The Cornell Chi Phi Case (two voices)

Sam This is the story of what's alleged to have happened at Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity house over one night in October 2024 — a gang rape allegation that two years later would pull in the university, a district attorney, and New York's attorney general. It starts a day earlier, with a warning the university already had.

Maya A warning — so something happened before the night itself that should have raised flags? That's a striking way to begin.

Sam On October 18, 2024, someone overdosed on ketamine at the Chi Phi house. That's according to a heavily redacted internal report Cornell later produced from its own 2025 disciplinary hearings. And it wasn't an isolated incident — a week before that, police had already responded to a drug-related incident at the same house.

Maya Two drug incidents at the same house inside a week, one of them an overdose. Did the university know about either of them before the night you are about to describe?

Sam A later lawsuit would make that claim — that Cornell knew, or should have known, about a drug culture there before the assault. But on the night in question, none of that had stopped anything. The next evening, October 19th, Jane Doe — 20 years old at the time — started drinking with her sorority sisters at Cornell's Tri-Delta house.

Maya And where does that evening take her — does it stay at the sorority house, or does the drinking move elsewhere?

Sam It moves to a bar called Moonies, where a Tri-Delta event was being held. Over about three hours, between the sorority house and the bar, she consumed the equivalent of ten drinks. According to the lawsuit, she was visibly marked on her hands as underage — bars do that to flag who can't legally be served — and was clearly intoxicated, yet Moonies employees kept serving her anyway.

Maya So the bar staff allegedly kept serving someone they had themselves marked as underage, and who was visibly drunk. Where does she go once she leaves Moonies that night?

Sam That service becomes one of the claims in the eventual lawsuit. Around 11 p.m., Doe left the bar alone and walked to the Chi Phi house to see a friend there — a fraternity brother later identified in the suit as Matthew Ingalls. According to the complaint, once she arrived, Ingalls allegedly proposed a threesome with himself and another brother, even though the lawsuit says she was "incapable of consenting." He allegedly brought her to a room anyway.

Maya And once she's in that room, what does the complaint say happens next — does it stay with just the two of them?

Sam No. The lawsuit alleges Ingalls and a second man, Johnathan Newell, pressured her to snort a white powder believed to be ketamine, and gave her marijuana and a high-proof rum. Then a third man, Gillio Lopes, allegedly joined — kissing her while Newell groped her from behind, before the two placed her on a bed and initiated sex without her consent, according to the complaint.

Maya That's three men already involved before anything like a wider group gets pulled in. Does the complaint describe how it spread beyond that room?

Sam It does. At 1:42 a.m., someone sent a Snapchat message to fraternity members reading, roughly, "Free p***y in alum pu" — a reference to the house's alumni room. Replies came back celebrating it: "This is crazy work," "I f*****g love chi phi." One brother reportedly asked by video if the "shop" was "still open," and two others answered yes.

Maya So that message is effectively an invitation sent to the whole chapter, and people are responding with enthusiasm rather than alarm. How many men does the lawsuit say came to the room after that?

Sam The complaint names seven total participants across the night: Ingalls, Newell, Winston Lee, Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris, and Scott Kretzschmar. The lawsuit alleges the assault continued for hours after that Snapchat message went out, with Doe becoming incapacitated while what the complaint calls "heinous criminal sexual acts" were committed against her, running until 5:45 in the morning.

Maya Nearly four hours after that message went out. What does Doe herself say or remember about it once the morning comes, and who does she say it to?

Sam What the record shows is murky and conflicting. One roommate recalled Doe saying the next morning, "Oh my goodness, isn't that crazy?" — laughing as she told it, though the roommate said she also seemed to be in shock, and she didn't use words like rape or assault. A second roommate gave a very different account, saying Doe told her directly, "I wasn't comfortable."

Maya Two people in the same house hearing two different stories from her within hours of each other — that's a strange split right out of the gate. Does anything else happen that same morning or the day after?

Sam Two days later, on October 21st, one of the accused men texted her to apologize, saying his memory was "kinda fuzzy." That's according to the Title IX record — Cornell's internal civil-rights process, separate from any police investigation — cited in later court filings.

Maya Two days after the night itself, then. What does Doe herself say in the days right after that, once word starts getting around campus?

Sam By October 23rd, rumors were spreading, and she texted Ingalls directly: "My reputation is destroyed and I'm utterly ashamed." But in that same exchange she also wrote, "everyone needs to grow up because sexuality and sex and stuff is changing and stuff like this is going to become more common. i'm also really open minded tho. i love u king." Both of those are in the same exchange.

Maya Those two things sitting side by side in the same message is hard to square. Does her tone stay like that, or does something change her mind over the following days?

Sam It shifts. By November 1st, she'd been excluded from a fraternity event, and her message that day reads very differently: "i knew this was going to happen. the woman will always get the short end of the stick. yall aren't my friends. yall are covering your a****."

Maya A very different message from the one she sent nine days earlier. What does the record show from the men's side during this same stretch of weeks?

Sam One of the accused men, in his own Title IX interview, described efforts to convince Doe not to "spread any rumors" about what had happened. The same record quotes him saying that he and his co-members were "in the idea of just deny" if anyone ever asked them about that night.

Maya So, by his own account, there was already an understanding among some of the men about what they would say if anyone ever asked them about that night?

Sam That is what the record quotes him as saying: an effort to persuade her not to spread rumors, and a shared idea among the men to deny it — all before she had made any report to anyone in authority.

Sam That arrangement ends on November 8th. Doe texts Ingalls, "i think i'm done talking to you. i know you lied." The same day, she files a report with Cornell University police describing the incident at the Chi Phi house.

Maya After weeks of going back and forth in private messages, she finally puts it in front of police. What does Cornell itself do once that report lands on the same day?

Sam Cornell moves fast. That same day, the university places the Chi Phi chapter on temporary suspension and issues temporary suspensions to several of the students involved, citing alleged violations of the student code of conduct. The university's Office of Civil Rights also opens an incident report once the complaint reaches it.

Maya So within hours the university has at least started a formal process on its own side. Does Doe have any direct contact with the people running that process soon after?

Sam Six days later, on November 14th, she meets with the Title IX Coordinator, the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, and Cornell University police together. That's her first formal sit-down with the people who'll be handling both the disciplinary and the criminal threads of this.

Maya And for the seven men already under suspension at that point — what does Cornell offer them as the process gets underway?

Sam According to the lawsuit, the seven suspended men — Ingalls, Newell, Lee, Lopes, Sarabia, Norris, and Kretzschmar — were given the chance to submit mitigation essays to the university as an early way to address their conduct. Two years later, once the case became public, that detail became a major point of contention, with Cornell disputing that essays were ever the sole form of discipline involved.

Maya Essays sound like a strange first step for something described as a gang rape allegation. Does the fraternity's own national organization weigh in at this stage?

Sam Within days, Chi Phi's national organization temporarily suspends the Cornell chapter, with its executive director saying the national body acted on its own accord, separate from whatever Cornell was doing. There was some confusion in early reporting about who suspended the chapter first, the university or the national fraternity, but the national body maintained it moved on its own.

Maya Beyond Chi Phi itself, does anything happen across the other fraternities and sororities at Cornell once word of this spreads among other fraternities and sororities?

Sam Cornell's Interfraternity Council — the student body that coordinates fraternity life across campus — votes unanimously to cancel all social activities for the weekend, saying the decision was made "in solidarity and respect for those affected by the recent tragedies," while noting the council itself wasn't part of Cornell's ongoing investigation. The cancellation reaches every fraternity chapter the council oversees.

Maya A campus-wide shutdown of social events is a pretty visible response. How does the student newspaper's editorial board react to all of this?

Sam Sharply. The editorial board argues the problem "runs deep at Cornell... deeper than any one frat, deeper than any generation of students and certainly deeper than can be solved with any one action or suspension," and calls outright for a permanent ban on fraternities at Cornell — not just a suspension of one chapter.

Maya That's a far bigger demand than anything the university or the national fraternity has done so far. Does the university's leadership say anything publicly during this period?

Sam On November 26th, Interim President Michael Kotlikoff issues a statement describing "serious and deeply disturbing allegations of drug abuse and sexual violence at the Chi Phi fraternity house." He confirms campus police are continuing their criminal investigation and that the Office of Student Conduct and the Title IX office are "diligently reviewing all reported information" tied to the fraternity.

Maya So the university's president has now described the allegations in a public statement. Does that statement give any sense of what happens to the suspended students next?

Sam It confirms the chapter remains under the temporary suspension order issued on November 8th, and that "late last week," additional temporary suspensions were issued for a number of students, described as interim measures meant to protect the immediate physical health and safety of all students on campus.

Sam That interim measures language from Kotlikoff's statement turns out to be the opening of a much longer process. Cornell's Title IX investigation formally begins January 14, 2025, and it runs for months — distinct from any criminal inquiry, built entirely around the university's own disciplinary standards rather than New York law.

Maya Months is longer than I'd have guessed for a campus process. What does an investigation of that length involve — is it mostly paperwork, or are people being questioned directly?

Sam Both, at real scale. Records that later became public — through one defendant's own court appeal — show the university investigator conducted more than fifty interviews, including thirty-two witnesses, and the case proceeded to twelve days of hearings in May 2025, with more than thirty witnesses testifying in total. The full record ran to an estimated four to five thousand pages, with over seventeen hundred pages of transcripts alone.

Maya A far bigger operation than the earlier mitigation-essay stage made it sound like. What came out of all those interviews — did investigators find anything beyond what was already alleged in the complaint?

Sam One finding stood out: the investigation confirmed that on the night of the alleged assault, a photo of Jane Doe was shared among active Chi Phi members in a Snapchat group — a finding recorded in the university's own investigation.

Maya And after twelve days of hearings and that much evidence, what did the panel decide to do with the seven men originally suspended?

Sam The panel's ninety-nine-page decision produced a range of sanctions. Two of the seven were expelled outright. Two more were suspended. A third man, who had already graduated, was permanently barred from campus. The final two received no-contact orders and were assigned reflection papers. Chi Phi's chapter itself was shut down and permanently banned from campus. Socially, two of the named brothers were also removed from their rugby club after the allegations came to light.

Maya Two expelled, two suspended, one barred from campus, and two given no-contact orders and reflection papers. Where does Doe's own account to police sit alongside all of this?

Sam Her original sworn statement to police — the one filed back in November 2024 — described her participation in the drug use and the sexual conduct that night as, in her words, "voluntary, conscious, and consensual." It did not allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped.

Maya That's strikingly different from everything the civil complaint would later claim. Is there anything in that same statement that complicates it further, or does it read as fully consistent?

Sam It's not fully consistent. In portions of her full statement to Cornell police — later obtained separately by reporters — she also told officers the incident "felt like coercion." So in a single statement, she used the word "consensual" and also said that it felt like coercion.

Maya Having both of those in one statement would make any outside reader's job harder, whether they're a Title IX panel or a prosecutor. What did the district attorney make of that statement?

Sam Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten reviewed the case during this same window and declined to bring any criminal charges. He based that decision specifically on the statement as written — the "voluntary, conscious, and consensual" language.

Maya So the university's own process produces expulsions and a shuttered fraternity, while the only prosecutor who looked at it finds nothing to charge. What happens to Doe herself once that decision comes down?

Sam She withdraws from Cornell. The lawsuit she would eventually file states simply that she later withdrew from the university. After that, the matter drops almost entirely out of public view — confined to the closed Title IX file and the DA's unprosecuted case — and stays that way for roughly two years.

Sam Nearly two years after that night, Doe filed a sweeping civil complaint in New York Supreme Court. The filing ran one hundred and one pages and named more than a dozen defendants — the seven fraternity members, Cornell itself, Chi Phi's local and national organizations, the Tri Delta sorority, and the bar Moonies, where she'd been served despite being visibly underage and intoxicated.

Maya That's a much wider net than just the seven men involved that night — pulling in the university, the sorority, and the bar itself as defendants. What legal grounds does the complaint rest on against that whole group?

Sam The claims include negligence, breach of contract, sexual assault and battery, and violations of New York's Human Rights Law. The negligence and contract claims are largely aimed at the institutions — Cornell, the sorority, the bar — for allegedly failing in duties they owed her, while the assault and battery claims target the seven men directly.

Maya Those are the legal claims. Does Doe say anything herself about why she is bringing this now, two years after she had already left Cornell?

Sam She spoke to the student newspaper directly. "What happened to me was horrific and deeply disturbing," she told The Sun. "Almost two years later, I still carry the weight of its impact every day and night."

Maya Almost two years on, in her own words. What does her attorney say about how the case was handled before the lawsuit was filed?

Sam Her attorney, speaking to CBS, said that, after an investigation, only two of the accused were expelled and no one was arrested. That is his description of the two years before the suit.

Maya And on the financial side of a suit this large — naming over a dozen defendants and alleging assault, negligence, and civil rights violations — is there any indication of what Doe is asking for in damages?

Sam No. The lawsuit does not specify how much she is seeking — there is no dollar figure attached to any of the claims it makes against the defendants.

Sam Once the lawsuit became public in September 2026, the Ithaca Police Department — the city force, separate from Cornell's own campus police — said it had never been told about any of this. It called the 2024 allegations "disturbing" and said it only learned of them through media coverage, not through any report filed with its own officers.

Maya So the city police, outside Cornell's gates, had no idea this had happened at all until it hit the news two years later. Does that mean no one ever brought it to them directly?

Sam That's what their statement says — the incident was never reported to that agency. Everything had gone through Cornell's own campus police and the university's Title IX process instead, which meant the city department was left out entirely for nearly two years.

Maya So for two years the city force did not know the case existed. What do the accused men's own attorneys say once the lawsuit puts their names and this narrative into public view?

Sam They push back hard. The men deny wrongdoing — some maintain the sexual activity was consensual, others deny participating at all. One attorney called the lawsuit "intentionally dishonest," while still describing his client's conduct as immature but not illegal. Another said the public narrative was "incomplete" and inconsistent with evidence from Cornell's own investigation, including Doe's statements.

Maya So they're not just denying the specific acts — they're saying the whole framing of the lawsuit leaves things out. Does either attorney point to anything specific that's supposedly missing?

Sam The second attorney pointed to the evidence developed during Cornell's own investigation, including Doe's own statements, and said the public narrative being told about his client was inconsistent with that evidence.

Maya So her own earlier statements are part of what the men's attorneys are pointing to. What about Chi Phi's national organization — how does it respond once its handling of the chapter comes under scrutiny?

Sam It defends itself firmly, saying it "went beyond anything the law or Cornell University required" by expelling the involved men permanently from the national fraternity. But there's a wrinkle: despite describing that as a permanent ban, the Cornell chapter's charter was never formally revoked — the university's own fraternity-life listing still shows it as "dormant," not terminated, which drew criticism that the organization hadn't been held accountable in any lasting way.

Maya Members expelled for good, but a charter listed only as dormant. Does this case feed into any larger conversation about fraternities more generally?

Sam The Hill described it as the latest in a long line of incidents that have made the public wary of Greek life nationally, noting that an estimated 750,000 undergraduates nationwide are involved in fraternities and sororities.

Maya City police, the men's attorneys, the national fraternity and a wider debate about Greek life, all within days. Does anyone with legal authority act on any of it?

Sam Yes — and quickly. On September 28th, District Attorney Matthew Van Houten reopened the criminal investigation into the 2024 allegations, citing the national attention the civil lawsuit had drawn. At the same time, he defended his original 2024 decision not to prosecute, repeating that Doe's sworn statement at the time described her participation as "voluntary, conscious, and consensual," and said plainly that his office couldn't have based that 2024 call on a lawsuit that wouldn't exist for nearly two more years.

Maya So he reopens the case while still standing by the decision he made in 2024. What does Cornell itself do on that same day?

Sam Cornell announced its own independent review of how it handled the case from the start. The university's board of trustees brought in Sally Yates, the former U.S. deputy attorney general, to examine the original investigation, the disciplinary process, and the campus police response — a review separate from, and running alongside, the DA's reopened criminal case.

Maya A former deputy attorney general, brought in by the trustees. Does the state get involved as well, beyond the county district attorney's office?

Sam The very next day, September 29th, Governor Kathy Hochul directed Attorney General Letitia James to open her own criminal investigation into the 2024 incident and to review how Cornell had handled the allegations. Hochul said James would "investigate the incident and, if warranted, prosecute any offenses... and present evidence to a grand jury" — effectively putting a state prosecutor on the case alongside the county DA.

Maya Having the county DA, the state attorney general, and Cornell's own independent reviewer all looking at this simultaneously is a lot of scrutiny landing at once. Does Cornell respond directly to that pressure that same day?

Sam Cornell published a detailed public FAQ defending its Title IX process, stating that the Office of Civil Rights and Student Conduct had investigated "consistent with university policies and Title IX," with hearings held over multiple days before a panel of trained faculty and staff. It also explicitly said its process is "distinct from the criminal justice system," applying university standards rather than criminal law, while noting it supported the DA's decision to let a grand jury hear Doe's story.

Maya That's Cornell drawing a clear line between what its own process is built to do and what a criminal court does. Does the FAQ address the essay-writing criticism directly, given how central that detail became?

Sam Directly and forcefully. Cornell stated, "Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false," pointing again to the expulsions, suspensions, and the chapter's permanent closure as evidence that discipline went well beyond any mitigation essays offered at the earliest stage of the process.

Sam Early October brought new material into public view, surfacing through the defendants' own court appeals rather than through Cornell or the prosecutors. A woman who says she gave Cornell police leads back in the original 2024 investigation told NBC News she feels "betrayed" by how the case was ultimately handled.

Maya Betrayed is a strong word for someone who was not one of the parties. Was she the only one criticising how the original investigation had been run?

Sam She was not. Critics argued that investigators had failed to chase obvious leads, and one of them said this about the Snapchat group chat: "What they should have done is investigated who was on that group chat and interviewed witnesses and developed evidence. That's what investigators do, and that was not done at all."

Maya So, according to that critic, the group chat was never properly investigated. Does Cornell answer that criticism directly, or does it stay with its earlier defense?

Sam Cornell's position stays what it stated in its FAQ — that it conducted a thorough, monthslong Title IX investigation that produced "a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions."

Maya Alongside that criticism, what did CBS News find when it reviewed Doe's own Title IX interview transcripts directly, rather than secondhand summaries of them?

Sam The transcripts show the investigator read her account back to her word by word, giving her a chance to correct anything. In that interview, Doe explained her own understanding of consent, saying she didn't show "excitement and enthusiasm, which is kinda the basis of consent," and said she'd told the men she was tired and didn't want to continue, but was at times encouraged to take more substances.

Maya Her own description, read back to her and confirmed. Has anything followed from the district attorney or the Attorney General since those transcripts were reported?

Sam No outcome has followed yet. As of October 8, 2026, no criminal charges have been filed against any of the seven men. The DA's reopened investigation and the Attorney General's parallel inquiry are both proceeding toward the possibility of presenting evidence to a grand jury.

Maya With two separate prosecutorial tracks moving at once, is there any sense of which one might reach a grand jury first, or are they working jointly?

Sam They're described as running in coordination, under the arrangement Governor Hochul set up, rather than as a race between two separate offices. Meanwhile Cornell's own review, led by Sally Yates, continues examining the university's original investigation, its disciplinary process, and how campus police handled the case — a third inquiry, running alongside the two criminal ones but asking a different question: not whether a crime occurred, but whether Cornell's own response was adequate.

Maya And the civil lawsuit itself — does that keep moving through the courts while all of this plays out separately?

Sam It remains active in New York state court, still naming Cornell, Chi Phi's local and national organizations, Tri Delta, Moonies, and the seven men individually. Several of those men, through their attorneys, continue to deny wrongdoing and describe the encounter as consensual, pointing back to Doe's own initial statement to police as the more reliable account of what happened that night.

Maya So a university that calls its process thorough, a district attorney, and a state attorney general are all now going back over the same night, two years on.

Sam That's where the case sits as of October 8, 2026 — nothing resolved, three separate inquiries running in parallel, and an account of a single night in 2024 now being read, line by line, by a university's reviewer, a district attorney, and a state attorney general. That's where this story stands for now, and it's a good place to leave it.

Maya It's a genuinely unsettled ending, with real people still waiting on three different institutions to decide what the facts add up to, and I appreciate you walking through all of it so carefully.

Sam Before we go — this show is AI-generated, the voices you're hearing are synthetic, and everything in this episode was drawn from the source reporting we're about to credit, whose authors have no connection to this show. Everything today came from reporting by the Cornell Daily Sun, CBS News, ABC News, Wikipedia, NBC News, CNN, and statements published by Cornell University.

Maya Thanks for following this one all the way through with us — it's a lot to carry, and we're grateful you stayed with the story to its current, still-open end.