The searing lawsuit brought by a former college student known as Jane Doe lays blame at the feet of her school, Cornell University. The seven men she accused of sexual assault, the fraternity Chi Phi and an off-campus bar where she drank at a private party have also faced public backlash.
Less scrutinized in the uproar is the role of another defendant: Delta Delta Delta, Jane Doe’s sorority.
It was the 113-year-old Cornell chapter of Tri Delta, Jane Doe claimed in the lawsuit, that also bears responsibility for what she described as a violent, traumatic assault. The sorority had put on a public face promising safety for the women who joined, the lawsuit said, vowing to monitor and protect the sisters of Tri Delta who lived in the stately brick sorority house on Triphammer Road.
Yet on that night in October 2024, an underage Jane Doe drank alcohol with her sorority sisters at their house, downing what she later estimated to be about six shots of vodka. The “house mom,” an employee of the sorority who supervised the women living in the house, escorted an intoxicated Jane Doe in an Uber from the sorority house to a bar in downtown Ithaca, the lawsuit said. At that bar, where Tri Delta hosted a “date party” for women and their guests, Jane Doe was able to drink even more alcohol, ordering a cocktail from a bartender without interference, the lawsuit said.
These events, the lawsuit said, led directly to the sexual assault of Jane Doe later that night at the Chi Phi house.
Tri Delta said in a statement that it “supports women and will continue to stand beside those who have experienced sexual violence.”
But the naming of Tri Delta as a defendant has roiled the sorority’s members in Ithaca and beyond, prompting many to ask whether an organization founded on principles of sisterhood and personal character could have been culpable in the rape of one of its own members.
Others have questioned whether the lawsuit has made Tri Delta a convenient scapegoat, another instance of women shouldering blame for the actions of men.
“It makes me angry that it’s even a conversation of, ‘What didn’t we do to protect our sister?’” Lucia Montes, a Tri Delta member who graduated from Cornell in 2017, said in an interview. “But that’s the reality.”
By Jane Doe’s account, the night of Oct. 19, 2024, began with a scene of sisterly camaraderie at the Tri Delta sorority house.
In hundreds of pages of confidential investigative files obtained by The New York Times, Jane Doe said that she and her fellow Tri Deltas had gathered at their house, preparing for a party at Moonies, a bar off campus. Jane Doe, who was relieved of her “sober monitor” duties after her wallet was stolen earlier that day, took swigs of Tito’s vodka from a bottle while the young women chatted and got ready to leave, drinking quickly enough that at least one friend gently told her to slow down.
But when the group eventually loaded into a pair of Ubers for the party, Jane Doe was mistakenly left behind.
Alone and struggling to hold back tears of disappointment, she sought out the “house mom.”
“I didn’t want to tell her I was drunk because she’s a mandated reporter,” Jane Doe said, according to a transcript of her conversation with investigators.
Sororities nationwide have strict rules banning alcohol in their houses. The lawsuit claimed that Tri Delta, whose Cornell chapter counts more than 160 members, failed to “exercise reasonable care to prevent plaintiff from binge drinking at its sorority house on Cornell’s campus, when plaintiff was in its care, custody and control.”
The house mother offered to drop off Jane Doe at the party in an Uber, since she was also heading in that direction. At the door at Moonies, Jane Doe, who was then 20, was given a mark on her hand to indicate to the bar staff that she was not allowed to drink.
But, according to documents obtained by The Times, she was able to order a cocktail from the bartender anyway, socializing with friends and vaping tobacco in a back room at the bar.
“Everyone kind of knows that if you want alcohol, you will find a way to get alcohol,” Jane Doe told investigators, according to the transcript obtained by The Times.
Sometime around 10 p.m., Jane Doe walked over to another bar, Lot 10, and bumped into more friends. Most of the women, she recalled in the transcript, were accompanied by their boyfriends or friends.
“It was a pretty solid group of people there,” she told investigators of the scene at Lot 10. “They all had somebody watching out for them.”
Around 11 p.m., Jane Doe set out to meet a friend at the Chi Phi house, walking alone.
Last week, Tri Delta members across the country received an unexpected email. The subject line read: “A message from Tri Delta.”
It was a jarring interruption from the usual updates on scholarships, class reunions and efforts to raise money for childhood cancer research. In the email, Stacey Dickenson Cox, the president of the sorority, said she was “saddened, outraged and deeply concerned” by the news reports about the “incident” at Cornell in 2024.
Because the sorority was named in the lawsuit, she added, there are details that she could not share publicly.
“There will undoubtedly be difficult conversations and strong reactions as the lawsuit moves forward,” she wrote. “Some of what is said publicly may be painful for our sisters to hear.”
To some devoted Tri Delta women, the email did not go far enough.
“Sickeningly thin,” said Haisley Smith, a dues-paying Tri Delta alumna from Mountain Brook, Ala. “It was just completely inadequate to make any current members, alumni or prospective members feel like the national organization is feeling the gravity of this in any substantial way.”
Brittany Robb, a spokeswoman for Tri Delta, said in an email that the organization does not comment on pending litigation. “As an organization, we are committed to supporting women and victims of sexual violence,” she said.
The Cornell chapter of Tri Delta said in a statement that it was “inspired by women like Jane Doe.”
“We stand in solidarity with Jane Doe and every other survivor,” the statement said.
Lenore Schiller, a Tri Delta member who graduated from Cornell in 2019, saw Jane Doe’s lawsuit as something unique to the sorority: an embodiment of the Tri Delta values of strength and solidarity, the kind of philosophy reflected in its members’ standard email sign-off, “Loyally.”
“Our values were always like women’s rights, standing up for each other, not taking B.S.,” Ms. Schiller said. “She was brave enough to come out to say something because that’s what Tri Delt stood for.”
Some members questioned whether the sorority had enough safety measures in place to protect its young women from fraternity men, in a Greek system where alcohol and drug use is commonplace.
“What do we expect to happen?” said JoDee Neil, a Tri Delta alumna of Texas A&M University. “We’re not giving them any tools. And we’re sending them off, basically, into a lion’s den.”
Legal experts said that the inclusion of Tri Delta as a defendant in the lawsuit reflected a common strategy in civil legal actions like this one. Including every party who could be held liable for a plaintiff’s suffering helps make a case to a jury. And the more defendants found liable, the more financial damages a plaintiff could presumably recover, the experts added.
“You want to be able to tell a full story to the jury,” said Heidi Li Feldman, a professor emerita of law at Georgetown University Law Center.
She cautioned that simply being named as a defendant in the lawsuit does not suggest that Tri Delta would bear an equal burden of responsibility to other defendants.
“To say that the sorority might have played a causally significant role and not acted perfectly is not to say that the sorority is the big villain,” she said.
Thomas Giuffra, a lawyer for Jane Doe, said in an interview that she never should have been allowed to leave the sorority house.
“That’s the first failed guardrail,” he said. “Somebody should have said: ‘Hey, no, you’re intoxicated. You’re not, you shouldn’t be going outside. It’s not safe.’ And that failed.”
But holding Tri Delta liable could be an uphill battle for Jane Doe.
“I can’t see a world in which the sorority would be held responsible for this conduct,” said Rebecca Zipkin, a lawyer who has represented victims of sexual assault on college campuses.
She added that sorority and fraternity life should be examined more broadly.
“There’s a larger conversation around Greek life and what kind of culture fraternities and sororities are creating on campus,” Ms. Zipkin said.
Davaughnia Wilson and Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
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