Nearly half of Cornell University students found responsible for sexual assault in recent years were punished with extra study programs and written reprimands – but avoided suspension or expulsion, a CNN review of school records found.

That pattern of relatively lax response by Cornell officials now faces national scrutiny after a woman alleged she was gang raped at a fraternity house.

Just two Cornell students were expelled after being found responsible for sexual assault between mid-2020 and mid-2024, according to the most recent data released by the university. In all, Cornell reviewed 51 formal complaints about sexual assault in that time frame and found students responsible in 16 cases.

Those statistics highlight a significant problem of Cornell officials minimizing accounts of abuse, five current and former students who filed sexual misconduct complaints at the university told CNN.

Some of those students say the university found their attackers responsible for the assault – only to let them off the hook with light punishments.

Kacey Lee said she felt “betrayed” by Cornell after the student that school officials found responsible for assaulting her was punished in 2023 with a “reflection paper” and other measures, but not suspension or expulsion. Lee said she wished she hadn’t endured the school’s investigation process: “To know that I went through it all for this illusion of accountability felt even worse.”Others said the school’s Title IX office, which investigates claims of sexual abuse, ignored significant evidence as part of a flawed process that allowed attackers to evade responsibility – and at times strike again.

“No punishment. No essay. No apology. Allowed to graduate,” said one Cornell alum, who asked not to use her name out of fear of retaliation, describing the result for her alleged attacker after she complained of being sexually assaulted. “It hurts so much.”

In a statement, a Cornell spokesperson said the university takes sexual misconduct allegations “extremely seriously.”The university “investigates reports through established processes, providing support and resources to those who come forward,” the statement said. The statement noted that the university expanded in-person sexual violence prevention education this year to all first-year students.

Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff acknowledged in a video released last week that the university needs to improve how it handles sexual misconduct in the wake of the new national scrutiny of claims by Jane Doe, the former student who filed a lawsuit last month describing being gang raped at the Chi Phi fraternity house in 2024.

“We don’t have all the answers, but we are committed to investigating and finding the answers our community deserves,” Kotlikoff said. “I believe we as an administration and we as a community must do better.”

Universities face a difficult task with internal investigations into sexual assault, said Peter Lake, a Stetson University professor who focuses on higher education law, because accused students often hire lawyers early in contentious cases – and sue if they’re expelled.

“Striking a balance is rather tricky for a lot of institutions, because I think they are being taffy-pulled by competing interests,” Lake said. “When you level the most severe sanctions like long-term suspension and expulsion, you can almost guarantee that people are going to lawyer up.”And since Cornell and other universities typically don’t publish information about their Title IX investigations, the full details of allegations are usually unclear.

But the rarity of tough punishments at Cornell, even in cases where the school itself found evidence of a sexual assault, points to a larger trend of the university failing to protect students from sexual misconduct, according to students and victim advocates who spoke to CNN.

“Expulsion should be, in my view, the only outcome of a Title IX case where there’s a finding of responsibility,” said Nicole Bedera, a researcher who wrote a book about sexual violence among college students. “The best predictor of a place where sexual violence doesn’t occur is that when it happens, it’s not tolerated.”A national furor has grown over Jane Doe’s 101-page lawsuit, which alleges a brutal assault at a fraternity house – and a lack of action by campus authorities after she reported being drugged and raped in October 2024. Attorneys for some of the men named in the lawsuit have denied the allegations. As law enforcement officials evaluated the case at the time, the university began its own parallel process.

According to Cornell’s policy, formal complaints of sexual misconduct are investigated by the university’s office for Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting gender-based discrimination. The cases are then reviewed by a panel of faculty and staff, which can impose punishments ranging from verbal warnings to suspension or expulsion.

Of the 51 formal complaints about sexual assault or attempted sexual assault that were filed over the four academic years starting in mid-2020, the panel found the person accused was not responsible in 15 cases, and the complaint was dismissed or withdrawn in 19 cases, according to the university’s data. In one case, the respondent was found responsible for a lesser offense.

