Cornell investigators' records detail alleged gang rape, victim's account of feeling 'like bait'

In May of 2025, a woman sat across from Cornell University investigators and tried to describe what it felt like to be incapacitated. She had been at a Chi Phi fraternity house six months earlier, in October 2024, after being invited by a man she had long wanted to be with. What happened there, she told the investigators, left her in a state she could only compare to being present but absent—lights on, nobody home. Her brain was not functioning at its proper level.

Now, documents from that investigation have surfaced in a lawsuit filed by one of the men she accused, and they reveal the full weight of what the university examined. The woman, identified in court filings as Jane Doe, alleged she had been given ketamine and alcohol, then assaulted repeatedly by multiple men as her capacity to resist or consent dissolved. "I felt like bait," she told investigators. "I felt like lions around me. It just was a totally debilitating place to be in."

The investigation itself was substantial. Cornell's Title IX team conducted 50 interviews across 32 witnesses and held 12 days of hearings. The documents show a fractured record: the woman and several of the accused men offered similar accounts of what drugs were consumed and what sexual activity occurred, but they disagreed sharply on the question that mattered most—whether any of it was consensual. The woman had initially agreed to sexual contact with the man who invited her and one of his friends, but she later alleged in her lawsuit that she had been pressured into taking ketamine, marijuana, and alcohol and was too intoxicated to consent to anything that followed.

What drew other men into the room was a Snapchat message sent at 1:42 a.m. by one of the fraternity brothers. Using vulgar language, he advertised that a woman's body was freely available. Later, another person in the chat asked if the "shop" was still open. The woman told investigators she remembered smoking marijuana and knew she had taken ketamine for the first time, but had no independent memory of consuming it. She said some of the men inhaled drugs off her unclothed body.

One of the men she accused of snorting drugs off her body denied her account entirely. He told investigators he had been in the room for no more than five minutes and was there only to check on her welfare. He said he never saw her naked—she was under bed coverings, he claimed—and he did not use drugs. He sat on a couch, chatted briefly, and left after confirming everyone was fine. A Cornell disciplinary panel later cleared him of sexual assault and exploitation charges but found him responsible for attempted sexual exploitation, deciding his stated motives were not credible.

The same man who is now challenging his punishment in court had also posted in the Snapchat conversation, saying what was happening in the room was not a joke and adding: "Firsthand pov not a bit." When investigators asked him about the message, he said he did not remember sending it. In her lawsuit, Jane Doe accused two other men of performing sex acts on her without consent while she was partially incapacitated. She accused another of kissing her without consent. Two more men, she said, stood at the foot of the bed acting as voyeurs. She is suing all seven men for rape and seeking unspecified damages.

Cornell has not disclosed the full results of its investigation, but said it resulted in some students being expelled. The man challenging his punishment was allowed to remain at the university but was ordered to stay away from the woman, take a class on sexual harassment and bystander intervention, and write a paper reflecting on his conduct with a proposal to train other students on preventing sexual harassment. Three weeks after the October 2024 encounter, the woman had gone to campus police and given a detailed account. The local district attorney reviewed a police summary of her interview and decided not to file criminal charges or pursue further investigation. Only the university's Title IX process continued. This week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James as a special prosecutor to lead a renewed criminal investigation, saying she had lost faith in the Tompkins County District Attorney's handling of the case.