Almost two years after a former Cornell University student says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple Chi Phi fraternity members in a single night, the criminal investigation into the case has been officially reopened. The civil lawsuit she filed in September 2026 — naming seven students, the fraternity, and the university itself — brought details into public view that prosecutors say they had never seen, including a Snapchat message that allegedly invited fraternity brothers upstairs while she was incapacitated. A grand jury will now decide whether criminal charges follow.
What the lawsuit says happened on the night of October 19, 2024
The woman at the center of the case, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, was 20 years old when the alleged assault occurred. According to her lawsuit, the night began at Cornell’s Tri Delta house and continued at a local Ithaca bar. She arrived at the Chi Phi fraternity house around 11 p.m. to meet someone she considered a friend, already visibly intoxicated. The complaint alleges that once inside she was given more alcohol and pressured into taking drugs — including a substance the men allegedly identified as ketamine — and that multiple fraternity members sexually assaulted her while she was impaired.
One of the most damning pieces of alleged evidence is a message posted to a Snapchat group called ‘Chi Phi Actives’ while Doe was upstairs. The lawsuit includes an image it says shows that message effectively inviting other members up for sexual access to her. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has since acknowledged his office was never provided that image during the original handling of the case in 2024 — a detail that now sits at the center of the reopened investigation. Doe says she woke around 5:45 a.m. bruised and with fragmented memories. She reported the incident to the Cornell University Police Department on November 8, 2024, several weeks later. These remain allegations in a civil complaint; no criminal conviction has been established.
At least one defendant has denied the allegations outright. Attorney Jeremy Saland, representing defendant Scott Kretzschmar, says his client never sexually assaulted or touched Doe and argues that evidence contradicts her account.
The essay controversy and what Cornell actually did
When the lawsuit became public, one detail ignited a specific kind of outrage: the allegation that accused students were permitted to submit essays that could be used to mitigate their disciplinary consequences. The phrase ‘punished by writing an essay’ spread faster than any nuance could follow it.
Cornell disputes that framing directly. The university says its investigation produced serious sanctions — including suspensions and expulsions — and rejects the idea that essays were the only consequence. Federal student privacy law prevents Cornell from publicly identifying which individual received which sanction. Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, has stated that two of the seven accused students were expelled and others received lesser punishments; that account comes from plaintiff’s counsel, not a public disciplinary record. The Chi Phi chapter was placed on indefinite suspension and remains barred from campus. What is not in dispute is that no one faced criminal charges in 2024 — and that Title IX processes and criminal investigations are fundamentally different things, a distinction that matters enormously when the public is trying to weigh whether justice was served.
Why the criminal case stalled — and why it may move now
DA Van Houten has offered a blunt explanation for why no one was charged in 2024: Doe’s original statement to police, he says, did not include allegations that she was unknowingly drugged, forced to participate in sexual acts, or unconscious during the encounter. He has also said his office did not conduct an independent investigation and instead relied on the Cornell University Police’s work.
Giuffra has pushed back hard on that reasoning, arguing that trauma survivors require specially trained interviewers and that Doe was never given one. That argument is not abstract — it is a documented problem in how sexual assault investigations are conducted nationwide, and it goes to the heart of why so many cases collapse before they reach a prosecutor’s desk.
On September 28, 2026, Van Houten announced that the case will go before a grand jury for consideration of possible criminal charges against the seven alleged perpetrators. That is not an indictment — a grand jury reviews evidence and decides whether there is sufficient basis to charge. But it is a consequential shift from where this case stood a year ago, when it was effectively closed. Cornell has said publicly that it supports the decision to reopen the investigation. Jane Doe left the university. She has said that the aftermath was compounded by feeling ostracized by parts of the student community rather than supported. The system’s first answer to her was essays and silence. Whether the second answer is different is now up to a grand jury.
- how universities handle fraternity sexual assault cases
