The former pupil who accused seven males of sexual assault in a lawsuit that has rocked Cornell University wrote in a letter to school leaders last week that she felt “unsupported” and “disbelieved” by the faculty’s president, Michael Kotlikoff.
In a two-page letter to the school senate, the former pupil, recognized as Jane Doe, said she needed to share a “second-hand account” as the senate considers a uncommon vote of no-confidence in Dr. Kotlikoff’s administration. The letter described a remark she said he made in a assembly shortly after she alleged she was raped at a fraternity home.
His “initial response,” she wrote, “was along the lines of, ‘Why did she wait so long to report it?’”
The alleged assault occurred on Oct. 19 and 20, 2024. She went to the campus police about three weeks later, on Nov. 8.
A Cornell spokeswoman said that while Dr. Kotlikoff made a comparable remark at a January 2025 assembly, the “second-hand account” was incorrect and the phrases were not directed at the former pupil.
“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 ongoing social media activity about the incident in October 2024,” the college said in a assertion. “He was not questioning Jane Doe’s reporting.”
The former pupil, now 22, stopped short of telling the school senate how it should vote in her letter, but she said Dr. Kotlikoff’s phrases, as informed to her, had shaken her trust in Cornell.
“It diminished my confidence in the administration’s ability to approach my experience with the understanding, sensitivity, and fairness I had hoped for and expected from what had been my dream school,” she wrote.
Her letter, obtained by The New York Times and authenticated by her lawyer, was dated Oct. 14, 2026, two weeks before the school senate is scheduled to start its vote. The letter exhibits how the girl, who dropped out of Cornell after the incident, is actively making an attempt to weigh in on the roiling debate around her allegations.
“She believed that this was important information that the faculty should know when considering what steps to take” in relation to Dr. Kotlikoff, said Thomas P. Giuffra, her lawyer.
While the school senate has no energy to take away officers, a no-confidence vote would be a sturdy rebuke of Dr. Kotlikoff, who has had the support of Cornell’s highly effective board of trustees in the face of some calls for his resignation. The senate will meet to debate the no-confidence decision on Oct. 28, with voting persevering with for several days after.
Mr. Giuffra despatched the letter on behalf of his shopper to Samuel Mayer Nelson, the speaker of the school senate, and Chris B. Schaffer, the dean of school. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Schaffer did not immediately reply to requests for remark. It was unclear how many of the roughly 135 members of the school senate had seen the letter by early Tuesday morning.
The college has confronted intense criticism for its handling of the former pupil’s allegations in the weeks since she filed a lawsuit against the college; the Chi Phi fraternity and seven of its former brothers; and her sorority, Delta Delta Delta.
In the lawsuit, Jane Doe claims she was given medicine and gang raped over several hours in the Chi Phi fraternity home. All of the males have denied wrongdoing and none have been charged with a crime.
When the former pupil reported her allegations to campus police a few weeks later, a Title IX investigation was triggered.
The assembly the former pupil referred to in her letter took place in January 2025 and included representatives of many of Cornell’s sororities as effectively as Dr. Kotlikoff and at least one other administrator, according to a particular person with direct information of the assembly who spoke on situation of anonymity to reveal particulars of a personal assembly.
According to a Cornell official acquainted with the matter, the dialog took place at a meet and greet for Dr. Kotlikoff as he was getting to know pupil teams during his interim president period. The official Cornell account comes from contemporaneous notes from the assembly taken by the other administrator.
In the letter, the former pupil recounts the exchange that she said she was informed occurred between Dr. Kotlikoff and the president of her sorority. She wrote that her sorority sister relayed the dialog to her “with concern.”
“She interpreted his question as an expression of doubt in the veracity of my story,” Jane Doe said in the letter.
The sorority president said other school or workers members heard the dialog, according to the letter, and that “at least one of them appeared distressed” by the president’s remark.
“When the then-Tri Delta President relayed this conversation to me, I felt unsupported and disbelieved by President Kotlikoff,” the former pupil wrote. “I am sharing this account now because, to my knowledge, only a few individuals are aware of the conversation; I do not know if you or other members of the Faculty Senate are among them.”
She added, “I would not want to withhold something potentially pertinent, only for Senate members to later discover that information relevant to their deliberations had not been made available to them.”
The former president of the Cornell chapter of Tri Delta declined to remark.
Dr. Kotlikoff has said he was not conscious of the particulars of the former pupil’s case after her initial report, but has burdened that he took its claims of drug and alcohol fueled abuse severely enough to create a presidential activity power on campus sexual assault in February 2025.
Cornell finally barred the fraternity from campus, expelled two of the accused males and suspended two others. The other three males accused by the former undergraduate acquired lighter punishments.
Hurubie Meko and Andrea Barnes contributed reporting.
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