An Open Letter to Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff
President Kotlikoff,
I am a Cornell alumna, and I am writing because I am ashamed of how my university has handled the alleged gang rape of a student at the Chi Phi house in October 2024.
A 20-year-old woman says she was drugged and assaulted for hours by multiple men, after one of them invited his brothers to join through a fraternity group chat. She reported it. Cornell investigated. And when it was over, according to her lawsuit, two of seven accused men were expelled. The rest walked away with suspensions, workshops, and written assignments. She, meanwhile, is no longer a student at the school she once called her dream.
Cornell insists no one was offered essays “as a sole consequence.” That is not the defense you think it is. There is no version of this in which a writing assignment belongs anywhere on the list of consequences.
What makes this worse is the silence. The accused have been shielded by the institution, while the woman at the center of it has had to go to court to be heard. Only after a civil lawsuit and national headlines has the Tompkins County District Attorney agreed to take this to a grand jury. Cornell now says it “supports” that decision. Support that arrives only after public exposure is not leadership. It is damage control.
We have seen this pattern before. Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes were enabled not only by one man, but by institutions that negotiated quietly, protected identities, handed out lenient deals, and hoped the victims would simply go away. That is exactly what this looks like from the outside: powerful young men protected, a young woman pushed out, and a university more concerned with its reputation than with justice.
Get Yakoweshen’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I am asking you to do what should have been done two years ago:
- Explain publicly why five of seven accused students remain eligible to be Cornell students.
- Commission an independent, external review of this Title IX process and release its findings.
- Cooperate fully and transparently with the District Attorney’s grand jury.
- Permanently ban Chi Phi’s Xi chapter from campus.
Cornell’s founder promised an institution where any person can find instruction. Right now, the lesson this university is teaching is that if you are a young man accused of assault at Cornell, you will be protected, and if you are the woman who reports it, you are on your own.
Every alum who reads this should ask whether they can keep supporting an institution that behaves this way. I am asking myself that question today.
Lynn Yakoweshen
Cornell MBA, Class of 2013
