Cornell Police Drug Arrest at Chi Phi Came Before Alleged Gang Rape

Cornell University police arrested a student on drug-related allegations at the embattled Chi Phi fraternity house in New York less than a day before seven former members were accused in a new civil lawsuit of gang-raping a female classmate, according to the university’s crime log.

The Cornell Daily Sun, an independent student newspaper at the Ivy League university, highlighted the crime blotter entry in a report published over the weekend.

The incident reportedly occurred at about 1 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2024, when campus officers went to the university-owned fraternity house and arrested a student on drug charges. The log does not specify the alleged offenses, saying only that “an individual has been referred to the Office of Student Conduct.”

The entry does not identify the substance involved, say whether the arrested student belonged to Chi Phi or explain the eventual outcome of the case.

News Media contacted Cornell University for a response but had not received one.

Later that same day, the fraternity held a party that continued into the early hours of Oct. 20.

The event is cited in a lawsuit filed by an unidentified woman referred to as Jane Doe. She told university police on Nov. 8 that she had been sexually assaulted sometime between 11 p.m. on Oct. 19 and 5:45 a.m. the next morning.

Doe further alleges in the complaint that she was pressured to snort ketamine during the party.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration describes ketamine as an anesthetic that can produce dissociative and hallucinogenic effects. The agency also cautions that the drug “has also been used to facilitate sexual assault.”

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According to Doe’s complaint, Cornell suspended Chi Phi on Nov. 8, 2024—the same day she reported the sexual assault allegations to campus police.

In a separate development, windows were broken and red slogans were painted at Day Hall, a university administrative building, early Monday, according to photographs published by the Daily Sun.

“We understand the frustration and strong emotions being expressed across our community,” Kyle Kimball, Cornell’s vice president for university relations, said in a statement to Fox News. “Those concerns deserve to be heard, but damaging property is not the answer. We are investigating the vandalism at Day Hall and will address it in accordance with University policy and applicable law.”

Tompkins County prosecutors did not pursue criminal charges after Doe initially reported the alleged assault to Cornell police in 2024.

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has said Doe’s sworn statement from November 2024 did not claim that she had been drugged without her consent or gang raped. Instead, he said, the statement characterized her drug use and sexual activity as “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”

But a local CBS New York report said investigators later interviewed Doe over two days, on Nov. 14 and 15. In that account, she differentiated an initially consensual encounter from the alleged assault later in the night, reportedly telling investigators, “I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.”

“Nobody knows this information about the transcript and that gives me something to really dig into because that changes the landscape for me,” Van Houten told the news outlet.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor last week to examine the allegations raised in Doe’s lawsuit.