Jane Doe says Cornell president's response left her feeling disbelieved

Cornell disputes her account of a January 2025 meeting

Jane Doe, identified in court documents by the pseudonym used in her lawsuit, wrote a two-page letter to Cornell’s faculty senate dated 14 October. The letter, obtained and published by The New York Times on Tuesday, said President Michael Kotlikoff’s response left Doe feeling “unsupported and disbelieved.” Doe wrote that she was sharing the information because she believed it could be relevant to the faculty’s deliberations on a no-confidence resolution in Cornell’s administration.

Doe’s account concerns a January 2025 meeting between Kotlikoff and the then-president of Tri Delta, Doe’s sorority. She said she was told Kotlikoff’s initial response was along the lines of: “Why did she wait so long to report it?” Doe characterized the comment as a second-hand account and said it was made shortly after her 2024 report to Cornell.

Cornell disputed Doe’s account on Tuesday. A spokesperson said the second-hand account of the January 2025 question was “incorrect, based on a documented first-hand account.” Cornell said the question was directed at bystanders who had not used the university’s anonymous tip line, despite social-media activity about the incident in October 2024. The spokesperson said Kotlikoff was not questioning Doe’s reporting.

Doe wrote that the comments attributed to Kotlikoff diminished her confidence in the administration’s ability to approach her experience with the understanding, sensitivity and fairness she had expected from Cornell, which she described as her “dream school.” She said Tri Delta’s then-president relayed the conversation with concern, while a sorority sister interpreted the question as doubt in the veracity of her story.

Doe wrote that, to her knowledge, only a few people knew about the conversation, and she did not know whether faculty senators were among them. She wrote: “I would not want to withhold something potentially pertinent, only for Senate members to later discover that information relevant to their deliberations had not been made available to them.”

The faculty senate scheduled a meeting for 28 October to debate the no-confidence resolution, followed by electronic voting, according to its website. The letter comes as Cornell’s administration faces backlash and criticism over its handling of the 2024 allegations that became public in Doe’s civil lawsuit.

Doe’s September lawsuit named Cornell, the Chi Phi fraternity, seven of its former brothers and Tri Delta as defendants. She accused seven Chi Phi members of sexually assaulting her at an October 2024 party at the fraternity house on campus. The men named in the lawsuit have denied wrongdoing, and none has been criminally charged.

Doe first reported the case to Cornell University Police Department in November 2024, according to records obtained by The New York Times. After Cornell’s internal investigation, the records showed that two men were expelled, two were suspended and another, who had graduated, was barred from campus. The remaining men received lighter punishments, including an order not to contact Doe and an order to write “reflection papers.”

In an interview with The New York Times published on 13 October, Kotlikoff acknowledged that he knew a student had reported being sexually assaulted in November 2024. He said he did not follow up with Doe in the months afterward. Kotlikoff said he and other school officials did not have the full picture of Doe’s allegations or the investigation until earlier in October, and he called the allegations “deeply disturbing.”