Cornell Student Journalists Who Pursued Alleged Gang Rape Case Speak Out

The Cornell student journalists who have long covered the alleged gang rape of their peer by 7 members of a fraternity say they want actual accountability from the University and District Attorney.

The Cornell Daily Sun’s editor-in-chief, Sophia Dasser, and senior editor and writer, Cereese Qusba, went on CNN Tuesday night and expressed “shock” that their reporting went national and viral.

They’ve been all over this story for two years, but what really grabbed headlines was the accuser’s recent civil lawsuit … Cereese says reporting on all the graphic details and refusing to “sugarcoat anything in our coverage” resulted in lots of eyeballs.

Sophia says there’s been a “huge wave of solidarity and kinship with Jane Doe” flooding their inboxes … plus a ton of outrage against Cornell.

At the heart of The Sun’s coverage is accountability … according to the editors.

Sophia says … “We are students. We have the right to demand safety from our university administrators, and we have the right to demand things like anonymized data reports of outcomes and sanctions and punishments from cases that were reported.”

What’s more, she says the university’s sexual assault task force was not effective as a preventative measure.

The way the students see things … “It was extraordinarily concerning that the last we had heard on any solution from the case was a sexual assault task force that had approached sexual misconduct as an educational problem … the individuals who would probably be committing the sexual misconduct are not the individuals who will be showing up to these workshops.”

As we reported … the Jane Doe told police in 2024 that she was certain without a doubt that she had been raped.

This appears to conflict with Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten‘s account … after he claimed the Jane Doe said in her original statement that the sexual activity was “voluntary, conscious and consensual.”