Cornell University has retained Sally Yates to lead a broad independent review of how it prevents and responds to sexual harassment, sexual assault and related misconduct on campus. The new inquiry will also take a close look at Cornell’s response to the allegations involving Jane Doe and members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024.
The review is being handled by a newly formed Special Committee of the Cornell University Board of Trustees, which said Yates will have full independence and will report findings and recommendations directly to the committee. Yates is a partner at King & Spalding LLP and a former Acting Attorney General of the United States and Deputy Attorney General of the United States, giving the university an outside investigator with deep federal experience at the moment it is under pressure to show its own system can stand up to scrutiny.
For Anne Meinig Smalling, the point is not simply to revisit one case. She said Yates brings extraordinary experience, independence and judgment to the work, and said the questions raised by the Jane Doe matter warrant a rigorous examination of Cornell’s response. But she also said Cornell’s responsibility is broader, and that the team has been asked to examine the university’s overall approach to preventing and responding to sexual misconduct, identify where it is doing well and where it can do better, and recommend changes that will help make the community safer.
That scope reaches far beyond the October 2024 allegations. The review will examine how reports are received and investigated, how students are supported, how hearings, discipline and appeals are handled, and how campus police respond and coordinate with other law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. It will also assess campus safety reporting, the university’s policies and oversight involving fraternities, sororities and other student organizations, and the Board’s own oversight of these issues.
The committee said the work will be measured against Title IX, the Clery Act, the Violence Against Women Act’s Campus SaVE Act, New York State law and recognized best practices in higher education. Cornell said the investigative team will have access to relevant policies, records, case files, personnel and leadership, subject to law and privacy requirements. The Special Committee itself includes Anne Meinig Smalling, Jennifer L. Davis, Tara Holm, Howard L. Morgan Ph.D., Beckie Robertson, Stephen C. Robinson, Martin F. Scheinman and Robert W. Selander.
The real test now is whether the review produces more than a summary of failures already visible in the Jane Doe matter. Cornell has put an outside lawyer with high-level federal credentials at the center of a process meant to judge the school by the standards it expects from others, and the findings will show whether the university is ready to change the way it handles misconduct from report to resolution.
