ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University told its fraternities on Tuesday that the parties are over for the year, and told its students something harder: that women on campus “continue to question whether they are safe.”
“I am deeply sorry for the harm Jane Doe suffered in 2024, and appalled that this act of sexual violence occurred within our Cornell community,” President Michael Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus. Doe, a former student, alleges in a civil lawsuit that she was drugged and gang raped by members of the Chi Phi fraternity at a party in October 2024. The district attorney did not prosecute in 2024, NPR reported. Gov. Kathy Hochul has since appointed Attorney General Letitia James special prosecutor, and James has called it “an active criminal investigation,” CBS New York reported. The lawsuit’s claims are allegations.
All parties and social events in Interfraternity Council houses are suspended for the rest of the 2026-27 academic year, Kotlikoff said, and any house that holds one will receive “an immediate emergency suspension.” The ban is meant to give the university “time for a thorough review of fraternity life” to decide “whether and how it can safely continue.”
The second change is about who investigates. Cornell is working with the New York State Police so that their “trauma-informed criminal investigators, who are independent of Cornell University,” can look into allegations of sexual assault on campus, according to the president’s statement. They would interview survivors who choose to pursue criminal charges, for the length of an independent review led by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. The university will also add a case manager in its Office of Civil Rights and more victim advocates.
“The administration is clearly feeling the heat and needed to make a move,” John Hartnett, a sophomore who helped organize protests, told NPR, calling the changes a “half measure.” Julia Chang, an associate professor of Hispanic studies, said the changes are “a testament to the power of the student movement and the global conversation it has sparked; not the integrity of the administration.” The faculty senate is considering a vote of no confidence in the administration on Wednesday, NPR said.
Doe’s lawyer, Thomas Giuffra, has said she has received death threats and that police swarmed her family’s home after she filed suit, as EH reported. Hochul’s order and James’s role are described by CBS New York. Al Jazeera noted that Cornell shut the chapter in 2024 and temporarily suspended the accused students, two of whom were later expelled, and that critics have called that response too lenient, according to its report.
Kotlikoff’s letter did not explain why the measures are coming two years after administrators learned of the allegations, NPR noted, and it addresses Interfraternity Council houses specifically. “Trust is still eroded on campus,” Chang said. “That hasn’t changed.”
