Cornell Chi Phi
2024 – present

Tompkins County, New York · Alleged October 2024

Seven men are named in a civil complaint
alleging they drugged and assaulted a Cornell student
inside a fraternity house.

On the night of October 19, 2024, a 20-year-old Cornell student says she was taken to the Chi Phi house, pressured into consuming what she was told was ketamine, and sexually assaulted while incapacitated. Nearly two years later the record is still moving. This page lays out what is documented, what is alleged but unproven, and what remains open.

7 students named as defendants in the 2026 civil complaint
101 pages in the complaint filed in New York Supreme Court
Grand jury the Tompkins County DA referred the case on Sept. 28, 2026

Read this first. Nothing here is a conviction. No one has been charged with a crime. A civil complaint is an allegation, and the defendants deny it. The grand jury has not returned a decision. This page is careful about that line, and so should anyone who shares it.

Where the case stands

Three proceedings are running at once, and they use different standards. Conflating them is the single most common error in coverage of this case.

Open

Criminal — grand jury

Tompkins County District Attorney · reopened Sept. 28, 2026

DA Matthew Van Houten reopened the investigation after the civil complaint surfaced allegations that, by his account, differ substantially from what the plaintiff told police in 2024. He declined charges in 2024 on insufficient evidence, and his office never investigated independently — it relied on Cornell University Police. He has now referred the matter to a criminal grand jury, saying the Snapchat screenshot changes its legal analysis. Cornell publicly supports that decision.

A grand jury referral is not an indictment. It is a question, put to a grand jury, about whether to charge anyone at all.

Concluded

Title IX — university process

Cornell Office of Civil Rights & Student Conduct · began Jan. 2025

Cornell says the investigation ran over several months and culminated in a hearing before a panel of trained faculty and staff, held over multiple days, at which the complainant and respondents could testify and present evidence. The panel issued sanctions that Cornell says included expulsions and suspensions.

Cornell invoked federal privacy law when asked for individual outcomes, and has not named them. That limitation is real — and it is also the reason the public has spent two years arguing about the word “essays.”

Pending

Civil — damages lawsuit

New York Supreme Court, New York County · filed Sept. 14, 2026

A 101-page complaint filed by the plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, seeks compensatory and punitive damages. Cornell declined to comment on the pending litigation beyond its public statements. Defendants have not answered in the sources reviewed here.

A civil case is a lower “more likely than not” standard, not “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It can produce a judgment without any criminal charge.

What the complaint alleges

This is the plaintiff's account as described in the civil complaint and reported by The Cornell Daily Sun and the New York Post. It is an allegation, not a finding.

  1. 1

    The evening begins elsewhere

    The plaintiff says her night started at Tri-Delta's house and then at Moonies Bar & Nightclub in downtown Ithaca, where Tri-Delta hosted a private event on October 19, 2024. Moonies says it had a contract requiring unmarked hands for underage guests and wristbands for those over 21, and that it did not serve the plaintiff — a claim the complaint calls “completely inaccurate.”

  2. 2

    She goes to the Chi Phi house

    She says she arrived at the Chi Phi house to see a friend, already intoxicated. According to the complaint, two fraternity members pressured her into taking what they said was ketamine, and that she was given more of it repeatedly over the course of the night.

  3. 3

    A message summons others

    At roughly 1:42 a.m., the complaint says defendant Johnathan Newell posted to a Snapchat group called “Chi Phi Actives” that there was “free p———” upstairs, and that additional men then entered the room. Cornell Police says it provided a screenshot to the District Attorney as part of the evidence handed over in November 2024. See the evidence dispute below for why that point is contested.

  4. 4

    The assault, and the report

    She alleges she was assaulted for several hours while unconscious or incapacitated, and regained awareness later that day. She reported the incident to Cornell University Police and the Ithaca Police Department on or about November 8, 2024. The chapter was suspended the same day.

“What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing. Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night.”

Plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, to The Cornell Daily Sun, Sept. 2026

“In the aftermath, I was deeply disappointed by the lack of support I received from the student community… that pain was compounded by being criticized and ostracized at a time when I needed compassion, support and care the most.”

