A sexually charged case that unsettled Cornell University two years ago has moved onto the national stage, intensifying a debate over sex, consent and criminal liability in college hookup culture.
Seven former members of the Chi Phi fraternity are accused in a lawsuit of drugging and raping a Cornell student during a night of drinking, drug use and group sex at the fraternity house in October 2024.
The accuser, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, alleges that the men sexually assaulted her after she arrived intoxicated and was pressured to take ketamine and other substances. The men deny wrongdoing. Some contend that the sexual activity was consensual, while others say they were not involved. No criminal charges have been filed against the seven men.
The allegations have since triggered a political and legal firestorm. New York Attorney General Letitia James said Friday that her office is conducting an “active criminal investigation” after Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed the attorney general’s office as special prosecutor. Cornell has also agreed to hire outside counsel for an independent review of how the university handled the allegations.
The dispute centers on sharply different accounts of the night, including discrepancies between Doe’s descriptions in the weeks afterward, information prosecutors say they received from Cornell police and the serious claims outlined in a lawsuit filed nearly two years later.
The Chi Phi fraternity house at Cornell University, left, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul with Attorney General Letitia James, right. James has opened an active criminal investigation into sexual assault allegations stemming from an October 2024 incident at the fraternity house. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, who initially chose not to bring charges, has said Doe’s sworn statement from November 2024 did not claim she was drugged against her will or gang raped. Instead, he said, the statement characterized her drug use and sexual activity as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”
What happened that night?
Doe was 20 and an undergraduate at Cornell when the events described in the case occurred on the night of Oct. 19, 2024.
According to her lawsuit, Doe began the evening drinking vodka at the Tri Delta sorority house before attending a sorority gathering at a downtown Ithaca bar. She later visited a second bar, then left by herself around 11 p.m. and walked to the Chi Phi house to see a friend who belonged to the fraternity.
Doe’s complaint says she had consumed about 10 standard drinks in three hours and was visibly intoxicated when she arrived at Chi Phi.
After she entered the house, Doe alleges, a fraternity member gave her another beer and suggested a threesome with a second fraternity brother. The lawsuit argues that she was already too impaired to consent.
Doe says two fraternity members took her upstairs and pressured her to snort what they identified as ketamine, a drug she had never used before. She also alleges that they gave her marijuana and high-proof alcohol before engaging in sexual acts without her consent.
The lawsuit says additional fraternity members came into the room as the night continued. At 1:42 a.m., one member allegedly posted “free p—-” in a Snapchat group for active Chi Phi members, a message the complaint says invited others upstairs.
CBS News reported Friday that it obtained additional messages from the fraternity’s Snapchat group. They included a photograph of Doe with another man that was shared with dozens of Chi Phi members that night. Shortly before the image appeared, one participant wrote, “Like you can walk in and whip it out.” Another later asked, “Shop still open?” and received the response, “Yeah.”
Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., is facing renewed scrutiny over its handling of sexual assault allegations stemming from an October 2024 incident at the Chi Phi fraternity house. (TW Farlow/Getty Images)
Lawyers for several of the accused men have rejected claims of criminal conduct. An attorney for one man told NBC News that the lawsuit was “intentionally dishonest,” acknowledging that his client sent immature and inappropriate Snapchat messages but insisting he committed no crime. Another attorney said the public account was “incomplete” and conflicted with evidence from Cornell’s investigation, including Doe’s own statements.
Doe alleges that her impairment worsened as the encounters continued and that she ultimately became “completely incapacitated.” The complaint says the final alleged assault ended around 5:45 a.m., when she lost consciousness.
What did Jane Doe say afterward?
Texts, interviews and university records made at the time indicate that Doe described different parts of the encounter in varying ways during the following days and weeks, while also expressing distress over what had occurred.
When she returned to the sorority house at about 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 20, Doe told roommates that she had taken ketamine and had sex with several men, according to Cornell Title IX records obtained by The New York Times. One roommate said Doe did not initially call the experience rape or sexual assault. Another said Doe appeared to be “in shock” and seemed not to grasp the seriousness of what she was describing.
The next day, one of the men Doe later accused apologized in text messages, saying he felt terrible that he and another fraternity member had been too intoxicated to stop events before they went “way out of hand,” according to messages reviewed by the Times.
Doe responded that “none of the sexual stuff was illegal” and said she had enjoyed being with the two men.
Other contemporaneous evidence suggests Doe was already struggling with the encounter. On Oct. 22, she visited Cornell Health seeking treatment for a urinary tract infection and testing for sexually transmitted diseases, telling a doctor she had contracted the infection “in a traumatic way,” according to university records.
Doe also became increasingly distressed as word of the encounter spread around campus. A roommate told Cornell investigators that Doe initially described it as a “crazy thing that she had done,” but that her understanding shifted over the following days. The roommate said she discussed portions of the encounter with Doe and told her that some of what she described could constitute rape.
Cornell University (Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
About a week after the encounter, Doe discovered an anonymous online post claiming Chi Phi members had been “gang banging” and that a sophomore had been gang raped. Doe later told Cornell investigators that seeing the post marked a turning point in how she viewed the night.
