Police are searching for a suspect who fled after allegedly sexually assaulting someone at a University of Chicago off-campus fraternity party. Lilia Luciano has more.
Page A213From§Eachthe morning edition — 15 October 2026
Cornell named an outside reviewer; Chicago named a person of interest. Neither named anyone responsible.
As it ran on the front
On October 3, Cornell's own crime log confirmed what a lawsuit had already alleged: campus police made a drug arrest at a fraternity house twenty-two hours before a former student says she was drugged and raped in that same house. The log does not connect the two incidents. The university has not connected the larger case either — not since the district attorney, Matthew Van Houten, decided there wasn't enough evidence to charge the seven men the 2024 lawsuit names.
Three days later, on October 6, Cornell's trustees announced their answer: Sally Yates, once the Justice Department's second-ranking official, would review how the university handles sexual misconduct complaints. The same week, the state handed the underlying case to a special prosecutor the sitting president has publicly called biased. Faculty did not wait for either review.…
…(cont) This week, a fraternity party near a different university produced the same police blotter. A 21-year-old woman told University of Chicago police she was sexually assaulted early Sunday morning at an off-campus frat house. By Tuesday the school had issued a community alert naming a person of interest. The suspect fled the scene and has not been found.
All together now — set the two institutions' responses side by side and read them in order: name an outside reviewer, or name a person of interest; either way, do not say the word arrest. University of Chicago is four days into its version of that sequence and already ahead of Cornell on the one count that matters to a victim — it has named someone connected to the case. Cornell has had its case open since 2024, with a lawsuit, a trustee-ordered review, and a prosecutor under public suspicion, and its count of people charged, after two years, remains zero.
“They hire a lawyer to review the paperwork before police even finish looking for the guy who did it. Call it a review, call it a community alert — it's the same move, name a process, not a suspect. My kid's dorm could burn down and the first call wouldn't be 911, it'd be the PR office.”
“You want Cornell to just convict seven men because a lawsuit says so? There's a process — Sally Yates is a serious person, this is diligence, this is thoroughness. Did I just compare a misconduct review to a guy who ran from a frat house? That's not the same thing. Forget I said that.”
Earlier in this story
- New York Times prints the university crisis playbook; Cornell and Chicago are already following it. By Mitch · the morning edition, 15 October 2026
The receipts
A person of interest has been identified after a 21-year-old woman told police that she was sexually assaulted at a fraternity party near the University of Chicago last weekend, amid national outrage over sexual misconduct on college campuses.
A person of interest has been identified in connection with a sexual assault that was reported early Sunday morning at a fraternity house near the University of Chicago campus, the school announced Tuesday in a community alert.
· Former Obama official will review Cornell’s handling of sexual misconduct complaints from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
· Trump is fueling a culture of misogynistic impunity from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
· Cornell University police made drug arrest hours before alleged sexual assault from the morgue, 4 Oct 2026
· Cornell University police made drug arrest hours before alleged sexual assault from the morgue, 3 Oct 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.