Former Cornell student tells faculty she felt disbelieved by president
A former Cornell student who accused seven men of sexually assaulting her at a fraternity house in 2024 has told faculty leaders she felt "unsupported and disbelieved" by university president Michael Kotlikoff. The Guardian
The two-page letter dated 14 October was addressed to the Cornell Faculty Senate. It was obtained and published by The New York Times on Tuesday, 20 October 2026. The former student is identified in court documents by the pseudonym Jane Doe.
Jane Doe wrote that she was passing on a second-hand account of a remark Kotlikoff purportedly made during a meeting with the leader of her sorority at the time, Tri Delta. She said the meeting took place in January 2025, shortly after her 2024 report of assault to the university.
According to Jane Doe, she was told Kotlikoff's initial response was along the lines of, 'Why did she wait so long to report it?' She wrote that she was sharing the account because it may be relevant as the Faculty Senate considers a vote of no confidence in Cornell's administration. Her letter does not explicitly call on the Senate to support the measure, but she wrote that her experience "diminished her confidence" in the administration's ability.
A Cornell spokesperson said on Tuesday that the second-hand account of Kotlikoff's question in the January 2025 meeting is incorrect, based on a documented first-hand account. Cornell said 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 social media activity about the incident in October 2024, and was not questioning Jane Doe's reporting.
The Faculty Senate has scheduled a meeting on 28 October to debate the no-confidence resolution, followed by electronic voting. The Senate lists the resolution as a pending matter. A statement in support of the resolution on the Senate site says it is motivated by the administration's decade-long failure to address sexual assault, not only by what a proposed investigation will find. Cornell Faculty Senate
That Senate page cites Cornell's 2025 survey on sexual assault and related misconduct, which found that 35% of undergraduate women and 52% of those in Greek life have experienced sexual assault at Cornell. It says reports of sexual assault have increased steadily since 2021, and that in the last two years Cornell added only one victim advocate position to cover nearly 30,000 students. It also says more than 1,200 sexual assaults were reported at Cornell from 2018 to 2024, that a drug arrest occurred at the Chi Phi house less than a day before Jane Doe's assault, and that the sober monitor at the fraternity party that night was one of her assailants.
