CBS News legal contributor Rebecca Roiphe explains New York rape law and how it might play into the alleged Cornell University gang rape case.
Page A5From§Eachthe midnight edition — 4 October 2026
THE RECORD
Cornell pledges 'greater transparency' days after prosecutors declined to review evidence police already had.
As it ran on the front
Did the DA's office decline to look any further before the president made his promise, or after? I already asked myself that. I already answered it, too — out loud, last night, in the car, waiting on the fan belt to decide if it was going to hold. This morning I went back over the same two facts and the answer came out a different shape. Not a different answer. The same one, read back a different way.
Here's what I had written down. Cornell police responded to the Chi Phi house at 1:05 in the morning, October 19th, 2024. Forty minutes on scene. A drug-related arrest. NBC put a number on the gap between that response and the alleged assault: twenty-two hours. Was Chi Phi the same house Cornell police had already been inside, on a drug call, twenty-two hours before the assault she alleges? It was. I checked that twice.…
…(cont) The woman filed her lawsuit September 16th of this year. About two years after that October night in 2024 — not to the week, I ran the math and it isn't, so I'm not claiming it. Seven men named. Did the original handling produce any criminal charges before this lawsuit arrived? It didn't. That's in the record too.
Then it moved. AOC, at a town hall in Ithaca, September 28th, called it a culture. Schumer, September 30th: "horrifying," no stone unturned, he said. The next day — one day, I checked that twice as well, after getting it wrong the first time — a law professor at the same school wrote the opposite in print, called the public reaction a lynch mob. Same week, same campus. Were they arguing, that week, about a file that had already been shut before either of them opened their mouths?
Because that's the part I keep losing in my own notebook and finding again under something else. I don't have a date for when that decision landed. I have what came after: a special prosecutor named, a criminal investigation reopened, Cornell agreeing on October 1st to an outside review of its own handling. All of it stacked up after a file that was, by the record, already closed.
My toolbox is older than my car. There's a drawer in my garage where the mechanic down the block puts the work order when he's done with it — stamped, dated, closed out — and only then does he come find me to ask if there's anything else I want him to look at. Is that generous of him, or is that just the order things happened in?
Because here's the president, on video. Saturday: "deeply disturbing." Somewhere in the same run, "a defining moment." And once — I'm only using this once, I promised myself that — he says he'll deliver "greater transparency." Going forward. He doesn't say toward what. Is a promise aimed at the future still about the thing that already happened in the past?
I was closing the notebook. I really was.
Excuse me — before you go — can I ask it the way I should have the first time: which one came first, the decline or the promise? I have the dates for one of those. Transparency.
“The DA's office had the same records Cornell police did and decided there was nothing left to look at — then the university's president goes on camera calling it "deeply disturbing" and promising "greater transparency." That's not candor, that's a press release timed for after the file was already shut. The woman who filed that lawsuit two years later doesn't get a video statement; she gets a reopened investigation because the governor stepped in, not because the school looked first.”
“Look, the DA's office reviewed the evidence Cornell police gathered and made a call — that's called trusting your local prosecutor, not covering anything up. Now Hochul wants a special prosecutor and James wants a say, and — wait, isn't she the AG whose own staff told federal investigators she orders them to target people? No, that's — I didn't mean to bring that up, forget I said that part.”
The receipts
Michael I. Kotlikoff said in a video the university would be more transparent, hold Greek groups accountable and improve sexual assault prevention.
As scrutiny mounts over Cornell's response to allegations that a student was gang raped at a fraternity house in 2024, the university's president acknowledged troubling questions raised about the investigations and pledged taking a 'serious look at the role of fraternities and sororities in campus life.'
Cornell's president said his school's administration "must do better" amid the criticism of its investigation into allegations made by a former student that she was gang-raped at a fraternity in 2024.
Michael Kotlikoff also said he backed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s decision to name a special prosecutor to lead a reopened criminal investigation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is too political, biased and unethical to fairly investigate the seven Cornell University fraternity brothers accused of raping a female classmate, pols and other critics told The Post.
The Tompkins County DA's office declined to additional review material gathered by Cornell University police, documents reviewed by ABC News show.
An incident at Cornell University involving alleged gang rape is stoking controversy after a woman filed a lawsuit alleging sexual assault nearly two years after she said the incident occurred. A young woman whose identity was shielded with a “Jane Doe” name filed the lawsuit on Sept.
Cornell University police made a drug-related arrest at a fraternity house 22 hours before a former student alleges she was drugged and sexually assaulted there, according to police records.
Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff said the university "must do better" after questions arose over its handling of fraternity sexual assault claims.
We can't recall a Tish James investigation that wasn't blatantly political, so Gov. Hochul knows exactly what she's ordered up here.
We’re seeing dramatic video of a confrontation with one of the men accused in the Cornell sexual assault case. This as questions grow over how the alleged 2024 incident was handled. NBC News’ Valerie Castro reports.
Cornell police responded to Chi Phi at about 1:05 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2024, and made a drug-related arrest during the roughly 40-minute response.
Cornell’s president issued a video message Saturday on the rape scandal surrounding the Ivy League school, calling the case “deeply disturbing.”
· Cornell law professor decries ‘lynch mob mentality’ over alleged gang rape case, blasts AOC for ‘rushing to judgment’ from the morgue, 1 Oct 2026
· AOC Calls Out Cornell and 'Culture of Rape' as Prosecutors Reopen Campus Assault Case from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Schumer calls for review of 'horrifying' Cornell rape case: "No stone unturned' from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Cornell University frat house rape investigation reopened: What we know from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Cornell Agrees to Outside Investigation of Alleged Gang Rape Case from the morgue, 1 Oct 2026
· Federal investigators interviewed Letitia James whistleblower who said she ordered staff to target ‘Trump himself’ from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.