Of the 16 students the panel found responsible for sexual assault, only two were expelled and six were suspended. Seven received other punishments, including written reprimands, disciplinary probation, directed study and no-contact orders. One case is still listed as pending appeal.

It’s not clear how many, if any, of the 16 cases resulted in criminal investigations. Under Cornell’s policy, university officials should inform students who report sexual assault that they have the right to contact law enforcement or to choose not to do so. The university’s Title IX discipline system runs concurrently with any investigations by Cornell’s police department or other law enforcement agencies, the policy says.

According to a guide posted by Cornell’s Office of Civil Rights, directed study involves a requirement to read or watch “relevant materials” and to “discuss those materials and how they apply” to their case. The reading materials can include “an impact letter written by the complainant,” the guide says.

In several other cases in which a sexual assault complaint was withdrawn without a hearing taking place, the respondent was given other sanctions such as writing an “Accountability Reflection Paper” or an “Apology Letter,” the data shows.

The university has not yet published data for the school year starting in fall 2024, when Jane Doe’s alleged assault occurred, or more recent years.

Jennifer Brownell, the executive director of the Advocacy Center of Tompkins County, a nonprofit Cornell refers students to that offers counseling for sexual violence victims, said she was concerned by relatively lax punishments for students found responsible for sexual assault.

“My gut reaction is that’s infuriating,” she said. “Should they be expelled? I don’t know. But should there be harsher punishments? Yes.”But Lake, the expert in higher education law, noted that the Title IX regulations don’t have sentencing guidelines, leaving it up to universities to decide the punishments for students found responsible.

In Jane Doe’s case, the university expelled two of the seven men she accused of participating in her assault, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. Two others were suspended and required to take directed study, while one student who had graduated was barred from campus for three years. Two students, including one who was found responsible for entering the room where Doe was allegedly assaulted but not attacking her, were punished with directed study and writing reflection essays.

One of those students was ordered to do a study “focused on the issues of social media use and sexual harassment” and to write “a reflection paper that engages with the specific circumstances” of his case, according to a partially redacted disciplinary record included in court files. (That student’s attorney said he is challenging the Title IX decision.) A Cornell spokesperson said in a statement that “the university conducted an extensive investigation and adjudication over several months, imposing sanctions based on the findings and circumstances involving each student.”Some former Cornell students who reported a sexual assault say Jane Doe’s complaints about how her case was handled struck a chord with them.

In Lee’s case, she accused her fellow student of engaging in sex acts without her consent in April 2022, which he denied. Lee described herself as distraught and “mentally stuck” afterward, leaving her skipping meals, struggling to attend class and eventually dropping her minor.

A university panel found the other student responsible for sexual assault after hearing testimony and reviewing evidence, including that Lee called a rape hotline and searched “What to Do if You Were Raped” in the hours after the incident.

Lee asked for the student to be expelled, but instead he was punished with a written reprimand, disciplinary probation, a no-contact order and a directed study that included “a reflection paper,” according to a university record reviewed by CNN. The panel concluded that his “actions caused significant harm but were not taken with malicious intent,” and that “education in affirmative consent and related topics was likely to prevent the respondent from engaging in similar misconduct in the future.”

Lee said when she read the Cornell panel’s decision, it felt like her alleged assailant “just got an extra homework assignment.”

“In a way, they were telling me it just wasn’t bad enough,” she said. “Why is my pain only worth an essay?”Other former Cornell students also say the school’s Title IX process failed them.

The alum who asked not to be named alleged more than five years ago that she was assaulted by a male classmate – a student who had already been the subject of another Title IX complaint less than a year earlier.

The student who filed that first complaint, who also spoke to CNN under the condition of anonymity, said he had assaulted her multiple times, including once so violently that she bled for days. She said she was granted a no-contact order, she didn’t hear about any further investigation, and no disciplinary action was taken.

When the second student complained about the same classmate, she said she provided a witness statement.

The student who made the second complaint said a Title IX panel found him not responsible. She said she developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the assault, and said the lack of transparency and length of the investigation added to her anxiety and depression.

