Jane Doe says Cornell president appeared to question her allegations in letter to faculty senate

Jane Doe, the woman who accused several Cornell University frat members of sexually assaulting her in 2024, sent a letter to the school’s Faculty Senate sharing a second-hand account of President Michael Kotlikoff’s response to her allegations ahead of a potential vote of no confidence in his administration.

In a Wednesday letter obtained by NBC News, Doe described a meeting between Kotlikoff and the then-president of her sorority, Tri Delta, months after she reported the alleged assault to the university. Doe wrote that the sorority president subsequently told her that Kotlikoff had allegedly questioned why she waited to report the incident.

“After the conversation she shared with me, with concern, that President Kotlikoff’s initial response was along the lines of, ‘Why did she wait so long to report it?’” Doe said in the letter. “She interpreted his question as an expression of doubt in the veracity of my story.”

Cornell disputed that characterization on Tuesday, saying in a statement that Kotlikoff’s question during a January 2025 meeting was focused on bystanders who had not reported the allegations, rather than Doe herself.

The letter comes amid mounting scrutiny of Cornell’s handling of Doe’s allegations and growing debate among school faculty members over whether to hold a no-confidence vote in the university’s administration. Earlier this month, Cornell hired former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates to lead that independent review, which will examine the school’s response to Doe’s allegations and broader policies governing sexual misconduct.

In a civil lawsuit filed last month, Doe accused seven of the members of the now dismantled Chi Phi fraternity of plying her with drugs and sexually assaulting her at a party in October 2024 and into the early hours of the next morning. Orazio Petito, one of the named defendants in the lawsuit and the former president of the fraternity, was dropped from the lawsuit after his lawyer said he was “mistakenly” identified as the Chi Phi chapter president at the time of the alleged 2024 assault, according to court documents.

Attorneys for several of the men have denied wrongdoing or disputed her account. Doe’s lawyer did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

Cornell subsequently investigated the allegations through its Title IX disciplinary process, expelling two students and imposing suspensions or lesser sanctions on others. The university also launched a Presidential Task Force on Campus Sexual Assault in early 2025 and has said in a Tuesday statement that it is implementing recommendations to improve its response to sexual misconduct.

“The second-hand account of the question asked by President Kotlikoff in a January 2025 meeting in the letter is incorrect, based on a documented first-hand account,” the statement added. “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. He was not questioning Jane Doe’s reporting.”

In her letter, Doe wrote that the sorority president told her that at least one other faculty member who attended the meeting “appeared distressed” after hearing Kotlikoff’s question. Doe said that the faculty member thought “the President’s response was inappropriate.”

“I felt unsupported and disbelieved by President Kotlikoff,” Doe wrote in the letter. “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.”

Doe added that she is now sharing this account because she does not know how many people know about the meeting or the president’s response.

“My intention is not to prescribe how the Senate should interpret this account, but rather to provide information that its members may wish to consider or investigate further,” she wrote. “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 letter has prompted questions from at least one faculty member about how it was handled by Cornell’s dean of faculty, Chris Schaffer. A professor on the Faculty Senate, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the situation, told NBC News that Schaffer told members Tuesday that he had received Doe’s letter last week, the same day the Senate met to discuss whether to hold a vote of no-confidence.

“If he received it on the 14th, he should have said so,” the professor said.

Cornell said Schaffer received the letter as “legal correspondence claiming to be from a law firm representing Jane Doe” and that he “subsequently turned it over to the General Counsel to verify and to share with the Independent Review.”

“Shortly before the start of the Senate meeting on October 14, I received a communication from a lawyer representing Jane Doe, which relayed a second-hand account of President Kotlikoff asking about the timing of reports about the Jane Doe assault in 2024,” he wrote. “I later received a contemporaneous account of the meeting from a university official who was present that indicated President Kotlikoff asked bystanders ‘why did it take so long for the assault to be reported’ through Cornell’s anonymous tip line, given the level of social media discussion of the events. The question was not about Jane Doe or her decision to report.”

Schaffer added that his office “does not have the investigatory capacity to properly follow up on private communications of this kind, nor is this the role of the office.”

“In the interests of transparency, I am writing now to inform the Senate that I received this communication, that I passed it on to the Office of the General Counsel, and that they have sent it to the investigatory team led by Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates,” he added. “Any individual who has information they believe is relevant to the deliberation of the Cornell Senate may make such information public or communicate it directly.”