The backstory is convoluted. What happened at Chi Phi Fraternity at Cornell University on the night of October 19, 2024 is unclear. It could have been a gang rape. It could have been a woman who voluntarily engaged in drug- and alcohol-fueled sexual conduct with multiple male students, who subsequently regretted her actions and either wants to get money out of Cornell or exact revenge on the men.
What is known is that the woman, proceeding pseudonymously, has sued Cornell under Title IX for failing to pursue her claims, which prompted the Tompkins County prosecutor to reopen a case that had been dropped at the time. The woman went to the Cornell Police Department to make a complaint. Her statement failed to allege that she was forced to ingest drugs or engage in nonconsensual sex. In other words, it didn’t allege anything criminal. When it was forwarded to the district attorney, there was no basis to proceed.
The woman’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, complains that the district attorney should have investigated the complaint nonetheless, and that the statement from the Cornell police was inadequate as they were not specially trained to deal with sexual assault victims.
“It is challenging for me to understand how a thorough criminal investigation could have been conducted when she never spoke with anyone other than the officer who took her original complaint,” Giuffra told CNN in an earlier statement.
“Other than her initial contact with Cornell Police, she was not contacted by investigators from the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office or any investigators trained in interviewing rape survivors,” Giuffra said.
A wrinkle arose from a fraternity member’s internal Snapchat, which was not initially provided the DA.
At roughly 1:42 a.m., one of the men allegedly sent a message to the fraternity’s Snapchat group chat – titled “Chi Phi Actives” – stating there was “free p*ssy” upstairs.
By doing this, the suit alleges one of the accused “encouraged other XI CHAPTER members to join in on the gang rape of plaintiff.”
While repugnant, this did not bear upon the issue of consent.
Subsequently, Cornell held Title IX hearings and meted out sanctions against some of the students. It also barred the fraternity from campus. Both of these suggest that the University concluded that both wrongdoing of some sort occurred and that some students were responsible for it.
When the Jane Doe complaint against Cornell went public, the district attorney reopened the case and said it will be presented to a grand jury. The Cornell Daily Sun, the student newspaper of the University, had other ideas.
Matthew Ingalls. Jonathan Newell. Winston Lee. Gillio Lopes. Diego Sarabia. Scott Norris. Scott Kretzschmar.
These are the names of the seven men named as defendants in a civil complaint filed on Sept. 14 alleging they drugged and gang raped a Cornell student, identified as Jane Doe, in the Chi Phi house in October 2024.
The editorial went on to castigate Cornell for its failure to protect Jane Doe, arguing that feeling safe is a precondition of getting an education.
This is not a dark chapter in Cornell’s history, it’s a morbid pattern, only rectified with thorough criminal investigations in the hands of parties independent of the University — the Ithaca Police Department and the Tompkins County district attorney. As for Cornell, administrators have allowed the idea that enough ambiguity, enough he-said-she-said, enough familial connections, enough money will allow you to get off scot-free. We call on Cornell to publish the standard by which a suspension in a sexual assault case is lifted. We call on them to state whether an allegation of sexual assault is eligible for emergency suspension at all under the revised Article VIII. Finally, we expect that the University shares with the complainant the outcome of her own investigation.
Did Cornell do anything wrong? That depends on whether one believes the woman, or to be more precise, believes the woman now or believed the woman then. Did Cornell go easy on rapists or did Cornell go hard on young men who engaged in consensual group sex? Just because it’s alleged in a complaint does not make it so, and does not make it not so. That’s why they build courtrooms.
It then concluded.
We refuse for this victim to be reduced to just another story. Cornell has failed to protect its students. Cornell has failed to address the growing issue of sexual assault on campus with its pathetic task force. Cornell has failed the student allegedly raped by those seven men at Chi Phi in October 2024. Cornell has failed her. Cornell has failed us.
To Matthew Ingalls, Jonathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar: We know who you are and we refuse to let you benefit from this University’s concealment.
In the penultimate paragraph, the word “allegedly” appears. In the last graf, boldfaced in the original, the condemnation is clear. Already, one of the students named has been fired from his job at Wells Fargo bank. Name and shame is out for the others in full force, none of whom have been charged, no less convicted, of any criminal act.