Plaintiff, The Cornell Daily Sun

The 1:42 a.m. message, and a fight over it

The Snapchat group is the most consequential thread in this case, and the handling of it is genuinely contested between the three parties who should agree. None of the disputed versions are resolved.

What is public

The screenshot cited in the complaint was provided to news outlets by the Supreme Court of the State of New York. It shows a message at roughly 1:42 a.m. in a group called “Chi Phi Actives” advertising “free p———” upstairs. The complainant’s counsel has identified the poster as Johnathan Newell. CBS News reports it obtained additional video from the fraternity’s group Snapchat conversation from that night.

Why it reopened the case

The District Attorney’s office has said publicly that the “vulgar” screenshot changes the legal analysis of the allegations. On that reading, the message is the reason a case the DA’s office had declined twice is now before a grand jury — evidence that appeared in the civil filing rather than in the 2024 police file.

Three accounts of whether police ever had it

The District Attorney Van Houten

Says a screenshot of part of the Snapchat group conversation cited in the civil complaint was never provided to his office. He also acknowledges that his office relied on the investigation conducted by Cornell University Police in 2024 and did not independently investigate the allegations.

Cornell University Police CUPD

In its public FAQ, Cornell says CUPD provided the screenshot to the District Attorney as part of the evidence supplied in November 2024. That is a direct contradiction of the DA’s account, and it is the reason the question is open rather than settled.

The plaintiff’s counsel Jane Doe’s attorney

Disputes the DA’s account and says the messages were provided to authorities in 2024. Counsel has also criticised the absence of any follow-up with Doe by someone specially trained to speak with abuse survivors — a criticism that sits alongside the DA’s own admission that no independent investigation occurred.

Why this matters beyond the seven. If Cornell Police held the screenshot in 2024 and the DA’s office did not have it, then a case capable of supporting a grand jury referral was not referred for two years because of an evidence-handling gap inside a single institution — not because prosecutors weighed the evidence and concluded it was insufficient. Those are very different failures, and the public record currently supports neither conclusion cleanly.

Named in the complaint

Seven students are named as defendants in the civil complaint. Their names are public record: they appear in a court filing and have been reported by the New York Post, CBS News, USA Today, and the Daily Sun. Listing them here carries obligations as well as facts.

Read this before the list. Being named in a civil complaint is an allegation of negligence-adjacent, non-criminal conduct against real people. It is not a finding of guilt. Cornell’s Title IX process reportedly resulted in expulsions and suspensions, but Cornell has not publicly tied any sanction to any individual, and the defendants deny the underlying claims. A defendant's lawyer says the defense holds documents — including what he describes as the plaintiff’s own words and scientific evidence — that contradict the complaint. The grand jury has not decided. If you share this page, share it whole.
  • 1Matthew Ingalls’27
  • 2Johnathan Newell’27
  • 3Winston Lee’27
  • 4Gillio Lopes’27
  • 5Diego Sarabia’25
  • 6Scott Norris’26
  • 7Scott Kretzschmar’26

Class years are as reported by The Cornell Daily Sun and CBS News. The same reporting notes that at least one defendant’s attorney has stated that the defense “wholeheartedly deny” the allegations and possesses documents contradicting them. A separate 2010 New York Court of Appeals decision, People v. Reome, is a different case entirely and should not be read as bearing on these allegations.

Also named as defendants

The complaint reaches well beyond the seven. It names Cornell University, Chi Phi entities, Tri-Delta entities, a former president of Cornell’s Chi Phi chapter, Moonies Bar & Nightclub, certain faculty, alumni and executive board members, and unnamed individuals. The claims range from negligence and negligent supervision to breach of contract, New York human-rights and education statutes, and New York’s Dram Shop Act.

Timeline

Every entry below is sourced. Dates are as reported.

