Cornell Student Sues Over Alleged Drug-Facilitated Rape At Fraternity Party

A Cornell student suing over a rape allegation says two years later she still cannot sleep. Her attorney, Thomas Giuffre, confirms the trauma remains deep and unhealed. Jane Doe filed her suit in New York last week. She claims fraternity brothers drugged her with alcohol and ketamine at an October 2024 party. The attack allegedly lasted hours before ending. Seven men named as defendants were all then-Cornell students in the Chi Phi fraternity. One sent a Snapchat message to active members offering "free p***y" for Doe upstairs. A photo of that chat appears in the legal filing.

Tompkins County District Attorney officials stated no criminal charges followed the investigation. Giuffre argues law enforcement did little after she first spoke up. Another lawyer said his client never contacted police at all. Cornell expelled some accused students and suspended others temporarily. The lawsuit says the school let them mitigate their conduct by writing essays. Yet the defendants continue studies while Doe dropped out completely.

Doe described the event as devastating and humiliating in her sworn court statement. She stopped going to class immediately after the incident happened on October 19, 2024. Now she battles anxiety and depression alongside those sleepless nights Giuffre noted earlier. Fear of public identification worries her about damaging relationships or ending her career permanently. She tried rebuilding a reputation that now faces serious threats from this case alone.

Giuffre paints Doe as someone who achieved something rare for her small hometown background. Few students from her region reach Ivy League campuses in the first place. He calls her accomplishment unusual given where she grew up originally. Now she has left college entirely after this ordeal struck hard. The accused boys move on with normal lives while she loses that same benefit forever.

Giuffre admits even winning the lawsuit cannot fix what broke inside her mind and body. "You could give her all the money in the world," he said sadly to reporters. No amount of cash buys back lost years or trust stolen from a young woman. The Chi Phi fraternity sits suspended from campus operations since this event took place there late one night.

Nobody wants this kind of thing in their lives. That sentiment rings true for everyone involved, yet the reality on the ground at a Chi Phi fraternity house in Ithaca, New York, turned out to be something far more harrowing. An investigation by the local District Attorney's office concluded with no criminal charges filed against any of the seven accused students.

The story centers on Doe, who was just 20 years old when she arrived at the fraternity home late on October 19, 2024. She had already been drinking heavily all night around Ithaca. In her lawsuit, she alleges that a fraternity member pulled her aside and asked her to have a threesome with another male student. Doe claims in the suit that she was too intoxicated to consent at that point, but she was taken upstairs anyway. The two men allegedly pressured her to snort ketamine, smoke marijuana, and drink high-proof liquor before sexually assaulting her.

A third fraternity member walked into the room and began kissing her. He and one of the other men then placed her on a bed and assaulted her again, according to the filing. It was during this alleged assault at around 1:40 am that someone sent a message to the active-members Snapchat group called 'Chi Phi Actives'. The text read there was free p***y upstairs. A screenshot included in the legal document shows another member replying with comments like You can walk in and whip it out.

The lawsuit accuses the sender of using that message to encourage other Chi Phi members to join what it describes as a gang rape of Doe. That message allegedly marked the moment the circle of attackers widened. More fraternity members entered the room soon after. At one point, seven men poured ketamine over Doe's body and snorted it while she lay on her back. One man allegedly poured ketamine onto his genitals and ordered her to snort it.

Eventually, five of the men left the room. Two took Doe into a smaller room believed to be the fraternity president's office where she claimed in the complaint that she was pressured to snort more ketamine. By then, the complaint says, she was completely incapacitated before the two men sexually assaulted her again. The alleged assault ended at around 5:45 am when Doe says she lost consciousness.

Doe said the fear and humiliation caused by the alleged attack led her to drop out of Cornell. Nearly three weeks after the incident, she filed a report with Cornell University Police on November 8, 2024, after friends encouraged her to come forward. Cornell temporarily suspended Chi Phi and the seven accused students that same day. The university states the Xi chapter remains barred from campus.

The university later launched a Title IX investigation which included at least 12 hearings in May 2025 and has since concluded, though the lawsuit does not disclose its findings. That criminal investigation ultimately produced no charges against any of the seven men. Jeremy Saland, an attorney for one of the defendants, denied Doe's allegations in their entirety and said law enforcement never even contacted his client.

Our legal system allows anyone to make a complaint, criminal or otherwise, even a wrongful one. However, it is lost on no one that the District Attorney's Office, led by a chief prosecutor with the duty to pursue justice and uphold the rule of law without bias or favor, filed no charges against my client, Saland told the Daily Mail. He added simply that the evidence against him, or more accurately lack thereof, didn't even muster up to the nominal standard of probable cause to arrest because the allegations as described did not happen. There was absolutely no criminality according to his client who is completely innocent.

The outcome leaves many questions about how such an event could unfold with zero charges and what that means for campus safety.

Period. Giuffre stated that the news one accused individual allegedly did not speak with police has only worsened his worries about how thoroughly this case was probed. He claims Doe was never interviewed again by officers after making her report and wonders if outside investigators even saw the Snapchat message shared in her suit. Cornell later started its own Title IX inquiry, which held at least 12 hearings back in May 2025 before finishing, though the lawsuit keeps those findings secret. Giuffre says his lawyers eventually got that text and think Cornell knew about it, but he does not know if the school ever handed it to local cops. The message for free p***y should have totally triggered something to say this isn't right... We need to look closely at this, but they did nothing about that,' Giuffre said. Then again, if you don't go looking, you're not going to find anything, are you? Ithaca PD and Cornell's campus police ignored repeated requests for comment. Cornell initially refused to talk about the pending court case but later posted a long statement on its website. The school said the claims were investigated and decided upon by its civil rights and student conduct offices, and that the Xi chapter of Chi Phi remains barred from campus. Federal privacy law prevents it from disclosing any disciplinary action taken against individual students. Violations of university policies could lead to sanctions up to and including suspension or expulsion,' the school said. We will respond in detail through the legal process.' Cornell added that it takes sexual violence extremely seriously and pointed to a presidential task force launched after the incident, whose recommendations are now being implemented. Chi Phi's national office also released a statement, calling the allegations deeply concerning and insisting that anyone who reports sexual violence deserves to be heard and treated with compassion, dignity and respect. Personal Integrity, and our mission of Building Better Men, call on every brother to demonstrate character through his actions and respect for the dignity and safety of others. Sexual violence is fundamentally incompatible with those expectations. We are aware of the lawsuit concerning an alleged incident in 2024. While we cannot discuss the specific allegations during pending litigation, we take this matter seriously. Our responsibility is to approach this with care for those affected and respect for a fair legal process,' the statement read. Giuffre said Doe's allegations were among the most disturbing he has encountered in his career and that he found it particularly jarring that the alleged conduct took place at an Ivy League university associated with some of the country's highest-achieving students. You think this is an Ivy League school. It's one of the best and brightest of the American educational system, and they would act like just animals, for lack of a better word,' Giuffre said. He added: It's a difficult complaint to read and, frankly, it was a difficult complaint to write. It's been very hard for her. It's been very triggering. She's tried to make a go of it, but there's still a lot to overcome.