Man accused in Cornell sex assault was designated as a party monitor

The fraternity party at Cornell University where a woman alleges she was sexually assaulted in 2024 was officially registered under university rules that were supposed to promote safer partying.

The rules required fraternities to designate “trained event monitors” who would stay sober and wear distinctive clothing so that police officers, paramedics or other partygoers could quickly identify them in an emergency.

One of the monitors listed by the Chi Phi fraternity in paperwork to register the 2024 party was Jonathan Newell, a man who would later be accused of sexually assaulting the woman known as Jane Doe — and the one who sent a Snapchat message inviting others into the room with her.

That information was included among more than 1,000 pages of confidential university records obtained by The New York Times.

Newell, a sophomore at the time who was expelled for his actions that night, has told investigators that his sexual encounter with Jane Doe was consensual and that he did not remember sending the Snapchat message, the records show.

He was one of seven men accused of assaulting Jane Doe, who has since dropped out of Cornell, in a lawsuit she filed last month. All have denied any wrongdoing. None have been charged with a crime.

A university spokesperson declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Newell’s designation as a safety monitor in the paperwork underscores the limitations of Cornell’s efforts to rein in its party culture in response to a drumbeat of troubling incidents.

One of the first recorded deaths from a fraternity hazing in the United States took place at Cornell, when a student fell into a gorge during initiation in 1873.

More recently, Greek life at Cornell has faced scrutiny after two high-profile deaths — one in 2011 when a student died of alcohol poisoning after a fraternity party and another in 2019 when a student was found dead in a gorge after a recruitment event.

Every school year, the university investigates new allegations of hazing. In 2022, Cornell made headlines again after reports that one student was sexually assaulted and at least four others were drugged at off-campus fraternity parties in recent weeks.

In response, Cornell has layered more and more rules atop sorority and fraternity events.

It banned all hard liquor from Greek houses. It mandated that parties where alcohol is served must end by 1 a.m. It required a roving security team to conduct random spot checks at Greek houses.

And it bolstered the rules around event monitors.

The monitors, who must regularly complete a training program, are supposed to remain sober and have a range of responsibilities at parties.

As of earlier this year, according to an archived version of Cornell’s event rules, the monitors were required to take reasonable steps to prevent overcrowding and underage drinking, prohibit public urination, and stop people from leaving with open containers of alcohol.

Sororities and fraternities were required to identify one such monitor for every 25 attendees and to submit the names in an online application before the party.

On the paperwork filed ahead of the Chi Phi party Oct. 19, 2024, the night of the alleged assault, Newell was listed among the fraternity’s seven designated monitors, according to the records obtained by the Times.

It was not clear whether Newell knew he was listed on the paperwork, and campus investigators did not ask him about it when they interviewed him in December 2024, about two months after the party.

In the interview, Newell said that by the time he showed up to Chi Phi that night at about midnight, he had already been drinking at earlier parties — where he estimated he had two to three beers, several shots, two mixed drinks, and a half bottle of a strawberry tequila drink. He was drunk to the point of stumbling down the stairs, he told the investigators.

After he walked into the party, he said, another fraternity member asked if he wanted to participate in a threesome with Jane Doe — a statement consistent with what the woman told investigators in November 2024, the university records show.

But afterward, Jane Doe said in her lawsuit, Newell and other fraternity members pressured her into snorting ketamine with them and then began engaging in sex acts without her consent. She said she pushed Newell’s hands away as he repeatedly reached for her vagina throughout the night.

Newell told investigators that Jane Doe gave verbal consent for the sexual encounters. He denied giving her ketamine, but acknowledged that he had gaps in his memory later in the night when he was vomiting from the drugs and alcohol he took.

Newell did not respond to a request for comment. It was not clear whether he had hired a lawyer.

Shortly after the Chi Phi party in 2024, the campus police interviewed the fraternity member who served as its risk manager in charge of assigning the sober monitors, according to the files obtained by the Times.

