Former Cornell fraternity members, dragged into scandal, ask university to clear their names

A group of former Cornell University students say they are being falsely connected to the alleged 2024 fraternity house rape, and smeared and targeted online, and they want the college to say explicitly that they were not among men accused in the incident.

The former students, members of the Chi Phi fraternity who graduated in 2022 and 2023, say online sleuths have wrongly pegged them for harassment, leading to negative personal and professional consequences. 

A lawyer for the group asked the school in a letter on Oct. 3 to clear them and others who graduated prior to the alleged assault.

"We understand that federal privacy law limits what Cornell may say about individual students, and we are not asking Cornell to identify anyone who was in the group chat," wrote attorney Adam Ford, referring to a Snapchat message thread from the night of the October 2024 incident. "We are asking for the opposite: a public confirmation as to who was not."

A woman identified as Jane Doe sued Cornell, the fraternity and several men who she says pressured her into taking the drug ketamine and sexually assaulted her. According to the suit, which was filed in September, a fraternity member sent a crude message to a Chi Phi Snapchat group chat suggesting that a woman was available for sex in a room in the frat house, leading to hours of assault. 

The local district attorney did not bring criminal charges against anyone at the time. New York Attorney General Letitia James has now been appointed special counsel to investigate the case.

Ford's letter says none of the men he represents were in the group chat. While all had been previous members of Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity, they were not students at the time of the alleged assault.

Ford wrote that the men have been harassed in the days since a website devoted to exposing people associated with the rape posted their names under a list of former Chi Phi members. The messages they received, according to Ford, included threats like "I will find you," "you will never know peace" and "all 57 men of the fraternity deserve public execution." 

The men's names have been removed from the website following a cease-and-desist letter sent on Oct. 2. A podcaster who indicated in a tweet that they were in the group chat also appears to have deleted the post after receiving a letter from Ford.

"Most of them have had their employers and higher education institutions take

adverse actions against them, including being placed on leave," Ford wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Brian White, Cornell's vice president and general counsel. "We believe Cornell is uniquely situated to correct the public record with a clear and unambiguous public statement that members of the Chi Phi fraternity who were not enrolled at Cornell during the fall of 2024 were not on the relevant 'Chi Phi Actives' Snapchat group chat."

A spokesperson for the school did not immediately respond to CBS News' request for comment. 

The men have also asked for individualized private letters "confirming that the University has information proving they were not members of the Chi Phi Actives group chat."