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“That’s the first time I had ever heard the narrative change that I wasn’t a whore and that I was assaulted,” she said, according to the university records obtained by the Times.
Doe nevertheless remained in contact with fraternity members and planned to attend Chi Phi’s Halloween party, according to the records. After initially being told she was welcome, the fraternity’s president uninvited her, prompting Doe to accuse the men of “covering your asses.”
By Nov. 3, however, Doe was explicitly describing most of the encounter as nonconsensual. In a text reviewed by the Times, she wrote that “90% of what happened that night was not consensual,” adding that she had been given more ketamine than she could remember and had felt uncomfortable around people she did not know. Four days later, she went to an Ithaca emergency room and requested a rape kit.
Doe was interviewed by Cornell University Police on Nov. 14 and Nov. 15. A transcript obtained by CBS New York shows that she distinguished the initial sexual encounter, which she said she had been “pretty OK with,” from what she said happened later in the night.
“I can say with 100% confidence I was raped,” Doe told investigators, according to the transcript. She also described later sexual activity as coercive and said she had been “completely and totally incapacitated.”
During those interviews, the campus police investigator prepared a six-page written statement that Doe reviewed and signed. That document — rather than the complete interview transcript — was what Van Houten says his office received before deciding not to pursue charges.
According to Van Houten’s account of the signed statement, Doe said she agreed to the initial threesome out of attraction and “drunken curiousness,” was “pretty ok” with it and voluntarily took ketamine later in the night.
The district attorney said multiple prosecutors and investigators reviewed the statement, assumed Doe’s account was true and concluded that the facts contained in it did not establish a crime under New York law. Van Houten said her credibility was “never in question.”
When CBS presented the full transcript to Van Houten this week, he said it had never been provided to him.
“That wasn’t information that I had,” he said, later adding that its existence “changes the landscape for me.”
How the case resurfaced
For nearly two years after the alleged encounter, no criminal charges were filed against any of the men.
The case burst into the national spotlight Sept. 16, when Doe filed a sweeping 101-page lawsuit in New York Supreme Court laying out in graphic detail her allegations about what happened inside the Chi Phi house.
The lawsuit accuses the seven former fraternity members of sexual assault and rape and seeks compensatory and punitive damages. But it casts a far wider net than the seven men.
Doe also sued Cornell University, Chi Phi and affiliated entities, her own Tri Delta sorority and Moonies Bar & Nightclub, among others, alleging that institutions around her failed to protect her before, during and after the events of that night.
The complaint alleges Doe had already become intoxicated while drinking at the Tri Delta house before a sorority housemother accompanied her to Moonies. There, according to the lawsuit, a bouncer marked both of the then-20-year-old’s hands with an “X” signifying she was under 21, but she was nevertheless served alcohol.
The graphic allegations prompted immediate questions about why no one had been prosecuted in 2024. Van Houten said he first learned of the lawsuit on Sept. 18, two days after it was filed, and that his office was subsequently inundated with calls and emails, including threats, demanding answers.
Van Houten publicly defended his original decision. He also reopened the investigation, met with Doe and her attorneys and announced plans to put the matter before a Tompkins County grand jury so it could consider her testimony and any new evidence raised by the lawsuit.
The controversy intensified after CBS reported that Van Houten had never received the full transcript of Doe’s November 2024 interview with Cornell University Police. Van Houten said that if relevant information had been omitted from the signed statement provided to prosecutors, the circumstances should be investigated by someone outside Cornell.
Cornell has separately agreed to retain outside counsel to conduct an independent investigation into the university’s handling of the allegations, according to Hochul. That review is distinct from the criminal investigation now being led by James’ office.
Cornell, meanwhile, reached its own conclusions through the university’s disciplinary process. University President Michael Kotlikoff said two of the accused students were expelled, two were suspended for at least two semesters, one had graduated before discipline could be imposed and two were found not responsible for sexual misconduct.
Those university findings were reached through Cornell’s disciplinary process, which is separate from the criminal justice system and applies different standards and procedures.
Cornell has rejected allegations that it imposed only minor consequences, saying its Title IX process resulted in expulsions and suspensions. The university said no student was offered the opportunity to write essays as the sole consequence for their involvement and called suggestions that it failed to impose consequential punishment “false.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Attorney General Letitia James attend a news conference regarding an investigation into alleged sexual assault at Cornell University in New York City Oct. 2, 2026. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)
Cornell said in a statement to Fox News it “fully support[s] the appointment of a special prosecutor” and is committed to “an independent external review of all aspects of how Cornell has handled this case.”
The case has also drawn renewed attention to Cornell’s campus climate after more than 35% of female undergraduates responding to a 2025 university survey reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact involving force, threats or incapacitation, up from 23% in 2023. Although Cornell said 926 of 6,000 students invited to take the survey responded, a participation rate of about 15%.
Gov. Kathy Hochul intervened Thursday, signing an executive order appointing the Office of the Attorney General as special prosecutor in the case.
James said her office would lead an investigation guided by “the facts and the law.”