Editors of The Cornell Daily Sun clustered around their computers late Monday night, getting ready to send out a letter from the editor. They looked bleary-eyed, and one reporter confessed she had skipped her class on Nietzsche that day. These student journalists at Cornell University were pressing through a dizzying two weeks following the story of a student’s allegation that she was raped on campus in 2024.

The case had long had their attention; now it had burst into the national spotlight, and their high-risk decision to publish the names of the accused was being discussed not only in Cornell’s libraries and walkways but in the national media. Back in November 2024, students at Cornell were shaken by an alert they received over email: “Crime ALERT: Sexual Assault,” the email read, referring to the case of a woman who told the Cornell police she had been assaulted at a fraternity house.

Cereese Qusba, 22, a senior and reporter for The Sun, couldn’t shake her concerned curiosity about the case. She got in contact with Jane Doe, the plaintiff, and built a relationship with Ms. Doe and her lawyer. When a new editor in chief, Sophia Dasser, 20, took over the paper in early 2026, she immediately received a phone call from Ms. Qusba. This month, when Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against the university, the fraternity and her sorority, Ms. Qusba was ready to hit publish on her investigation, which was 23 months in the making.

Ms. Dasser decided to publish the names of the seven fraternity men named in the lawsuit on the paper’s front page and in a fiery editorial. It was a sensitive decision, she knew, given that the men were named in the suit but had not been criminally charged. Ms. Dasser said she decided to publish the names to display the transparency that some students felt was lacking from university leadership.