On Oct. 17, 2024, a Cornell University sophomore who was worried about drug use at fraternity parties suggested to the school’s student government that all student housing should be supplied with medication for opioid overdoses, date-rape drug testing kits, and an easy means of testing whether drugs were laced with fentanyl or xylazine.
The next day, according to court documents, a student in Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity overdosed on ketamine, a dissociative hallucinogenic anesthetic better known as Special K or key.
And the following night at a party at Chi Phi, a 20-year-woman took ketamine in the midst of what she would later allege in a lawsuit was a gang rape that extended into the early-morning hours of Oct. 20. Numerous people consumed ketamine, according to court documents, snorting it off a key or off of the woman’s naked body.
The lawsuit filed last month against multiple defendants, including Cornell and seven men, touched off a nationwide firestorm of outraged reactions. One of the issues that surfaced in the case, as well as in other high-profile incidents in recent weeks, is the availability and recreational use of dangerous drugs on college campuses.
While alcohol use has caused problems at universities for decades, and cannabis is the most commonly used drug on campuses, experts said students now have access to a variety of far more potent, fast-evolving and potentially deadly drugs — without knowing whether something they bought illegally or right at their gas station contains dangerous unknown compounds.
Besides ketamine and fentanyl, the drugs spurring widespread concern on campuses this semester include kratom, an herbal product which can be purchased in stores in some states, cychlorphine, which is estimated to be about 10 times more potent than fentanyl, and xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer. Cychlorphine and xylazine are sometimes added to other drugs unbeknownst to users, experts said.
Some of the newer drugs are very different from those of previous generations, said Mary Hoban, chief research officer of the American College Health Association: “They’ll kill you at a single use.”
And young people, whose brains are still developing, often feel invincible, said Bernadine Waller, an assistant professor in psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “They’re not thinking anything could go wrong.”
Two students were found dead last month at the University of Mississippi, one on campus and one at a house off campus, just one hour apart.
The causes of deaths have not yet been determined.
But the county narcotics unit said both men had packages of kratom-like pills. Officials took the opportunity to warn people through a press release not to use kratom, which is derived from the leaves of a tropical tree that is a stimulant at low doses and opiate-like sedative in higher doses. It is legal in many states, including parts of Mississippi — although the city and county where the school is have bans in place.
There are also synthetic versions of kratom.
Agents with Lafayette County Metro Narcotics went to a vape shop in the college town where they said one of the students bought kratom-related pills, seized THC- and kratom-related products and other substances, and arrested two men working at the shop. They were charged with possession of Schedule 1 controlled substances with intent to distribute, and also charged on a criminal complaint by federal prosecutors Thursday in suspected connection to the death of one of the Ole Miss students.
The narcotics officials warned last week that manufactured, concentrated or chemically altered kratom products are different than botanical kratom. And the pills that were found in both cases contained an alarming ingredient — one of three synthetic opioids that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently determined present an imminent hazard to public safety.
The developments, narcotics officials wrote in a press release last week, raise important questions about how emerging synthetic substances are identified, regulated and prosecuted. They called on Mississippi lawmakers to take action to help keep people safe.
Kratom derivatives like MGPI, MGM-15 and MGM-16 have been referred to as “gas station heroin,” a statement released last week from U.S. Attorney Scott F. Leary for the Northern District of Mississippi noted, and can be significantly more potent than morphine, with high risk of addiction, overdose and death.
In 2025, poison control centers received 3,434 kratom-related exposure reports, a marked surge from the year before and an increase of 1,200 percent in the last decade.
“There has never been a more dangerous time to be a young person in American society,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) said in a statement after news of the deaths of the two students, just 18 and 20 years old.
Students around the country are warning their classmates that they may be unknowingly consuming a lesser-known substance while getting high on other drugs.
Fraternities and sororities at Ole Miss, and other campuses including Michigan State University, warned students on social media and in other ways about the new threat posed by cychlorphine, a powerful synthetic opioid that has caused overdose deaths.
And while several students at various campuses said they have seen some students carry and routinely use fentanyl test strips — inexpensive ways to check drugs for the potentially deadly substance — those tests don’t indicate the presence of cychlorphine.
Because cychlorphine can be far more potent that fentanyl, some of the warnings sent to students urged people to keep naloxone on them at all times, and carry at least two doses when possible — since one may not be enough to counter the drug.
Naloxone is a medicine that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose.
Ole Miss, like a small but growing number of campuses, has vending machines with free Narcan, the nasal spray that quickly administers naloxone so that students have quick access to potentially lifesaving supplies. It is also available in student housing at some campuses, which according to the American College Health Association, is increasingly common.
A local paper, the Oxford Eagle, reported last month that a Narcan vending machine in downtown Oxford, Mississippi, installed less than two months earlier had been used nearly 800 times.
Ole Miss also has a wellness center, named after a student who died of an overdose, that offers services including Narcan training and substance abuse recovery communities.
Several students at Ole Miss said people on campus are grieving and frightened by the recent deaths, which came just after a festive weekend when the football team beat rival Louisiana State University in an ESPN College Game Day event that broke records for crowds at a school known for its huge tailgating culture.
Nadia Shah, a senior linguistics major from Tennessee, mentioned how much people were partying that weekend. “But I would hope that after all this has happened students here will take more precaution,” in what kind of substances they’re ingesting, she said, “because you’ll never know what exactly what you’re smoking or what you’re drinking.”
Allyson Harlos, a pharmacy student from Mississippi, said she grew up in a “drug-heavy” town, so hearing about the deaths was more sad than shocking to her; she has long been aware of the risks of substances like fentanyl.
Since she got to college, she has always carried Narcan, she said.
“I’ll be honest,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s really gonna change their ways about this. … Maybe a couple more people will carry Narcan, maybe a couple more people will do things a bit more safely. But all in all, Ole Miss is one of the top-10 party schools in the world — or at least in the U.S. — and nothing’s ever gonna change that.”
It’s always going to be dangerous, and people are always going to do irresponsible, dangerous things, she said, because “in the moment they’re fun.”
In 2024, Cornell student Davian Gekman started to worry about safety at his fraternity because there was no way to know whether people had taken drugs before they showed up at a party, or what was in the drugs if they had. One of the frat’s members went and got some Narcan to have on hand, just in case. That’s when Gekman, a member of the student assembly, began to think that all student housing should have Narcan and ways to test drugs to make sure they weren’t laced.
Soon after he introduced the resolution, the student government agreed to recommend making Narcan available as well as date-rape drug testing kits and test strips that could test for fentanyl and xylazine. Xylazine is sometimes added to other drugs, and its effects can’t be reversed with overdose reversal medications.
In addition to free Narcan and testing strips in vending machines, Cornell provides Narcan training for students, faculty and staff, university spokesperson Rebecca Valli said.
The school strengthened its focus on alcohol and other drugs while implementing a presidential task force on campus sexual assault, formed in 2025, including adding in-person education about communication and consent. The school also offers drug and alcohol prevention programs, including by-request education sessions focused on reducing high-risk substance use, Valli said.
On Saturday, Cornell President Michael I. Kotlikoff promised an external review of its handling of the rape allegations, and said the school would not wait for the review to act. “Where we see opportunities to strengthen prevention and education, student support, mental health and substance use resources, investigative processes or coordination among our university offices, we will act,” he said in a video message to the campus community.
Gekman said he was appreciative that there was agreement from student leaders in 2024 about implementing precautions around drug use.
“We didn’t wait for something to happen,” he said. “We took action right away.”
Dylan Thomas contributed to this report from Oxford, Mississippi.
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