Oct 19, 2024

The night in question

The plaintiff says her evening moves from Tri-Delta’s house to Moonies Bar to the Chi Phi house, where she is allegedly pressured into taking ketamine and later assaulted while incapacitated. The alleged assault is described as running for several hours, ending around 1:42 a.m. and into the early morning of Oct. 20.

Nov 8, 2024

Report and immediate suspension

The plaintiff reports the incident to Cornell University Police and the Ithaca Police Department. The same day, Chi Phi’s Xi Chapter is placed on temporary suspension for alleged violations of the Student Code of Conduct, and temporary suspensions are issued for the seven students named in the complaint.

Nov 26, 2024

Cornell goes public

Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff issues “Update on disturbing allegations of sexual violence,” describing drug abuse and sexual violence allegations at the Chi Phi house. He calls the described behavior “abhorrent” and urges anyone with information to report it.

Jan 2025

Title IX investigation opens

Cornell begins a Title IX investigation in response to the plaintiff’s formal complaint, according to the civil filing.

Spring 2025

Presidential task force formed

Cornell launches the Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault, composed of faculty, staff and students, to develop a public-health framework for addressing sexual assault. The 2025 Cornell Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct later reports campuswide increases across all measured forms of sexual assault and misconduct.

Mar 17, 2026

Task force recommendations

The task force issues final recommendations, signed by President Kotlikoff and Provost Kavita Bala. They call for in-person sexual health and well-being education for all new students, additional Cornell Health prevention staff, a new Pathways resource clarifying support and reporting, new “sexual citizenship” courses, expanded physical safety measures, and better transparency on prevention and accountability.

Sept 14, 2026

The civil complaint

A 101-page complaint is filed in New York Supreme Court. It names Cornell, Chi Phi, Tri-Delta, seven students, a former chapter president, a bar and others, and seeks compensatory and punitive damages. A lawyer for one defendant says the defense possesses documents and scientific evidence contradicting the account. Reporting on the filing date varies between Sept. 14 and Sept. 16.

Sept 21, 2026

Cornell answers

Vice President for University Relations Kyle Kimball confirms Cornell’s investigation has concluded and that the Xi Chapter “remains barred from our campus,” but declines to describe individual discipline, citing federal privacy law.

Sept 28, 2026

Grand jury referral

Tompkins County DA Matthew Van Houten reopens the criminal investigation and refers the case to a grand jury, noting the lawsuit allegations differ substantially from the plaintiff’s 2024 account to police. His office says the Snapchat screenshot changes its legal analysis. Cornell endorses the decision. Separately, Chi Phi’s national chapter issues its own statement.

Sept 30, 2026

Cornell’s FAQ, and the essays fight

Cornell publishes an FAQ confirming that sanctions included expulsions and suspensions, and answering a direct question with a direct no: “Is it true that involved students only had to write essays as a disciplinary measure?” Cornell has not publicly tied any individual outcome to any individual student.

Now

What happens next

The grand jury decides whether anyone is charged. The civil case proceeds toward discovery and motion practice. Cornell has committed to implementing the task force’s recommendations. None of that is finished.

Cornell’s response, in its own words

Cornell has been direct about process and indirect about outcomes. Both are worth reading closely, because the gap between them is where most of the public argument lives.

Did Cornell investigate?

Cornell says the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards investigated the allegations against both the individuals and the fraternity, consistent with university policy and Title IX. It says the investigation ran over several months and included hearings before a panel of trained faculty and staff, over multiple days, where the complainant and respondents could testify and present evidence.

Did students only have to write essays?

Cornell’s answer is one word: No.

The question comes from the civil complaint, which alleges the defendants were offered the chance to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays. Cornell’s FAQ addresses the claim directly and denies it, and separately confirms that the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions that included expulsions and suspensions.

What Cornell has never done is say which sanction went to which student, and why. It cites federal privacy law for that. The Daily Sun has separately reported that Cornell confirmed expulsions while denying the essay-only characterization.

Why won’t Cornell name the sanctions?

Cornell says federal privacy law prohibits it from disclosing individual disciplinary information, and adds that it recognizes the limitation “can be frustrating and can create the impression that Cornell is unwilling to answer legitimate questions about accountability.”

