ITHACA, N.Y. — Hundreds of students demonstrated at Cornell University on Monday afternoon, demanding the school expel or revoke the degrees of several fraternity members after allegations of gang rape have brought withering national criticism to the administration.
“We are known as the rape school,” Saya Taylor with Students for a Democratic Cornell said to a packed Ho Plaza. “We can be known as leading a nationwide reform movement.”
The controversy exploded last month when a lawsuit filed in New York accused members of the Chi Phi fraternity of coercing a 20-year-old sophomore into doing ketamine at a party, after she had already been drinking, then raping her over the course of seven hours in 2024. In the woman’s interview with campus police about three weeks later, she said she had “100% confidence” she had been raped, according to CBS News.
The district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, did not file criminal charges. He told CBS that he had never seen a transcript of her conversation with police before the news network reported it. The Cornell University Police Department has said it shared the woman’s sworn statement to his office.
Two of the accused were expelled by the university in 2025, according to the New York Times.
Students called for a return of the university’s independent judicial system, overseen by an administrator who does not report to the school’s president or vice president. They demanded mandatory sexual assault prevention trainings for students and trauma-informed training for university police.
The Justice for Survivors protest was led by 20 student organizations. It broke a policy that limited protests, without prior approval by university administrators, from being held between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. at the plaza. Similar policies have appeared at other Ivy League institutions, including Columbia and Yale University.
“Students know what Cornell will do to protesters, and that’s why it’s so remarkable there’s been an outpouring of support,” said Jack Huber, a 19-year old student who helped organize the demonstration. Administrators have suspended, evicted, and dropped credit hours for student activists, causing some to lose their student visas. “I am scared, but in moments like these, you have to do it scared.”
Students for a Democratic Cornell say an independent judicial system, like the one the university had between 1969 and 2020, would result in quicker and stronger punishments against perpetrators of sexual assault.
During the beginning of the pandemic, the university rewrote its code of conduct and placed ultimate disciplinary authority in administrative hands.
“The people deciding matters of discipline are the same people whose job it is to make university look good in the public sphere,” Huber said.
Early Monday morning, activists spray painted messages condemning the university and smashed the windows of Day Hall, the seat of senior administrators.
The afternoon protest filled Ho Plaza with over a 1,000 people. Some carried signs urging the firing of university president Michael Kotlikoff.
A young woman in the front row was teary-eyed holding up a cardboard sign with one of the now infamous Snapchat messages on it, which an alleged perpetrator sent to the rest of the fraternity: “Shop still open?”
Others wore tags with the name Jane Doe, in reference to how the woman who made the allegations is named in her lawsuit.
“There’s a sense of mourning for the victim, and there’s a sense of overwhelming anger at the administration and fraternities,” said Hudson Athas, 21, a senior in labor relations. “This incident is not isolated to one bad fraternity, or seven bad members of a fraternity. This incident is systemic.”
The protest is one of many on Cornell’s campus this week. On Wednesday, student groups are planning a seven-hour sit-in in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault.
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