Jane Doe Challenges Cornell President Before No Confidence Vote

A former Cornell University student has challenged the university administration's handling of her sexual assault allegations in a letter to faculty leaders ahead of a potential no-confidence vote. In the October 14, 2026, letter, the woman, identified as Jane Doe, described a secondhand account of President Michael Kotlikoff's response to her November 2024 report, saying the experience undermined her confidence in the university.

The letter arrived as Cornell faces renewed scrutiny over allegations involving members of the now-dismantled Chi Phi fraternity. A civil lawsuit filed last month accuses seven men of drugging and sexually assaulting Doe during a party on October 19 and 20, 2024. According to the reports, she contacted campus police on November 8, approximately three weeks after the alleged incident.

Doe told the Faculty Senate that the former president of her Tri Delta sorority had described a conversation with Kotlikoff shortly after the allegations were reported. According to Doe's letter, the sorority leader recalled the president asking, "Why did she wait so long to report it?" Doe wrote that the sorority leader interpreted the question as expressing doubt about her account.

Doe said the conversation left her feeling unsupported by the administration. She submitted the information so faculty members could consider whether it was relevant to their deliberations, rather than directing them toward a particular decision.

"I felt unsupported and disbelieved by President Kotlikoff," Doe wrote in her letter to faculty leaders.

She also said the experience diminished her confidence in the university's ability to respond to her allegations with understanding, sensitivity and fairness. Her letter stated that she did not know how many people were aware of the conversation and wanted the Senate to have the opportunity to examine the account.

Cornell disputed Doe's characterization of the conversation. In a statement reported by NBC News, the university said Kotlikoff's question at a January 2025 meeting concerned bystanders who had not used Cornell's anonymous tip line, not Doe's decision to report the alleged assault.

"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 university said.

The university said the question concerned why bystanders had not reported the incident through the anonymous tip line despite social media discussion in October 2024. Cornell maintained that Kotlikoff was not questioning Doe's reporting decision.

Faculty Dean Chris B. Schaffer said he received the letter shortly before the Faculty Senate's October 14 meeting and forwarded it to the Office of the General Counsel for verification and referral to the independent review team. He said a university official who attended the January 2025 meeting provided a contemporaneous account that differed from the description in Doe's letter.

"The question was not about Jane Doe or her decision to report," Schaffer wrote in his explanation to faculty members.

A faculty senator, speaking anonymously to NBC News, questioned why the letter had not been disclosed earlier during the Senate's deliberations. Cornell responded that Schaffer's office lacked the investigative capacity to pursue private communications of this kind and that the matter had been referred to the appropriate university offices.

Earlier in October, Cornell appointed former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to lead an independent review of the university's response to Doe's allegations and its broader sexual misconduct policies. The university also previously investigated the allegations through its Title IX disciplinary process, expelling two students and imposing suspensions or lesser sanctions on others, according to NBC News.

The lawsuit names seven men accused of involvement in the alleged assault. Attorneys for several defendants have denied wrongdoing or disputed Doe's account. One defendant, Orazio Petito, the fraternity's former president, was removed from the lawsuit after his lawyer said he had been mistakenly identified as the chapter president at the time of the alleged incident, according to court documents cited by NBC News.