Cornell notes it is generally not subject to state or federal public-records law as a private university, though it must share records with New York State regarding public funding of state-contracted colleges. That leaves a real gap: the university is asserting a privacy bar while telling the public to trust the outcome it cannot describe.

Why didn’t the DA charge anyone in 2024?

Cornell says that decision belonged to the Tompkins County District Attorney, not the university, and that the DA has now reopened the investigation in light of the additional allegations in the civil complaint. The DA has said his office previously found insufficient evidence to pursue criminal charges, and that the lawsuit account differs substantially from the 2024 account given to police.

Why did Cornell Police handle it alone?

Cornell says CUPD is a unit of the university whose officers are sworn Tompkins County deputy sheriffs, that the incident occurred in Cornell’s jurisdiction, and that this is why Ithaca Police were not brought in at the outset. The plaintiff separately reported the incident to Ithaca Police as well.

Cornell also says CUPD provided the Snapchat screenshot to the District Attorney as part of the evidence supplied in November 2024 — a detail that matters, because it means the message at 1:42 a.m. was in the hands of law enforcement from the start.

Does a school finding mean a crime happened?

No, and Cornell is explicit about the separation. Its process applies university policy, not criminal law, and Cornell states plainly that someone can violate university policy without committing a crime. The reverse also holds: a criminal process can reach a different result on the same facts. This is the single most important thing to understand about how this case has been reported.

What’s still unresolved

The honest gaps. Anyone presenting this case as settled is overstating it in one direction or the other.

No criminal decision yet

The grand jury has the matter and has not returned a decision. The 2024 outcome was “insufficient evidence.” That may change, or it may not. Until it does, there is no criminal finding of any kind in this case.

Individual outcomes are undisclosed

Cornell confirms a range of sanctions including expulsions and suspensions, and declines to map them to individuals. The public therefore cannot currently verify who was expelled, who was suspended, or on what findings.

The 2024 and 2026 accounts differ

The DA says the lawsuit allegations differ substantially from what the plaintiff told police in 2024. That is a material discrepancy, and it is one of the reasons the criminal investigation was reopened rather than closed.

The defenses are not public

At least one defendant’s attorney says the defense holds documents and scientific evidence that contradict the complaint. Defendants have not answered the complaint in the sources reviewed here. An unanswered complaint is not a decided case.

The count of participants is not established

The complaint describes additional men entering the room after the 1:42 a.m. message. No reliable source establishes a total number of people present that night, or how many were aware of what was happening. Any specific figure beyond the seven named defendants is speculation.

Nobody knows who was in that room

The Snapchat group is a chapter-wide group for active members, not an incident thread. It necessarily includes the seven named defendants, and it cannot be read as a witness list. Determining who else was present is the grand jury’s work, and no public source establishes it.

Institutional follow-through

Cornell says the task force’s March 2026 recommendations are being implemented, with some complete and others in development. Whether that translates into measurable change is not something the university has yet reported on.

About the number “57”

A word on the name of this project, because getting this wrong does real damage.

There is no 57 in this case. The 2024 Chi Phi case names seven student defendants. No figure of 50 bystanders appears in the complaint, in Cornell’s statements, or in any reporting reviewed for this page.

The number 57 comes from a different episode entirely. In 2010, an anonymous blog post circulated a list of 57 Cornell students and alumni as rapists. That list grew out of a Boston-area serial rape case in which DNA evidence had connected several men — a case that did reach the courts, and which produced a published New York Court of Appeals decision, People v. Reome (2010). The blog list was not a court record. It was anonymous, unverified, and included people who were never charged with anything. Cornell Police said it had no records connecting the listed names to any assault.

The aftermath is the reason this distinction matters. Publishing an unsourced list of names attached to the word “rapist” produced retaliation, doxxing, and damage to people who had done nothing wrong. It also made it harder, not easier, for survivors of real assault to be heard — because it trained everyone involved to treat allegations as noise.

