Many faculty members who spoke at a Cornell Faculty Senate meeting Wednesday said they did not trust the university’s top leadership to “effectively address the ongoing crisis of sexual assault at Cornell University.”
The 83-member governing body held the first of two debates Wednesday over a resolution that would express no confidence in central leadership. A final vote on the resolution is scheduled for an Oct. 28 meeting.
Throughout the meeting, several attendees called on Kotlikoff to resign. Ahead of the meeting, Kotlikoff told the New York Times Tuesday that he does not plan to do so.
The resolution is part of a broader wave of outrage over the university’s handling of the alleged rape and drugging of a former student in October 2024. In a recently filed lawsuit, the former student, identified only as Jane Doe, alleged that she had been coerced into sex with seven former fraternity members.
Cornell leadership and campus police have faced a wave of criticism for their response to the incident. So far, no criminal charges have been brought in the case. Jane Doe’s lawyers and local prosecutors have alleged that a sworn statement prepared by campus police and signed by Jane Doe omitted the allegations of rape she made in her original police interview.
The faculty senate represents about 2,600 of the university’s Ithaca-based faculty members, including non-tenured professors, librarians, researchers and archivists. Many faculty members who do not serve on the body attended Wednesday’s meeting.
The Ithaca Voice obtained a recording of the meeting, which opened with a reminder of the university’s recently implemented “expressive action policy” which places restrictions on how students, faculty and staff are able to exercise their First Amendment rights.
In the lead-up to the meeting Wednesday, Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff rolled out the university’s renewed plans for reform.
On Tuesday, Cornell officials announced the school would ban all fraternity parties and other social events for the remainder of the school year. The university had also previously pledged to open an independent investigation into its handling of the incident in 2024, at the urging of Gov. Kathy Hochul. The university has tapped former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to conduct the investigation.
As part of its initial response in 2024, the university also barred its chapter of Chi Phi, the fraternity to which the seven men named in the lawsuit belonged. In 2025, officials also convened a task force meant to investigate sexual assault on campus and compile a list of recommended reforms. That report was released in March 2026.
When he appeared before faculty Wednesday, Kotlikoff gave a brief speech outlining the steps the university has taken so far in the wake of the Octover 2024 incident. He then took questions from faculty members for about 40 minutes before the proposal was introduced by faculty senator and co-sponsor Paul Ortiz, a professor of labor history.
Ortiz said he felt the university had cultivated a “culture of fear that prevents many victims of sexual assault from coming forward” that goes well beyond the Jane Doe case.
Ortiz said that even in light of pledges for reform the university announced Tuesday, he and others felt it was “more important than ever” to continue to put pressure on university leadership.
“While I applaud the fact that Cornell’s administration responded yesterday to the crisis of sexual assault on our campus, I mourn that it took so much trauma, so much student organizing and especially the suffering of Jane Doe to bring it about,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz added that he and other faculty members had felt stonewalled when calling for reforms in the past.
“Cornell will not do the right thing, colleagues, unless we, the faculty, demand that it do so,” Ortiz said.
Resolution co-sponsor and Cornell researcher Iris Packman told The Ithaca Voice in an interview that the promises of reform did not change her or other co-sponsors’ position “whatsoever” and did not go far enough to give her confidence in the administration.
“It’s too little, too late. They had two years to do something,” Packman said. “The only reason they’re doing it now is because there’s international scrutiny on the university. They’re not acting to protect students. They’re acting to protect their reputation.”
Packman, who also serves on the Tompkins County Legislature, also co-authored a resolution in that body calling for an independent audit of the Tompkins County District Attorney’s office. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten has faced criticism for their decision not to pursue criminal charges. He has maintained that Cornell police did not provide a full accounting of Jane Doe’s allegations in 2024.
Some faculty senate members said they’d like to table the matter until after the conclusion of the independent review into the university’s handling of the Jane Doe case. Few opposed the resolution outright.
Faculty Senate member William Katt said his colleagues at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine “mostly stand against” the resolution and preferred the senate to take on more substantive work.
“Why did your constituents send you to this chamber?” Katt asked. “Was it to tell the administrators that we don’t like them or was it to improve policy? Because we really can’t do both. This destroys our credibility.”
Before he became president of the university, Kotlikoff was the dean of the university’s veterinary college, where he founded and led the biomedical sciences department.
A university spokesperson noted that the Wednesday meeting was the first of two debates over the resolution, but declined to provide further comment. A final vote is set to take place on Oct. 28.
Fernando Figueroa contributed reporting.
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