A woman who says she was gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity told campus investigators last year that she “felt like bait” while her alleged attackers surrounded her “like lions,” according to records from the school’s disciplinary proceedings.
The records, reviewed Friday by The Associated Press, contain excerpts from interviews with the woman and the men she accused. They also provide new details about how Cornell handled the allegations.
Although much of the material is redacted, the documents present a more complete — and at times contradictory — timeline of the night. They also show how the accused men responded, with some disputing the woman’s account and denying any involvement in an assault.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe in court filings, sued Cornell and seven former students last month. She alleges that she was given ketamine and sexually assaulted multiple times at a fraternity house in October 2024.
She reported the encounter to campus police three weeks later and provided a detailed account. After reviewing a summary of her interview, however, the local district attorney declined to bring criminal charges or seek further investigation.
The university’s Title IX investigation was the only proceeding that continued, focusing on whether the students should face disciplinary action.
Lawsuit filed by accused student sheds light on Cornell investigation
This week, an attorney for one of the accused men filed records from the university’s investigation in a lawsuit seeking to overturn Cornell’s punishment and have it removed from his academic record. The filings include a 99-page report detailing a campus hearing panel’s disciplinary findings, along with a chronology prepared by the university’s lawyers.
The documents represent only a small portion of the thousands of pages collected during the investigation. Even so, they demonstrate its scope: Investigators conducted 50 interviews with 32 witnesses and held 12 days of hearings.
Late Thursday, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to oversee a renewed criminal investigation, saying she no longer had confidence in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.
The Title IX records filed in court cover only part of the investigation. They show that the woman and several of the men gave investigators broadly similar accounts of drug use and sexual activity at the Chi Phi fraternity house, but sharply different accounts of how much of that activity was consensual.
Snapchat messages brought more men to the room
According to the disciplinary panel’s findings, the woman had been invited to the fraternity house by a member for whom she had long felt strong romantic and sexual attraction. The panel determined that she initially consented to sex with that man and one of his friends. In her lawsuit, however, she alleged that she was pressured to take ketamine, use marijuana and drink alcohol, leaving her too intoxicated to consent.
More men later entered the room, some responding to a 1:42 a.m. message sent by one of the fraternity members to a Snapchat group. The message used a vulgar expression to suggest that a woman’s body was available. Later, another participant asked whether the “shop” remained open.
The woman told investigators that her intoxication left her partly defenseless. She recalled smoking marijuana and said she knew she had taken ketamine, which she had never used before, but could not independently remember taking it. She said the drug placed her in a state of “vague consciousness.”
“You look like an operating human being,” she told school investigators during a May 2025 hearing. “You don’t look dead or asleep necessarily. So, lights are on, but nobody’s home. Your brain is not functioning at its proper level.”
She also told investigators that some of the men inhaled drugs from her unclothed body.
“I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me. It just was a totally debilitating place to be in,” she said.
Accused student says he entered room only to check on woman’s well-being
One of the men accused of snorting drugs from the woman’s body, but not of taking part in other alleged aspects of the assault, denied her account.
He told investigators he was in the room for no more than five minutes, and didn’t go there for sex.
“That was not our intentions at all. We were just checking out to see if everything” was OK, he said.
He insisted that he did not see the woman naked at any time — she was under bed coverings, he said — and did not partake in drug use. He said he sat on a couch and chatted for a few minutes, then left after the woman and another man there both indicated they were all right.
A Cornell disciplinary panel later cleared him of sexual assault or exploitation allegations, but found him responsible for attempted sexual exploitation because it didn’t believe his claim to have gone to the room for altruistic reasons.
The fraternity member, who is challenging Cornell’s disciplinary process in court, also posted in the Snapchat conversation, saying what was happening in the room was not a joke, adding: “Firsthand pov not a bit.” The student later told investigators he did not remember sending the message, according to Cornell’s account.
Woman’s lawsuit seeks tougher penalties
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe accused two of the other men who entered the room of performing sex acts on her without her consent, while she was partially incapacitated. She accused another man of kissing her without her consent. According to the Title IX documents, Jane Doe told investigators two other men stood at the foot of the bed acting “more like voyeurs than anything.”
The lawsuit seeks to hold all seven men liable for rape. She is asking for unspecified damages.
Cornell hasn’t detailed the results of its investigation, but said it resulted in some students being expelled.
The man who filed the lawsuit challenging his punishment was allowed to stay at Cornell, but he was ordered to stay away from the woman, take a class on sexual harassment and bystander intervention, and write a paper reflecting on the circumstances for which he was found responsible and include a proposal to train other students on preventing sexual harassment.