Is it back? Should it be? Is this the next coming of the worst of #MeToo, Believe Women and the litany of campus rape hysteria?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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If Trump 2 wasn’t bad enough, Woke 2 and #MeeTooAgain are already scaring the hell out of me.
The accusations here aren’t even nearly as bad as the old Rolling Stone article. You would think someone would have remember how that went.
Mike, what specifically, as you put it, is “scaring the hell out of” you?
As sordid as the alleged behaviors appear, it would seem that the student journalists may have been equally sordid in their public shaming and may soon learn about the law of defamation. Or at least pay a lawyer a pretty penny to learn it for them. Ah, Cornell, far above Cayuga’s waters there is again an awful smell.
Letting things play out and then reporting on them is far too slow these days when attention is both highly valued and scarce. We won’t stop jumping the gun because we aren’t equipped or taught to slow down and wonder. Rushing to judgement isn’t a matter of sides or slogans at all. Fittingly, it’s about impulse control and choosing not to act on our baser desires for blood and sex.
[Ed. Note: Damn that was good.]
PK,
Nothing to add except that it’s young guys like you who made “judgment” a bad word
Mea culpa on the typo. I no longer identify as “young” in some contexts. Why like me?
I think this column is spot on. I think people ought to refrain from jumping to conclusions and see what the grand jury surfaces. I think Cornell should be made to hand over its files on the investigations it conducted so we can see whether students were punished by the school for things law enforcement should handle or if the students got punished for violating school rules.
What a difference a day makes.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/cornell-university-rape-case-jane-doe-police-interview-transcript/
“Nothing in Doe’s original statement indicated she was drugged without consent or had sex against her will, Van Houten said. According to the accuser’s statement, ‘each time Jane Doe asked to stop the sexual conduct, the sexual conduct stopped.’” – from the link to CNN coverage in this post.
“According to the transcript, she said she didn’t remember the end of the night ‘where I was raped’ and didn’t know how many people had sex with her.
When describing what happened later in the night, the transcript says Jane Doe said, ‘I can say with 100% confidence I was raped.’” – from the CBS article today.
We seem to have a Schrödinger’s statement, in which she both alleges rape and does not allege rape. Her statement is both the basis of the DA’s decision in 2024, and was never reviewed by Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten. He now claims her statement wasn’t provided, while Cornell, apparently, disagrees.
To paraphrase our esteemed host’s query regarding Jane Doe, should this bar believe Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten yesterday, or today?
IMO, this pc from The National Review is worth reading;
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/09/the-moral-wilderness-of-the-cornell-seven-case/
The younger brother of a friend of mine took part in a “gang bang” at a fraternity his first semester at college. It’s been almost fifty years, so my memory might be less than entirely reliable, but IIRC when he was home at Thanksgiving he was freaking out, because a few days later the woman went to the police and said she was raped. He’d see her on campus and was afraid she’d recognize him and he’d be arrested, lose his scholarship (stud athlete in high school, rode the bench for four years in college), and maybe go to prison for what he insisted was a consensual encounter.
A couple of years later, he’s at a townhouse off campus for a football game watching party. This same girl/ woman is there. A couple of guys start teasing her that after the game she’s going to be “pulling a train”. She just laughs and doesn’t leave the party.
After the game ends, one of the guys leads her upstairs and a couple of other guys follow. He leaves, but hears later she had sex with sev’l guys.
The second story doesn’t mean the first time wasn’t rape, but it does, I think, underscore that there’s a level of ambiguity that many/ most don’t appreciate when such events are are reported.
Hunter Thompson, in his book on the The Hells Angels, tells of being in a bar and one biker takes a girl into the backroom and has sex with her on the pool table. Another guy gets up to go to the john, sees what’s happening and takes a turn. At this point, others start lining up, and the woman – realizing what’s coming starts screaming. Somehow the bartender breaks it up.
Thompson asks what a jury would have made of this if the gang bang had continued. He said something along the lines of, “The first time was true love, the second was for kicks, but thereafter it was rape?”.
OT1H, I think a woman should be able to say “No” at any time and have this be respected. OTOH, there are times when “No” means “not now”, or “not yet”, or can turn into “Yes” pretty quickly, at least based on my own fooling around as a teenager.
And finally, consensual sex cannot become rape retroactively, no matter how embarrassing it proves to be or how much someone comes to regret it.