What the 2010 list was not

  • Not a court filing
  • Not verified by any authority
  • Not connected to a single incident
  • Not evidence of anything

What the 2026 complaint is

  • A 101-page filing in state court
  • Named parties with counsel
  • Part of an active grand jury referral
  • An allegation, still denied

If you have seen “Cornell 57” used to describe the 2024 case, that is a conflation of two unrelated things, and repeating it will misinform people about a case involving real people. This site is named after the old list only to make the correction, and it deliberately does not reproduce that list.

Support & reporting

If any of this is close to home, these are the real channels. They work whether or not anything appears in the news.

Report to Cornell Office of Institutional Equity and Title IX online reporting tool → Confidential resources Cornell’s confidential support listings for survivors → Report to the State The NYS Office of the Inspector General handles campus sexual violence complaints statewide → National support RAINN — hotlines, text lines, and directories of local advocates →

Cornell’s own language on concealment is worth repeating verbatim, because it is correct: “Only those who perpetrate sexual violence benefit from its concealment.” Concealment protects perpetrators, not survivors.

Sources

Every factual claim on this page traces to one of these. Where a source is secondary, it is labeled. Where something is only alleged, it says so.

Primary — Cornell University

  1. Update on disturbing allegations of sexual violence — Office of the President, Nov. 26, 2024
  2. FAQ Regarding 2024 Chi Phi Sexual Assault Allegations — updated Sept. 30, 2026
  3. Statement on the District Attorney’s investigation — Sept. 28, 2026
  4. Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault — final recommendations — Mar. 17, 2026
  5. 2025 Cornell Survey of Sexual Assault and Related Misconduct results — Nov. 4, 2025

Reporting

  1. Cornell, Chi Phi Sued by Victim of Alleged Gang Rape, Drugging in 2024 — The Cornell Daily Sun
  2. University Releases Statement on Alleged Gang Rape at Chi Phi — The Cornell Daily Sun
  3. Tompkins County DA Reopens Criminal Investigation — The Cornell Daily Sun
  4. Cornell Denies Defendants Only Wrote Essays, Confirms Expulsions — The Cornell Daily Sun
  5. Lawsuit: Cornell fraternity brothers drugged, gang-raped student — New York Post
  6. Former Cornell student sues school, 7 fraternity members — CBS News
  7. Details emerge in case of former Cornell student — CBS News
  8. Fraternity in alleged Cornell rape says accused members were… — USA Today
  9. Lawsuit Accuses Seven Cornell Frat Members — Finger Lakes Daily News
  10. DA reopens investigation into frat brothers — Scripps / WKRC
  11. DA’s Office Addresses ‘Vulgar’ Screenshot from Alleged Cornell Case — People
  12. Exclusive video obtained of Cornell fraternity’s group Snapchat conversation — CBS News
  13. Cornell lawsuit raises questions about what universities do with warning signs — GlobeNewswire — carries Van Houten’s account of the screenshot and the absence of an independent investigation
  14. Nightmarish lawsuit claims Cornell fraternity men drugged & gang raped former student — CNY Central — published the complaint’s Snapchat exhibit
  15. Cornell fraternity Snapchat messages could be key in Jane Doe rape case — The Hill

Unrelated — the 2010 case

  1. People v. Reome, 2010 NY Int. 118 (N.Y. Ct. App. June 17, 2010) — the only adjudicated criminal decision connected to the “57” figure. It concerns a different case and different people.

The 2010 anonymous blog list is deliberately not reproduced or linked here. It is unverified, it is not a legal record, and republishing it would repeat the specific harm it caused.

Colophon. This is an independent, non-profit, reader-funded project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Cornell University, Chi Phi, Tri-Delta, or any party to the litigation. It carries no advertising and no trackers.

Accuracy. This page is a secondary account assembled from public sources, not legal advice or journalism. The plaintiff is identified as Jane Doe and is not named here. If you are a party to this matter and believe something here is inaccurate, the Daily Sun operates a public tip line and Cornell operates a formal reporting channel.

Last reviewed against sources: