Woman who accused Cornell students of rape says president's response made her feel 'unsupported'

The pistillate who accused 7 Cornell University students of raping her astatine a fraternity location has weighed successful connected a looming module ballot of nary assurance successful the school’s leadership, saying the university’s president questioned wherefore she waited to study being assaulted — an alleged remark she said near her feeling “unsupported and disbelieved.”

The lawsuit of Jane Doe, arsenic she is identified successful tribunal documents, has prompted pupil protests, renewed scrutiny of the university’s disciplinary strategy and a authorities probe into the alleged battle successful October 2024.

In a missive past week to module leaders and obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, Jane Doe gave a secondhand relationship of a speech from November 2024, soon aft she reported the alleged assault. The president of her sorority told her that Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff had questioned Jane Doe's hold successful reporting the alleged assault, which the sorority person interpreted arsenic casting uncertainty connected her story.

“President Kotlikoff’s archetypal effect was on the lines of, ‘Why did she hold truthful agelong to study it?’” Jane Doe wrote successful the letter. She said the speech made her little assured that the medication could grip what happened with the sensitivity and fairness she expected.

Cornell’s dean of faculty, however, offered a antithetic relationship of the conversation. In an email sent Tuesday to module senators and verified by the AP, prof Chris Schaffer said different authoritative who was contiguous astatine the speech recalled that Kotlikoff asked wherefore bystanders, not Jane Doe herself, didn’t study the alleged battle sooner done the school’s anonymous extremity line, particularly since the allegations were already circulating connected societal media.

Schaffer said helium delayed sharing Jane Doe’s missive with module senators until helium could get different relationship of the conversation. He said helium forwarded the missive to assemblage lawyers, who passed it connected to an autarkic squad investigating Cornell’s response.

Schaffer said he's against the projected no-confidence resolution, saying it identified nary circumstantial failures oregon fixes, but acknowledged module frustration. “The choler successful our assemblage is justified and I stock it.”

Kotlikoff did not respond Tuesday to an email enquiry astir Jane Doe’s letter. A connection from a assemblage spokesperson besides disputed her relationship of the conversation, saying Kotlikoff was asking astir bystanders' actions alternatively than Jane Doe.

Her letter, transmitted done her attorney, comes arsenic Cornell module see a solution declaring nary assurance successful the assemblage administration’s quality to code what immoderate module members person described arsenic an “ongoing crisis” of intersexual battle connected campus.

Faculty members began debating the solution astatine a gathering past Wednesday, wherever Kotlikoff faced pointed questions astir the school's effect to intersexual battle allegations and its oversight of fraternities. The Faculty Senate is expected to resume statement connected Oct. 28 earlier holding an physics vote.

In her letter, Jane Doe said she wanted module members to person accusation that mightiness beryllium applicable to their deliberations. She emphasized that she was not trying to archer them however to vote.

“My volition is not to prescribe however the Senate should construe this account, but alternatively to supply accusation that its members whitethorn privation to see oregon analyse further,” she wrote.

Messages seeking remark were near for Jane Doe’s lawyers, Thomas Giuffra and W. Whitney Seals.