Cornell police videos show an officer challenging a rumor that the Chi Phi encounter was consensual.

A police interview video can show what a witness said and whether that witness was in a position to know it. It cannot show what happened in a room the camera never entered. Hearing that an encounter was consensual is a rumor. A grand jury would care about the difference, because consent is a fact about the people who were there, not a story that circulated in the house afterward. Cornell's expulsions are a campus result. They are not criminal guilt.

ABC News reported Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026, that videos it obtained show Cornell University police questioning members of the Chi Phi fraternity in the weeks after a former student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, alleged she was sexually assaulted at the fraternity house in October 2024. In one video, ABC News reported, members who were said to have been in the house that night but not part of the encounter told officers they had heard the conduct was consensual. One told police that what people were saying was that consenting adults had been in a room. Another described a general rumor that it was consensual. Those answers are what the members told an officer about talk they had heard. They are not a recording of the night.

ABC News reported the officer then asked how the members could know the encounter was consensual if they were relying on what other people said. He pressed one member for the names of the people who had been in the room and pointed out that the member was a fraternity brother, so a failure to identify them would look a certain way. ABC News reported the member said he could not recall exactly what had been said, that he believed the men had told others they had sex with Jane Doe, and that he could not name everyone who was in the room. He said he remembered Jane Doe in bed talking to people and that he would not guess from memory he did not have. A gap like that is visible on the video. The video does not say whether the gap is memory, loyalty, or both. That is a question for whoever later has to decide which witnesses actually know something.

ABC News also reported that it obtained a transcript of testimony Jane Doe gave later to a Cornell panel. In that testimony, as ABC News described it, she was definite: she described the night as something done to her, remembered a dark room with men moving through it, and asked Cornell to make the campus safer and to remove the students. That is a paraphrase of her account to a campus panel. A campus hearing uses the university's rules and its own standard of proof. It is not a criminal trial. ABC News reported Cornell later expelled two students and suspended two others. Those sanctions tell a prosecutor whom the school separated from campus and when. They do not prove a crime.

The criminal investigation is a separate track. Gov. Kathy Hochul appointed Attorney General Letitia James special prosecutor. CNN reported that her office is close to naming outside counsel and that it has spoken with Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten and with Jane Doe's attorney. CNN reported that a defense lawyer for one of the seven men named in the civil lawsuit has asked James to recuse herself over a social-media post she published on Sept. 28, before the appointment. Cornell's trustees have separately retained Sally Yates to review how the university responded. That review asks whether the school followed its own rules. It is not what these videos show, and it is not a charge. No one has been charged. What a grand jury could take from the videos is narrow. They show witnesses who say they heard a consensual account, an officer testing that account, and a brother who could not name the people in the room. A grand jury can call the people who were actually there. A rumor on a video is a reason to ask them. It is not the answer. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.