INSIDE CORNELL’S TWELVE-DAY CHI PHI HEARING

The clearest current picture comes from discipline summaries reported by The New York Times and The Cornell Daily Sun, which show that Matthew Ingalls and Jonathan Newell were expelled, Winston Lee was suspended for two years and would face probation upon return, and Gillio Lopes received a three-semester suspension followed by two years of probation. Diego Sarabia had already graduated when the panel finished and was barred from campus for three years, while Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar received no-contact orders and educational sanctions that included reflection papers. The outcomes differ sharply, which is why collapsing Cornell’s response into a single description of “the seven men” obscures what the University actually decided in the individual cases.

The Cornell Daily Sun reports that University files identify Ingalls and Newell as the two respondents the panel found responsible for sexual assault. Kretzschmar’s case ended differently: Cornell charged him with Sexual Assault and Sexual Exploitation, the panel did not find him responsible for those charged offenses, and it instead found him responsible for Attempted Sexual Exploitation. The published summaries for the other respondents identify sanctions and allegations without reproducing every charge-by-charge finding, leaving the public with the consequences Cornell imposed but without the complete explanation for how the panel reached each result.

For Jane Doe, those distinctions carry the weight of what Cornell was willing to acknowledge after months of investigation. The University had her account, the evidence she preserved, its own police materials, and the investigative file it created, and the hearing decisions are where all of that information was finally translated into institutional judgment. When the decisions remain outside public view, people see the punishments before they can see the reasoning that produced them.

The hearing stretched across twelve days in May 2025, with the same three-member panel meeting by Zoom to decide seven respondent cases. Cornell’s August 2024 Policy 6.4 procedures allowed factually related complaints to be joined and permitted the Hearing Chair, in consultation with the investigator, to consolidate related cases when doing so was expected to produce reliable and efficient outcomes without prejudice or confusion. The same procedures required separate consideration of sanctions for each respondent, a particularly important safeguard in a case where one survivor’s report implicated multiple men.

Because the case-specific consolidation or severance decision has not surfaced publicly, we cannot see exactly how Cornell arranged the twelve days, which testimony and exhibits were shared across respondent cases, or how the panel kept one man’s conduct from bleeding into its evaluation of another’s. Cornell’s policy explains what the University was permitted to do, while the missing case materials would show how those rules were applied to Jane Doe’s hearing.

Kretzschmar’s Article 78 challenge opened one narrow window into Cornell’s closed hearing process because most of the other written decisions remain outside public view. That imbalance is striking in a case centered on Jane Doe’s rape because one respondent’s challenge produced the clearest public procedural file, and Cornell’s explanations of what it concluded about her case remain largely closed. The docket indexes a redacted Notice of Charges, the Hearing Panel Decision, an exhibit titled “Emails Regarding Bao Distractions,” and the Appeal Panel Decision. Kretzschmar argued that Cornell charged him with Sexual Assault and Sexual Exploitation and then found him responsible for Attempted Sexual Exploitation. Justice Mark G. Masler rejected that procedural challenge at the trial-court level, and Kretzschmar later filed a notice of appeal.

That court file also preserves a dispute over whether panel member Savannah Bao was paying adequate attention during the hearing. Reporting based on Kretzschmar’s appeal materials says his attorney complained during the May 15 session that Bao appeared distracted and later alleged that she drove while another respondent was testifying. Cornell’s Title IX coordinator reportedly entered the objections into the file for a possible appeal. The available materials do not establish that Bao missed testimony or changed an outcome, although they do show that the objection was raised while the hearing was underway and became part of the respondent’s challenge to Cornell’s process.

Sarabia’s outcome carries a different kind of institutional discomfort because he had already graduated by the time the panel ruled. Cornell barred him from campus for three years, but the policy in force during this case expressly said the University was not withholding otherwise earned degrees until adjudication was complete. Earlier procedures had required a hold, and Cornell’s current rules again provide for withholding a degree while a formal complaint remains pending. Sarabia’s graduation therefore occurred under the policy Cornell had chosen for that period, leaving Jane Doe’s case inside a system that allowed a respondent to receive his degree before the sexual-misconduct proceeding was finished.

The word “essay” became shorthand for Cornell’s response because it captured something emotionally jarring in the public understanding of the case. Jane Doe had been raped by multiple men, and some of the eventual sanctions included reflection papers. Cornell later emphasized that no charged student received an essay as the sole consequence, and the discipline summaries confirm that the University also imposed expulsions, lengthy suspensions, probation, campus bans and no-contact orders.

The public descriptions need to hold both parts of that response in view because reflection papers were real components of some sanction packages and the most severe outcomes went far beyond them. The summaries still do not explain why Cornell chose expulsion in one respondent’s case, suspension in another or an education-focused sanction elsewhere, because the written findings tying evidence to each outcome remain largely outside public view.

By the time Cornell reached these decisions, Jane Doe had already been asked to give the institution far more than a headline can convey. Her report had become police paperwork, interview transcripts, medical documentation, internal investigative files, hearing exhibits and eventually a twelve-day proceeding in which seven respondent cases were judged. The sanctions now public show that Cornell’s process reached serious findings and consequences, including sexual-assault findings against Ingalls and Newell under the University’s administrative standard.

The written decisions remain the clearest account of Cornell’s respondent-by-respondent judgments and the reasoning behind the consequences it imposed. Until those decisions are publicly available, Jane Doe’s experience will continue to be discussed through sanction summaries, court filings, policy language and press reporting. Cornell itself holds the explanations for how more than 1,000 pages about her case were turned into judgment.