Cornell University was dropped from membership in the Ivy League amid the “Cornell 7” gang rape lawsuit.
Rumors that Cornell University was forcibly removed from the Ivy League, the collegiate athletic conference that includes eight of the United States’ oldest and most-prestigious universities, circulated in late September 2026.
The rumor circulated as the university was scrutinized over a lawsuit that accused seven male students of drugging and raping a female student in 2024. As Snopes previously reported, the lawsuit, filed in September 2026, led to the Tompkins County, N.Y., district attorney reopening his office’s investigation into the case.
People across various social media platforms shared the rumor, expressing their apparent satisfaction with the purported decision, writing, “Cornell getting dropped from the Ivy League is music to my earssssssssssss.”
Cornell getting dropped from the Ivy League is music to my earssssssssss!!
— Seema Genche (@seemagenche) September 30, 2026
However, the rumor that Cornell University was “dropped” from the Ivy League was false.
There was no evidence to suggest that the rumor had any merit. The official Ivy League website featured Cornell University as of this writing, complete with its upcoming game schedule and standings for multiple sports.
Further, the “About the Ivy League” page on the organization’s website stated, “The League’s world-renowned schools – Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale – serve as the standard bearers for inspiring and transforming student- athletes to boldly take on the world’s challenges and lead lives of great impact.”
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo revealed no credible media outlets reporting on the rumor, which would have been a major headline given the widespread media coverage of the “Cornell 7” case.
Looking closer at the most-popular versions of the claim circulating on social media, it’s clear that the accounts spreading the rumor used the exact same language — “Cornell getting dropped from the Ivy League is music to my earssssssssssss” — indicating that it was either the work of bots posting the message across a variety of accounts or, less likely, a copy-and-paste campaign.
A 2009 piece in Cornell’s student-run independent newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, dug into the history of the school’s affiliation with the prestigious organization.
It said the name Ivy League originated in 1937 but “did not become formal until November 1954, when the presidents of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale affixed their signatures to the ‘Common Statement of Ivy Group Institutions.'”
Further, it said the Ivy League “distinguished itself from other schools with a few basic rules: no postseason competition, and no financial aid to players except for legitimate academic or need-based scholarships.”
Snopes reached out to Cornell University and the Ivy League for comment and will update this article if we hear back.
