Cornell VP says punishments for involved students were ‘consequential’
A civil lawsuit filed earlier this month in New York Supreme Court includes a screenshot of Snapchat messages in which Chi Phi fraternity brothers allegedly encouraged each other to join the gang rape of a Cornell University student in 2024, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges the victim was forcibly drugged with ketamine at the Chi Phi fraternity house and gang-raped by seven fraternity members. The defendants include Cornell University, university faculty, the Chi Phi Fraternity, and the seven alleged perpetrators. The complaint alleges the school failed to protect the accuser.
The accuser, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, went to Cornell University Police the morning after the alleged rape, as details of what happened to her began to circulate around the school, according to the lawsuit. The complaint does not specify what she told campus police at that time.
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said Monday his office will present the case against the seven fraternity members to a grand jury for potential criminal charges. Van Houten defended his November 2024 decision not to pursue charges, when the accuser first spoke to Cornell University police and described her drug use and sexual conduct as “voluntary, conscious and consensual.” That account led prosecutors and criminal investigators to conclude no crime had occurred, he said.
“The allegations in the civil suit are substantially different from the six-page statement the accuser gave the Cornell University Police Department two years ago,” Van Houten said Monday. He added: “I recognize the reality that it can take years of therapy and healing for victims of sexual assaults to fully process and understand what happened to them.”
An attorney for Jane Doe said the university’s multiday hearings in May 2025 provided additional information about the alleged gang rape that the accuser was not aware of when she first spoke to police.
Cornell University expelled and suspended several students and closed the Chi Phi chapter following a monthslong investigation and multiday hearings in May 2025, at which both Jane Doe and the accused students presented evidence and testified.
“Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false,” Cornell’s Vice President for University Relations Kyle Kimball said. Cornell said it supports Van Houten’s decision to reopen the criminal case.
The national Chi Phi Fraternity, which oversees the Cornell chapter, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
The Cornell case comes amid other recent crime and misconduct allegations within college Greek life. Police in Pennsylvania have charged several fraternity members with running a cocaine ring at Penn State. In Wisconsin, authorities are investigating allegations of hazing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where 30 partially clothed fraternity pledges were found last week in a basement covered in food, condiments, and other fluids.