The Cornell Seven and the Case That Wouldn’t Close

The rumor that became a case

Ithaca in late October is cold enough to make students huddle in sweaters. On the night of Oct. 19 and into the early hours of Oct. 20, 2024, a 20-year-old Cornell student who would later be identified in court papers only as Jane Doe went to the Delta Xi chapter of Chi Phi. The lawsuit filed on her behalf in September 2026 says she arrived visibly intoxicated after about ten standard drinks in three hours. Inside, according to the complaint, a fraternity member pulled her aside and propositioned a threesome with another brother. The complaint says she was incapable of consenting in her drunken state. Two men then pressured her into snorting ketamine, a drug she had never used before, and plied her with marijuana and what the suit describes as Jamaican Liquor, a high-proof rum.

The 101-page filing names seven male students — Matthew Ingalls, Johnathan Newell, Winston Lee, Gillio Lopes, Diego Sarabia, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar — alongside Cornell University, the national Delta Xi fraternity, the Chi Phi chapter and its president, the plaintiff’s sorority, Delta Delta Delta, and an Ithaca bar alleged to have served alcohol to an underage, visibly intoxicated patron. The suit alleges sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract, violations of New York human rights law and negligence. It seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Embedded in the filing is a purported screenshot from a Snapchat exchange at 1:42 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, in which a participant alerts members to “free p” upstairs. Five of the seven men named in the lawsuit appear in the image. The complaint describes a seven-hour ordeal of drugging and repeated assault.

Jane Doe reported the incident on or about Nov. 8, 2024, to Cornell University Police Department. The same day, the student-run Cornell Daily Sun reported that an individual said they were sexually assaulted by several males and coerced into consuming ketamine and other drugs, prompting temporary suspensions of Chi Phi and Lambda Chi Alpha, the two houses on the block. Cornell confirmed on Nov. 26, 2024 that the Delta Xi chapter was under temporary suspension for alleged violations of the Student Code of Conduct and that interim measures had been issued for a number of students to protect health and safety.

The essay story and the university’s answer

Within days of the lawsuit becoming public in September 2026, social media filled with a particular accusation: that some of the accused students had been allowed to write essays in lieu of punishment. The lawsuit itself alleged that in addition to temporary suspensions, the men were afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays, the first mention of the essay rumor.

Cornell pushed back. University officials said the essay claim was false and that specific punitive measures could not be independently verified in the public record. The school said it had conducted an internal disciplinary investigation in 2024 with a panel of trained faculty and staff, where both the complainant and the accused had opportunities to testify and present evidence. It said sanctions included expulsions and suspensions, and that none of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence.

The Chi Phi Xi chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus. In February 2025 Cornell announced a Presidential Task Force for Campus Sexual Assault, a panel charged with developing recommendations. The university later said several recommendations had been implemented while others were in development. A 2025 school survey cited in the task force report showed a persistent climate of fear around reporting.

The lawsuit also accused Cornell of failing to protect the student and to adequately punish the men involved. The complaint says Jane Doe suffered severe emotional and psychological distress and personal physical injury, and that news of the incident quickly circulated through the school. She left the university afterward.

A prosecutor changes course

For nearly two years, the case sat in a closed file in Tompkins County. On Sept. 28, 2026, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said his office was reopening the investigation after an outcry over the treatment of the alleged offenders.

According to lawyers for the student, only two members of the Chi Phi fraternity were expelled after the October 2024 incident, none of the seven were arrested, and the others were made to write essays, attend workshops or serve short suspensions. Van Houten said the woman, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault, presented allegations in her lawsuit that were “dramatically different” from the statement she gave to police two years ago.

In a statement released later that Monday, Van Houten defended the earlier decision not to seek charges. He said Jane Doe’s sworn statement in November 2024 did not allege she was drugged against her will or gang raped. On the contrary, he said, the statement described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.

The district attorney released a summary of a six-page single-spaced typewritten statement Doe provided to Cornell police in November 2024. The summary says Doe told police she agreed to engage in sexual activity with two Chi Phi members because she was attracted to one of them and due to drunken curiousness. When she learned a third man would be involved, she remembered being excited because she thought the desire for a threesome meant they were gay. A third man shook her hand, pulled her in and they began making out while another man groped her. The three then ended up on a bed next to where a fourth man was sleeping and had a threesome.

The summary continues that four men later entered the room. Doe had difficulty remembering parts of what happened next. She remembered a man said something rude and mean to her, apologized, grabbed her face and started kissing her, and she backed away to stop him. Other members complimented her looks and asked if they could take drugs off her body, and she responded “Sure.” While men were doing drugs off her body, two men entered and said something like “Ok we’re shutting down whatever the f* this is.”

Van Houten said his office did not and could not have based its November 2024 decision on allegations in a civil lawsuit that would not be filed until nearly two years later. He said he had never been contacted by Jane Doe’s attorneys to say the original statement was inaccurate or to ask him to reconsider. He said he reached out to them after the lawsuit was filed to understand the discrepancy and the proper path forward.

He said he had asked a senior female prosecutor to prepare a case for a grand jury and recognized that the process of healing from trauma is personal and different for every person. Seeking justice sometimes requires reconsidering or reopening cases when additional evidence is provided, he said.

Cornell said it supported the decision to reopen the investigation and reiterated that any suggestion the university did not impose consequential punishments was false. A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate underreporting of sexual assault, the university said.

The campus and the country

The lawsuit’s emergence sparked a national firestorm. Photos of the seven fraternity members circulated online, and commentary ranged from criticism of the university and prosecutor’s office to doubt about the allegations. Actress Florence Pugh and U.S. lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke out about the case. Ocasio-Cortez said at a forum near Cornell’s campus that when men post in a group chat about a sexual encounter, it signals a culture where it is normal and acceptable, and that elite institutions must not protect those spaces.

On campus, the reaction was a mix of outrage, shock and exhaustion. Students described a humongous sense of unease as the story moved from private complaint to public lawsuit to a reopened criminal probe. The Chi Phi house, once a fixture on the fraternity block, remains shuttered.

The attorney for one of the men named in the suit, Jeremy Saland, denied the allegations. He acknowledged his client responded to and made an immature comment on Snapchat but said he did nothing else, was not involved in sexual activity, did not touch the plaintiff, and did not ingest ketamine.

The woman’s attorney told CBS that in the days following the assault, Jane Doe was traumatized, numb and unable to function or accept the horror of what had happened. She was in self-preservation mode, he said. He said she never spoke to anyone other than the officer who took her initial complaint and questioned why law enforcement had not conducted repeated interviews and evidence collection.

What remains open

The case now sits at the intersection of civil complaint and criminal process. A grand jury will weigh evidence. The university continues to insist its sanctions were consequential, while the plaintiff’s filing argues they were not. The prosecutor has acknowledged that trauma can change how memory is articulated over time and that a sworn statement taken in the immediate aftermath may not capture the full account later given in a civil filing.

For Cornell, the episode has become a test of institutional credibility. For the students named, the allegations have become public and irreversible. For the student at the center of the suit, the reopening of the investigation is both validation and a reopening of a wound she says she left behind when she quit school.

The story is no longer just about one night in a fraternity house in Ithaca. It is about how allegations are recorded, how they are judged, and how a community decides what accountability looks like after the headlines fade. The grand jury process will determine whether criminal charges follow. The larger reckoning — about culture, reporting, and trust in campus systems — is already underway.