Cornell Protesters Rally for Jane Doe, Demand President Resign

Cornell University faculty are considering a vote of no confidence in the administration as student demonstrations spread across campus over allegations of sexual assault on Tuesday.

The resolution has the backing of 40 of the Faculty Senate’s 75 voting members, according to its sponsor, Professor Paul Ortiz.

“As you may suspect, we were approached in our capacity as faculty senators by numerous Cornell colleagues demanding action,” Ortiz wrote. “Many of these faculty—including myself—were approached by students at Cornell who are upset, fearful for their personal safety, and wanting our university to address the perennial problem of sexual assault on the campus.”

Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff also faced questions from students during a campus assembly Monday, as demonstrations disrupted the university.

“We’re not hiding anything at Cornell,” Kotlikoff told students, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. “You will hear proposals from us going forward around what we’re going to do to try and improve this culture and address this problem.”

Kotlikoff has rejected calls from students for him to resign.

A lawsuit accuses seven former Chi Phi fraternity members of drugging and raping a Cornell student during an October 2024 gathering at the fraternity house involving alcohol, drugs and group sex.

The woman, identified as Jane Doe in court documents, says she was sexually assaulted after arriving intoxicated and being pressured to take ketamine and other substances. The men have denied wrongdoing. Some say the sexual activity was consensual, while others deny taking part. No criminal charges have been filed against any of the seven men.

The allegations have triggered a political and legal firestorm. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Friday that her office was conducting an “active criminal investigation” after Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the Office of the Attorney General as special prosecutor. Separately, Cornell agreed to hire outside counsel to independently review how the university handled the allegations.

The dispute centers on sharply different accounts of the October 2024 incident, including discrepancies between Doe’s statements in the weeks afterward, information prosecutors say they received from Cornell police and the detailed allegations in the lawsuit filed nearly two years later.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who initially decided not to pursue charges, has said Doe’s sworn statement from November 2024 did not allege that she had been drugged against her will or gang-raped. Instead, he said, the statement characterized her participation in drug use and sexual activity as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”