayed the interaction in text messages to Newell and Ingalls in the days that followed.
‘At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal, and honestly i really liked being w u and matt,’ she wrote in one text message to Newell.
She penned in an additional message, ‘I don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf.’
In a separate message to Ingalls, she suggested that people were expressing opinions about the incident because they were jealous.
‘But also like everyone needs to grow up cause sexuality and sex and s**t is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common,’ she wrote, before telling Ingalls: ‘I luv u king.’
This is a breaking news story.
