Cornell students blast school’s response as gang-rape scandal rocks campus: ‘Priority not to help the victim’

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As the District Attorney’s Office reopens its investigation into the alleged gang rape of a 20-year-old Cornell University coed by seven fraternity brothers at the Ivy League school, many on campus are frustrated and angered by the response into the attack, according to two undergrads who spoke to The Independent.

“I’m sort of surprised that people are so surprised by it,” one said Monday. “I don’t think there is a single person that’s surprised there’s a rape culture in fraternities. If they are, then they should probably go outside more.”

“Mary,” a young woman who lives on campus at Cornell and did not want her real name to be used, slammed the extended network of enablers she believes are also culpable.

“Think about how many people knew about this incident, or knew the people who were involved,” she continued. “There are lots of people one degree, or two degrees, away from this. But at the same time, it’s not just these seven guys. The university endorsing this frat culture – maybe not rape culture, but this sort of bro-ey, hypermasculine culture that these frats create – it’s all very accepted.”

Among Mary’s friends at Cornell, a large number of them have been preyed upon at fraternity gatherings, she claimed.

“Based on my experience, everyone has a story,” Mary said.

She and others “don’t have a lot of faith” in the Cornell administration’s effort to tackle the issue, Mary contended, asserting that it is “in the school’s best interest to make this story go away.”

“The thing I've always heard is that if something happens on campus, don't go to the administration,” Mary went on. “Go to the police or to some other outside resource, because the school’s number one priority is not to help the victim. The school just wants, as much as possible, to protect their reputation… If, God forbid, something happened to me, I would seek outside counseling, not Cornell Mental Health.”

She said there are plenty of “well-meaning individuals” there, but slammed Cornell for suspending students who protested the conflict in Gaza while the suspects accused of drugging and raping their unnamed victim at a fraternity party were reportedly penalized only with an essay-writing assignment about what they had done. (The school denies this, claiming that a hearing panel had in fact “issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions.”)

After “Jane Doe” filed a lawsuit on September 16 against her alleged attackers, as well as the Chi Phi fraternity and a host of others, Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten restarted his office’s probe into Jane Doe’s allegations.

Doe’s 101-page complaint alleges she was intoxicated and visiting a friend at Chi Phi in October 2024 when two fraternity members coerced her into snorting ketamine then sexually assaulted her. One of the men then allegedly sent a message to the frat’s Snapchat group, alerting the other to “free p****” upstairs and inviting them to join, according to the complaint. Incapacitated, Doe was subsequently subjected to a brutal hours-long gang rape by seven Chi Phi brothers, the complaint states.

Three weeks later, Doe reported the incident to the Cornell University Police Department in upstate New York, and an internal Title IX investigation began in January 2025. Attorney Thomas Giuffra, who has previously represented women sexually assaulted by hip-hop icon Sean “Diddy” Combs, said the Cornell cops never followed up with Doe.

No criminal charges have been filed in the case, though the DA is looking at the case again after Doe filed the civil suit garnering widespread attention.

“Her dreams were destroyed by a group of men who sought to abuse and humiliate her,” Giuffra said. “She was subjected to unspeakable horrors that I have not seen in my 30 years of handling abuse cases.”

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, on the other hand, said in a Monday press release that Doe gave investigators a sworn statement that “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”

To Mary, “It doesn't feel like the cards are stacked very well for a victim in this type of situation.”

In the days after the incident itself, other Cornell students expressed similar views, according to contemporaneous reporting in the school newspaper.

On the afternoon of November 8, 2024, a Friday, Jane Doe’s alleged gang rape was announced to the student body in a campus-wide Crime Alert email, according to senior Benjamin Leynse.

Leynse, a journalism student who broke the initial news of the alleged rape for The Cornell Daily Sun, told The Independent that the immediate aftermath was a grueling period for all.