He said he did not remember who the monitors were that night because he sometimes wrote the names in one document and then deleted them to write the names for the next party in the same document.

“I’m a pretty lazy person,” he told the investigators.

He said that as he was controlling the crowd at the front door, the party “got very hectic at points.” He was the one who let Jane Doe come in, he said, because she seemed “completely sober” when she arrived. (Jane Doe has told investigators that she had drunk heavily before showing up that night.)

The risk manager said he had heard at the party about “rumors of a threesome going on, and then another threesome going on,” but brushed it off as gossip.

Cornell’s guidelines state that event monitors are supposed to be “substance free for the duration of the event.” But, according to Chi Phi’s party registration and witness interviews, the party was scheduled to begin at 10:30 p.m. and had an official end time of midnight.

Winston Lee, another Chi Phi member accused of sexual assault by Jane Doe, was not listed as an event monitor in the paperwork filed by the fraternity ahead of the party. But he told investigators that he was assigned to be a sober bartender and performed that duty until the party ended. He said he helped get water and an Uber for a female attendee who was throwing up in the balcony.

After the party ended, he said, he entered an upstairs room to find Newell, Jane Doe and another fraternity member under the sheets.

He later told investigators that he took ketamine off Jane Doe’s body and received oral sex from her but only after she gave verbal permission.

A lawyer for Lee did not respond to a request for comment.

Soon after the party, Chi Phi was suspended from campus and has been closed ever since.

In interviews with more than a dozen current and recently graduated Cornell students, many emphasized that the role of an event monitor was not always taken seriously, especially in fraternities, where the policies were often seen as boxes to check, not as rules the university strictly enforced.

Some understood the role primarily to involve making sure nobody was vomiting in the house, stumbling, or passed out. Others said the responsibility of the risk manager was to turn off the music by 1 a.m. so the police weren’t summoned.

One senior who has attended fraternity parties said she had never heard of event monitors.

A former fraternity president who graduated this year and spoke on the condition of anonymity said fraternity leaders regularly shared ideas for how to circumvent the rules and throw unregistered parties, including by pouring all alcohol out of labeled bottles into cups so that the bottles could not be spotted in social media posts.

Students also emphasized that even an effective sober monitoring system would not resolve underlying cultural problems that encourage sexual misconduct.

“The sober monitors at parties I’ve been to don’t seem to be by any stretch of the imagination monitoring what could become a threat or risk,” said Julian Weinberg, a 21-year-old junior. “It helps shift the blame from the frat as a whole to a few individuals.”

The event monitoring at the Chi Phi fraternity was not the only breakdown in protocols on the night Jane Doe said she was sexually assaulted.

In fact, she was supposed to be a sober monitor for her sorority’s date party earlier in the night but began drinking in her sorority house after learning that another person was assigned that duty, she told investigators. When it was time to leave, she discovered her sorority sisters had forgotten to account for her in ordering Ubers to the bar and began to cry, she said.

Her house mother, a sorority employee who is supposed to report misconduct, took her to the bar in downtown Ithaca instead, Jane Doe said. In her lawsuit, she said the house mother should have observed that she was drunk.

At her sorority’s date party, the bar marked an X on her hand to indicate she was under the legal drinking age, she said. But she was able to buy a cocktail anyway, she said, simply by keeping her hand down as she was ordering.

In the lawsuit, Jane Doe also sued her sorority, Delta Delta Delta, for not preventing underage binge drinking at the sorority house and at social events, accusing the organization of failing to adequately train its sober monitors.

It remains to be seen whether Jane Doe’s lawsuit will have an effect on the party culture on campus.

Earlier this year, Cornell suspended a fraternity after finding that it had forced new members to drink to the point of blacking out and encouraged them to consume “unspecified drugs to the point of being too high.”

This year alone, the Cornell University Police has responded to at least 100 incidents involving alcohol or drug offenses, the agency’s crime logs show.