“This case has disrupted my school, work, and personal life to enormous degrees,” she wrote in an email to the Title IX coordinator, which CNN reviewed, noting that she was “ashamed to be a Cornell University alumni.”

Her note added that “the university goes against its own policy of taking sexual assault very seriously, and this outcome could dissuade others from coming forward.”

The Title IX coordinator responded by thanking her for participating in the process, apologizing for “communication issues,” and promising to “consider all the input you have provided,” in an emailed response reviewed by CNN.

Another current student at Cornell, who also asked not to be named, told CNN that in the summer of 2026 she reported to the Title IX office an incident in which she was sexually harassed during a one-on-one meeting with a staff member.

She still hasn’t heard whether an investigation has been opened or whether the staff member has faced any consequences.

“It would have been nice to have more transparency to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said, adding she is also worried that her scholarship could be in jeopardy because she has been avoiding required events where that staff member is present.

She said she wasn’t surprised by Jane Doe’s allegations. “It sounded typical of what would happen at Cornell, especially with the university being more concerned with covering up than helping the victim,” she said.

Jane Wang, a Cornell student who reported being sexually assaulted to the university, told CNN that she eventually withdrew her complaint because she felt that Cornell officials involved in the Title IX process weren’t responding in a timely manner or taking her allegations seriously.

“I felt like it was just treated with a complete lack of urgency, lack of responsiveness,” Wang said. The failures in the university’s system mean that “so many other victims and survivors are discouraged from truly seeking out justice within this process,” Wang said.

As Cornell grapples with Jane Doe’s case, the school has also struggled for years with serious problems at its fraternities – and with improving the way the school deals with sexual violence.

Dozens of times over the last two decades, fraternities at Cornell have been temporarily suspended or faced other disciplinary action over hazing and other rules violations, according to university records.

In 2022, the university’s Interfraternity Council temporarily suspended all fraternity parties and social events after allegations that at least four students were drugged and another was sexually assaulted at fraternity houses over the span of about a month.

The fraternity where Jane Doe was allegedly assaulted, Chi Phi, had not been sanctioned over sexual misconduct in recent years. But just a day before the alleged gang rape, campus police reported a drug-related arrest at the house, a university crime log shows.

Thomas Giuffra, Jane Doe’s attorney, told CNN that the arrest involved a drug overdose, and argued that Cornell had put his client in danger because of the university’s “failure to shut the frat down” after the incident.

If the university had responded adequately to that arrest, “there would not have been a sanctioned party for her to go to,” Giuffra said.

Chi Phi’s Cornell chapter was shut down in 2024 in the wake of Jane Doe’s complaint.

Cornell officials have acknowledged a long-standing need to better address sexual violence on campus – including in a March report from a university task force finding that decades of initiatives had failed to significantly reduce attacks. The report noted that in 2025, more than one in three undergraduate women reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at Cornell – an increase from previous years. More than 26,000 students attend Cornell.

“Despite a long history of actions to address sexual assault … rates of sexual assault remain persistently high,” the report concluded.

Carolin Guentert, a lawyer who represents sexual assault survivors, said the Jane Doe case had exposed “huge flaws” in how some universities handle the Title IX process. “I don’t think this is really serving survivors of sexual violence,” she said.

Instead of focusing only on accountability for past violations, Guentert said, universities like Cornell should invest more strongly in sexual assault prevention. “By the time it gets to a Title IX process like this, it’s too late. Something terrible has already happened,” Guentert said.

Alhassan Bangura, a Cornell graduate who helped author a 2023 student government resolution demanding the administration “take overdue action” to address sexual assault, said he was shocked by the Jane Doe case – but not surprised. After sexual assaults are reported, “we’re receiving text after text, and we hear that the university is looking into it, but the same thing is happening year after year,” Bangura said.

“Clearly something more tangible has to change.”Another author of the resolution, Lucia Balestrieri, said assigning essays to students for sexual assault is “barely a punishment – it’s a slap on the wrist if anything.”“Outside of Cornell’s campus, there would be real consequences,” she said. “Because Cornell doesn’t want a bad rap, you can get away with something.”