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On Monday evening, thousands of Cornell University students protested on the university campus, demanding accountability for Cornell’s alleged mishandling of the 2024 rape case that has come under a national spotlight.
Students held signs that said “We are Jane Doe,” “Stop Protecting Rapists,” and “We Want Sentences, Not Essays.”
The demonstration was organized by Students for a Democratic Cornell alongside over 20 other student organizations at Cornell, including Gender Justice Advocacy Coalition, Planned Parenthood Generation, Cornell Grad Students United, Black Students United, and other cultural organizations on campus.
Outrage has followed the case of a sexual assault that occurred in October 2024 at Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity house, where a victim, known as Jane Doe, says that she was drugged and raped by seven fraternity members. This anger has boiled over after Jane Doe filed a civil lawsuit in mid-September, pushing the local district attorney to reopen the case.
On campus, students have highlighted the university’s failure to hold the alleged perpetrators accountable, citing the university’s decision to allow some to write essays as punishment and the university police providing the district attorney with a “summary” of Jane Doe’s complaint that omitted mentions of rape, drugging, and sexual assault, leading to the DA closing the initial case.
Students for a Democratic Cornell (SDC), which called the protest, put forward demands that include an independent judicial system to replace Cornell’s current internal judicial system; an external investigation of Cornell’s administration; mandatory sexual assault prevention trainings for students; and Cornell’s compliance with New York State’s Enough is Enough law.
They have also called for the university to expel the men accused in the Jane Doe case and to revoke the degrees of those who have already graduated. (Only two of the seven men named by Jane Doe were expelled for the assault in 2025 after the university’s Title IX investigation.)
“SDC is really focused on attacking the institutional systems that enable sexual violence to be so prevalent on campus,” Jack Huber, an activist in Students for a Democratic Cornell, told Truthout.
“Between 2018 and 2024, there were over 1,200 reported instances of sexual violence on campus. Only seven of those cases resulted in expulsion,” he said. “So when we have a statistic like that, it is clear that the administration is not interested in seeking justice for survivors, and so we must return to an independent judicial system, one where decisions about discipline are not made behind closed doors based on what looks best for the university.”
Other on-campus organizations, like Cornell Graduate Students United (CGSU), have issued additional demands.
“In coalition with Students Not Bombs, we’ve publicly demanded the resignation of [Cornell University President] Michael Kotlikoff and other administrators implicated in the mishandling of Jane Doe’s case,” Cornell graduate student Kaori Quan told Truthout, speaking for CGSU.
CGSU has also called for “the abolition of Greek Life at Cornell, and the dissolution of the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards.”
Calls to ban fraternities, and for the university president to resign, were echoed in the chants at Monday evening’s protest, with students chanting “All the frats have got to go” and “Kotlikoff has got to go.”
“The prevalence of sexual assault on campus is due in no small part to Greek life and the way Cornell promotes it,” Quan told Truthout.
“Many of the fraternities on campus have been around for decades — wealthy donors are members of these organizations, and that stream of cash incentivizes the university to preserve their reputation over the health and safety of students,” she added. “The protection that fraternities enjoy from administration makes it easier to get away with sexual assault.”
According to a 2025 survey, 35 percent of undergraduate women at Cornell — more than one in three — reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at the university.
Campus organizations are mobilizing to continue the fight for their demands beyond Monday’s demonstration. Already, they have organized two campus-wide town halls — one on October 1 and another on October 6. The student chapter of the NAACP, in collaboration with other groups like the SDC, is also calling for a “Zero Day” at Cornell on Wednesday — a campus-wide economic blackout along with a seven-hour sit-in at a Cornell dining hall, to represent the seven hours Jane Doe says she was assaulted.
Graduate students like Quan are also attempting to organize against sexual violence on campus through their student union.
“CGSU fought hard for discrimination protections in our first contract that subjected Title IX proceedings to union grievance procedure because we have always known that Cornell’s own disciplinary mechanisms protect the institution and not its students and workers,” Quan said. “As we go up for bargaining again in Spring 2027, we plan to fight to strengthen these protections even further.”
The turnout for Monday’s protest was significant in the context of three years of campus repression of student activism, Huber explained.
“Over the past several years, there has been repression of free speech and protest on campus by the administration under their judicial system. So when I saw thousands of students coming out and protesting despite that crackdown, it was a really, really tremendous feeling,” Huber said.
Huber pointed out the university’s double standard in punishing and even criminalizing Palestine solidarity activists while it overlooked the issue of sexual violence on campus.
“What we saw during the encampments for Palestine, is Cornell persecuting protestors to the fullest extent that they could,” Huber said, explaining that “there were dozens of arrests, even more suspensions, and in one case a deportation, all stemming from students protesting against the genocide in Palestine, which threatened Cornell’s Board of Trustees’ investments, and threatened Cornell’s image, and so Cornell weaponized its code against these students.”
In total, 15 students were suspended in 2024 for protesting against Israel’s genocide in Gaza on campus.
“Cornell has suspended more protestors for organizing than they have expelled and suspended rapists from 2018 to 2024,” Huber said.
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