The alleged group rape of a Cornell University student has become one of the most serious scandals in the 161-year history of the elite New York institution, while also exposing a legal problem that could make criminal prosecution difficult even if investigators find evidence supporting the allegations. The case concerns a student identified as “Jane Doe”, who alleges that seven fellow students raped her after she was drugged in October 2024. She is now suing the men, their fraternity Chi Phi, Cornell University and others.
The case has also prompted a renewed examination of sexual violence at Cornell. According to the university’s security report, 34 rapes were reported on campus during the past two years. More strikingly, Cornell’s biennial survey found that in 2025, 15 per cent of respondents said they had experienced non-consensual sexual contact involving either force or incapacity, including situations in which someone was unable to act because of drugs. Among female undergraduate respondents, the figure was 35 per cent, while 52 per cent of young women associated with fraternities reported such experiences.
For Lydia Blum, a 21-year-old environmental and sustainability student and vice-president of the student assembly, the figures have reinforced concerns already familiar to students. Since her first year, she says, she has avoided attending student parties alone. She and her friends share their locations, make sure nobody is left by themselves and tell one another where they are going and with whom. “We check each other’s locations,” Blum says. “And we make sure that nobody is alone.”
Blum says those precautions have protected her during more than three years at Cornell. But she regards the allegations involving Jane Doe as fundamentally different from an isolated incident. Fraternity parties are notorious for sexual misconduct, she says, while fraternities and sororities occupy a major role in student social life across many US universities. They provide relatively inexpensive accommodation and organise parties in which heavy drinking is common.
Some events involve unusual rituals. According to the Cornell Daily Sun, at a party called “Champagne and Shackles”, a female and male student are reportedly tied together with cable ties and required to finish a bottle of champagne before they can be released. A German visiting student told Der Spiegel that stronger drugs are also readily available at such events, particularly cocaine and ketamine. Ketamine, an anaesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, was reportedly used by Jane Doe and the seven men she is suing on the night in question.
Accounts of earlier incidents remain disputed. Allison Fishman Task, a coach and former Cornell student, wrote on Instagram that sexual abuse had occurred at the university more than three decades ago. She said she had twice gone to campus police: once after a fraternity allegedly spied on women in their dormitory from a secret room, and again after fraternity members allegedly raped unconscious women and filmed the assaults. “It was swept under the carpet,” she said. The claims cannot now be independently verified.
Cornell’s administration did take action after the 2024 incident. In February 2025, four months after the alleged assault, the university appointed an expert group on sexual misconduct. Its task was to develop a comprehensive strategy to prevent such incidents, improve campus safety and support victims. The group presented recommendations in March 2026, and the university leadership said it would implement them.
The handling of Jane Doe’s initial complaint, however, has placed the campus police and local prosecutors under renewed scrutiny. She reported the alleged assault to Cornell police on 14 November 2024, about three weeks after the night in question. According to the New York Times, a police officer and university employee recorded 120 pages of material, but the officer produced a six-page summary. That summary reportedly included Jane Doe’s statement that sex with the first two men had initially been “pretty OK”, but omitted her later statement concerning the end of the night: “I can say with 100 per cent certainty that I was raped.”
The district attorney, Matthew van Houten, apparently read only the six-page summary and did not pursue further investigation. He decided not to initiate proceedings. Following Jane Doe’s lawsuit, the case was reopened. The district attorney’s office has said that her 2024 account differed from the allegations made in the current lawsuit, including over whether she initially consented to sexual contact with the first two men and whether she was pressured to take drugs.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has since removed van Houten from the case and appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as special investigator. “She will examine the evidence and pursue it wherever it leads,” Hochul said. “If the evidence justifies a criminal charge, she will bring it.”
Yet prosecution faces a specific difficulty in New York’s sexual-offence law. A person is considered legally incapable of consent only when alcohol or drugs were administered without their knowledge or against their will. Proving that condition may be difficult in Jane Doe’s case. Some of the men named in the lawsuit reportedly continue to maintain that she consented to the sexual activity. As a result, the alleged attackers could ultimately avoid criminal punishment even if the civil case continues.
At Cornell, Blum says she hopes justice will be served. Until she knows whether the university’s measures will reduce sexual violence, she intends to continue following the rules that have governed her social life since her first year: knowing where her friends are, making sure nobody is alone and never assuming that a party is safe simply because it takes place at an elite university.
