Former Cornell student alleging sexual assault says she felt ‘unsupported’ by university’s president

The former Cornell University student who accused seven men of sexually assaulting her at a fraternity house in 2024 recently wrote a letter to campus faculty leaders saying that she felt “unsupported and disbelieved” by the Ivy League institution’s president.

The letter addressed to the Cornell faculty senate was obtained and published by the New York Times on Tuesday – and in it the former student said she wanted to share information that she believed “may be relevant” as the panel considers a vote of no confidence in the school’s administration.

Identified in court documents by the pseudonym “Jane Doe”, the student wrote that she was “sharing a second-hand account with you” of a comment Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff had purportedly made during a meeting with the leader of her sorority at the time, Tri Delta. The comment was purported to have been made “shortly after my report of sexual assault to the university in 2024”, Jane Doe wrote.

Jane Doe said that she was told Kotlikoff’s “initial response was along the lines of, ‘Why did she wait so long to report it?’”

A spokesperson for Cornell said in a statement on Tuesday that “the second-hand account of the question asked by President Kotlikoff in a January 2025 meeting in the letter is incorrect, based on a documented first-hand account.”

“The question ‘why did it take so long for the assault to be reported’ was directed at bystanders who did not use Cornell’s anonymous tip line, despite ongoing social media activity about the incident in October 2024,” the spokesperson said. “He was not questioning Jane Doe’s reporting.”

In Jane Doe’s letter, which is two pages long and is dated 14 October, she wrote that the comments attributed to Kotlikoff and reported to her “diminished my confidence in the administration’s ability to approach my experience with the understanding, sensitivity, and fairness I had hoped for and expected from what had been my dream school”.

She also wrote that her sorority president had shared the conversation with her “with concern” – and that her sorority sister had “interpreted his question as an expression of doubt in the veracity of my story”.

“When the then-Tri Delta President relayed this conversation to me, I felt unsupported and disbelieved by President Kotlikoff,” the former student wrote. “I am sharing this account now because, to my knowledge, only a few individuals are aware of the conversation; I do not know if you or other members of the faculty senate are among them.”

She added: “I would not want to withhold something potentially pertinent, only for Senate members to later discover that information relevant to their deliberations had not been made available to them.”

According to the Times, the meeting that the former student is referring to in the letter took place in January 2025.

The faculty senate scheduled a 28 October meeting to debate the no-confidence resolution – “followed by electronic voting”, according to the group’s website.

It comes as Cornell’s administration has faced backlash and criticism for its handling of the 2024 allegations that were made public in a civil lawsuit filed by the former student in September against the university, the Chi Phi fraternity and seven of its former brothers, and her sorority.

In the lawsuit, Jane Doe accused seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity of sexually assaulting her at a party at their fraternity house on campus in October 2024. All of the men named in the lawsuit have denied wrongdoing, and none have been criminally charged.

It has been reported that the woman first reported the case to the Cornell University police department in November 2024. According to records obtained by the Times, after an internal investigation at Cornell, two of the men were expelled, two were suspended, and another, who had already graduated, was barred from campus.

The remaining men received lighter punishments, which included an order to not contact Jane Doe, and to write “reflection papers”.

In an interview with the Times published on 13 October, Kotlikoff acknowledged that he knew a student had reported being sexually assaulted in November 2024 – but did not follow up with Jane Doe involved in the months afterward.

Kotlikoff, who has described the allegations as “deeply disturbing”, said that he and other school officials did not have the full picture of Jane Doe’s allegations and the subsequent investigation until earlier in October.

The Guardian wp:paragraph