Tompkins DA reopens 2024 alleged Cornell fraternity rape case
A first-year college student who says she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity party was told by local police they lacked probable cause for an arrest, leaving the campus Title IX process as her only path to any formal consequence, according to BBC News reporting.
The woman, identified only as Mary to protect her identity, said she woke up after the party with bruises and bite marks over her body. It took her several days to piece together that she had been sexually assaulted while “blacked out,” she told BBC News. The man she accused was eventually expelled by her college — which BBC News did not name — but police declined to bring charges, saying there was a lack of physical evidence.
“Even though it was a positive outcome, it was still so emotionally exhausting and draining, because I had to do all of this in tandem with getting used to being a college student for the first time,” Mary told BBC News. The experience with local police, she added, “left me with a deep sense of disappointment in the system.” “In many ways, I had to be my own advocate, gathering all my evidence,” she said.
The broader challenges Mary’s account illustrates have returned to public attention this month after a former Cornell University student, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and raped by several men at a Cornell fraternity house in 2024. The lawsuit also alleges that Cornell failed to protect her or adequately punish those involved. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten this week reopened the criminal investigation his office had declined to pursue at the time.
Both Cornell and Van Houten have defended their original handling of the 2024 matter. Cornell said it had “conducted an extensive investigation and adjudication over several months and imposed different sanctions based on the findings and circumstances involving each student” and said it had created a new framework for addressing sexual assault on campus. The university has said it followed Title IX, a federal civil rights law that requires universities to investigate sexual assault complaints under defined procedures, and that its investigation resulted in the fraternity being barred from campus and students being suspended or expelled.
Cornell students have criticized the university’s handling. The Cornell Daily Sun, the campus newspaper, published the names of the accused under the headline “Cornell won’t, we will.” Cornell said federal privacy law “prohibits Cornell from disclosing specific information regarding individual students” and that it therefore cannot “make a public statement on any other disciplinary response.”
Mary did not attend Cornell, and her case is not connected to the university, BBC News reported. Her account was included as an illustration of the parallel systems survivors describe encountering across higher education.
How universities and the criminal justice system respond to these assaults is once again under public scrutiny. “These processes are hard to navigate if you aren’t in trauma. If you are in trauma, they’re virtually impossible to navigate,” said Nancy Chi Cantalupo, an associate professor of law at Wayne State University who has represented victims on college campuses.
The two tracks “serve different purposes, operate under different rules and timelines, and lead to different outcomes,” said Zoey Scheinblum-Brewer, a policy coordinator at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. “Unclear guidance about the options available through these parallel processes can create so much confusion and uncertainty that some students ultimately decide not to report,” she said. The confusing web of systems and policies — which varies greatly by college — is one of several reasons the vast majority of sexual assaults on college campuses go unreported, according to research cited by BBC News.
Typically, after a student reports an assault to a campus Title IX office, that office determines whether the alleged behavior could constitute a policy violation. Both parties then attend a hearing with a panel of faculty members or other mediators who consider evidence and testimony before the school reaches a decision. Some colleges have information-sharing agreements with local police; Mary said she was told she had to file a police report separately, a process she described as physically exhausting.
Mary said the process at her college was not clear to her when she decided to report the assault. “For me, it would’ve been nice to know what I was getting into before it all happened. It felt like they were learning the process alongside me,” she said of university officials.
According to Mary’s lawyer, there was surveillance footage from the night showing her alleged assailant carrying her “slumped” over, and Mary had pictures of her bruises and bite marks. Even so, police told Mary they did not have probable cause for an arrest and that the district attorney wanted to leave the matter to university administration. “I was left with this taste that because they knew that the college was ‘handling’ my investigation, that they could wipe their hands clean of it,” she said. The local police department told BBC News it did not have details of her case; the local district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
University investigations are done behind closed doors, said Helene Weiss, a lawyer who has represented several victims of sexual assault on college campuses. Weiss believes part of the reason for the secrecy is to protect institutions’ reputations. “The secrecy of the process, it prevents other students from knowing about it. It prevents witnesses from coming forward,” Weiss said.
Michael Diamondstein, a Pennsylvania attorney who has represented those accused of sexual misconduct on college campuses, said the secrecy helps protect both the victim and the accused. “I think when you compare it to what they would face in a courtroom, it’s much easier for students and much safer for students. Their name isn’t put out there. The news media doesn’t get them,” he said.
The burden of proof differs sharply between the two systems. Prosecuting sexual assault cases is notoriously difficult; a recent systematic review cited by BBC News found that less than 10% of sexual assault cases yielded convictions. In a criminal trial, a prosecutor must convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. Campus tribunals apply a lower standard. Many advocates say there is merit to universities investigating sexual assault complaints separately from the criminal justice system.
Title IX also requires remedies that criminal courts cannot impose — such as ensuring a student is not in the same class as their alleged abuser while an investigation is pending and offering homework extensions, according to Scheinblum-Brewer. This is one of several reasons victims and advocates for survivors say there are benefits to having two separate avenues, through the university and the criminal justice system.
For Mary, after her case was dropped by the police, pursuing her assault claim through Title IX became the only way for her alleged assailant to face repercussions: an expulsion from college. “This was my only avenue to achieve any sort of justice,” she said.