A woman who alleges she was gang-raped at a Cornell University fraternity house told campus investigators last year that she felt “like bait,” describing the men around her as “like lions,” according to records from the university’s disciplinary case.
The records, examined Friday by The Associated Press, contain portions of interviews with the woman and the students she accused, providing additional insight into how Cornell handled the allegations.
Although much of the material is redacted, it lays out a more detailed — and at times contradictory — chronology of the night and shows how the accused men responded. Several challenged the woman’s version of events and said they had no role in any assault.
The woman, referred to as Jane Doe in court filings, sued Cornell and seven former students last month. She claims that in October 2024 she was given ketamine and sexually assaulted multiple times at a fraternity house.
She reported the incident to campus police three weeks later and provided a detailed statement. After reviewing a summary of that interview, however, the local district attorney declined to bring criminal charges or request additional investigative work.
The university’s Title IX inquiry was the only investigation to continue, focusing on whether the students should face disciplinary action under the federal law.
Lawsuit from accused student brings Cornell investigation into focus
This week, an attorney representing one of the accused students submitted records from the university’s investigation as part of a lawsuit seeking to overturn his punishment and erase it from his academic record. The filing includes a 99-page report detailing a campus hearing panel’s findings, along with a university-authored summary of the case.
The documents represent only a small portion of the thousands of pages collected during the inquiry. Even so, they illustrate its scale: Investigators conducted 50 interviews with 32 witnesses, followed by 12 days of hearings.
On Thursday night, Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to oversee a renewed criminal investigation, saying she no longer had confidence in Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.
The Title IX records filed in court cover only part of the university’s inquiry. They indicate that the woman and several of the men generally agreed that drugs were used and sexual activity occurred at the Chi Phi fraternity house. Their accounts diverged sharply, however, over whether the encounters were consensual and how much the woman was capable of agreeing to them.
Snapchat messages brought more men to the room
The woman had gone to the fraternity house at the invitation of a member she had long desired romantically and sexually, according to the disciplinary panel’s findings. The panel concluded that she initially agreed to have sex with him and one of his friends. In her lawsuit, she later said she was pressured to consume ketamine, marijuana and alcohol, leaving her too impaired to consent.
More men later entered the room, apparently after one fraternity member posted a crude Snapchat message at 1:42 a.m. suggesting that a woman’s body was available. Someone else in the group chat subsequently asked whether the “shop” remained open.
The woman told investigators that the substances left her only partly able to protect herself. She recalled smoking marijuana and knew she had taken ketamine — which she said was her first experience with the drug — but could not independently remember doing so. She described the effect as a state of “vague consciousness.”
At a May 2025 hearing, she explained to Cornell investigators: “You look like an operating human being. You don’t look dead or asleep necessarily. So, lights are on, but nobody’s home. Your brain is not functioning at its proper level.”
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She also said that some of the men snorted drugs from her naked body.
“I felt like bait. I felt like lions around me. It just was a totally debilitating place to be in,” she told the investigators.
Accused student says he entered the room only to check on her
One student accused of snorting drugs from the woman’s body, but not of taking part in the other alleged acts, denied her account.
He told investigators he was in the room for no more than five minutes, and didn’t go there for sex.
“That was not our intentions at all. We were just checking out to see if everything” was OK, he said.
He insisted that he did not see the woman naked at any time — she was under bed coverings, he said — and did not partake in drug use. He said he sat on a couch and chatted for a few minutes, then left after the woman and another man there both indicated they were all right.
A Cornell disciplinary panel later cleared him of sexual assault or exploitation allegations, but found him responsible for attempted sexual exploitation because it didn’t believe his claim to have gone to the room for altruistic reasons.
The fraternity member, who is challenging Cornell’s disciplinary process in court, also posted in the Snapchat conversation, saying what was happening in the room was not a joke, adding: “Firsthand pov not a bit.” The student later told investigators he did not remember sending the message, according to Cornell’s account.
Woman’s lawsuit seeks tougher penalties
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe accused two of the other men who entered the room of performing sex acts on her without her consent, while she was partially incapacitated. She accused another man of kissing her without her consent. According to the Title IX documents, Jane Doe told investigators two other men stood at the foot of the bed acting “more like voyeurs than anything.”
The lawsuit seeks to hold all seven men liable for rape. She is asking for unspecified damages.
Cornell hasn’t detailed the results of its investigation, but said it resulted in some students being expelled.
The man who filed the lawsuit challenging his punishment was allowed to stay at Cornell, but he was ordered to stay away from the woman, take a class on sexual harassment and bystander intervention, and write a paper reflecting on the circumstances for which he was found responsible and include a proposal to train other students on preventing sexual harassment.
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