That weekend, Cornell sophomore Winter Knutson was found dead at the bottom of one of the area’s many gorges, an apparent suicide; another Cornell student was grievously injured that same day and had to be airlifted to a hospital in Pennsylvania after an accidental fall into the same gorge. That Monday, a Cornell custodian was arrested and charged with murder after allegedly stabbing his wife to death.

Campus groups for a mental health day, a proposal which was rejected by the administration, according to Leynse. One friend of Knutson’s called Cornell’s actions at the time “impersonal and perfunctory.” Another undergraduate described the atmosphere as “anxiety-ridden and tense,” and said people “felt like they’ve had to fend for themselves and haven’t received much support.”

Undergraduate Alia Amer told the Sun, “[T]here needs to be more communication about what the administration plans to do to help students rather than just throwing QR codes and links at us.”

Leynse said the “emotional weight” of the goings-on was palpable, and recalled a “somber mood” among the student body.

There were calls for fraternities at Cornell, where about 30 percent of the student population is involved in Greek life, to be abolished, according to Leynse, who said the Chi Phi house was splashed with red paint and egged by a campus activist group calling itself Riot Moon.

A letter left behind by Riot Moon, an anonymous, decentralized organization with no stated leader, read, “Fraternities were created to consolidate white male power and perpetrate violence, abuse, and rape in our communities. We no longer tolerate a culture that teaches men to rape, the use of sexual violence to subjugate others, or a ‘justice system’ that continually forces survivors to relive their trauma and leaves abusers unpunished and un-shamed.”

Riot Moon said its members did not feel protected by Cornell or the police, and that “We keep us safe by any means necessary.”

Some on campus were aware of the names of the accused, but their identities were not widely known until their online footprints began to disappear, Leynse told The Independent.

He said there are “tentative plans” for a demonstration to take place at Cornell this week, and, like Mary, emphasized that there is a sense among students that the administration has given short shrift to sexual assault survivors such as Doe.

When Doe’s allegations emerged, Cornell set up a Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault, which was charged with “developing and recommending a holistic framework for addressing and preventing sexual assaults on campus.”

The year before, according to the task force, 23 percent of undergraduate women and 9 percent of undergraduate men reported having been sexually assaulted at some point during their time at Cornell.

Cornell administrators held a series of town halls about campus rape, but Leynse said, “they ultimately didn’t want to recommend anything about solving the problem.”

The task force issued a report in March 2026 – nearly a year late – that put forth a set of strategies and tools to try and combat the issue, including a recommendation to place a QR code on the backs of all Cornell IDs which would link to an “interactive decision tree” for students to “access to a wide range of help that may be needed, including mental health supports.”

“I know in talking to different students, there was some disappointment about that,” Leynse said.

An attorney for Scott Kretzschmar, one of the men named in Doe’s lawsuit, told ABC News the incident did not happen and described Doe’s allegations as “selfishly false claims.” Scott Norris, another of the Chi Phi members named in the lawsuit, told ABC News through his attorney that he “did not participate in any sexual activity or drug use,” and that Cornell absolved him of any wrongdoing in its internal investigation. A third Chi Phi brother named in the suit, Diego Sarabia, was reportedly fired from his job at Wells Fargo.

In a statement, Cornell said it takes allegations of sexual violence “extremely seriously,” and that Chi Phi was shut down in 2024 and is no longer allowed on campus.

For one, Mary remains somewhat skeptical that much will change from here.

“No one wants to say it out loud, because they know how it sounds,” she said, “but I’m sure guys are texting each other right now saying, ‘What was she wearing?’ or, “I’m not part of the problem,’ or whatever.”

“It’s just the culture of society, it’s not limited to college campuses or Greek life,” Mary went on. “I don’t have a solution for it, I don't think anyone has a solution for it. Because it’s not just these seven guys. There are a lot of people who had to look away.”

For those affected by rape and sexual abuse, if you are in the United States, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673).

Rape Crisis also offers support.You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk.