Cornell Investigation Reopened After the Woman Who Reported an Assault Sues the School

New York prosecutors have reopened an investigation into an alleged gang rape at Cornell University in 2024, after the woman who reported the assault sued the school and others, PBS NewsHour reports. A civil lawsuit, in other words, has been followed by a renewed criminal inquiry — the order matters, because it is the suit that is described as prompting the reopening, not new charges filed by the state at the outset. When the report was first made, no criminal charges were filed. Cornell said then that it had investigated and taken disciplinary action of its own, including suspensions and expulsions. That is the quiet tension in cases like this: a university's internal process can produce consequences — suspensions, expulsions — while a prosecutor's office concludes there is nothing to charge, and the two outcomes sit side by side for years until something disturbs them.