Trigger warning: This post contains details of rape and may be distressing for some readers.
Update:
There’s been a beautiful development in the story of Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who has pledged to carry a matress around campus with her until her rapist is expelled.
Word of her project has spread across social media, and a group of fellow students have now banded together to help her carry the matress around, Elite Daily reports.
They have called the project Carrying the Weight Together.
Previously, Mamamia wrote.
Emma Sulkowicz alleges that she was raped on her first day back at ivy-league Columbia University in 2012.
Sulkowicz reported the alleged crime to the university and then to police but, when her case was disregarded, the visual arts student faced the prospect of having to attend the same university as her alleged rapist until graduation.
“I was raped in my own dorm bed, and since then that space has become fraught for me,” Sulkowicz says in a video published by the Columbia Spectator. “I feel like I’ve carried the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then.”
Now, Sulkowicz has found a powerful, unique way to protest the university’s sexual assault policy: she’s started carrying a dorm mattress with her everywhere she goes – and she says she’ll keep doing so until her rapist is expelled.
“The act of carrying something that is normally found in our bedroom out into the light is supposed to mirror the way I’ve talked to the media,” she said in the video. “A mattress is the perfect size for me to just be able to carry it enough that I can continue with my day, but also heavy enough that it have to continually struggle with it.”
Sulkowicz calls the endeavour an “endurance performance art piece,” and has turned into a visual arts thesis titled Mattress Performance or Carry That Weight. “The piece could potentially take a day, or it could go on until I graduate,” she said.
Speaking to TIME Magazine in May, Sulkowicz said she didn’t report the alleged rape at first because she was afraid of dealing with the emotional trauma associated with it — but that when she met two other women who said her alleged rapist had also assaulted them, she decided she “had to do something”.
“We all reported our cases, and all three were dismissed,” she said.
“During my hearing, which didn’t take place until seven months after the incident, one panelist kept asking me how it was physically possible for anal rape to happen. I was put in the horrible position of trying to educate her and explain how this terrible thing happened to me.”
Ultimately, Sulkowicz’s rapist was not found guilty. “I appealed, but appeals go to the dean who basically has the autonomy to make the final decision for every case of sexual assault on campus,” she told TIME.
“Every day, I am afraid to leave my room… Last semester I was working in the dark room in the photography department. Though my rapist wasn’t in my class, he asked permission from his teacher to come and work in the dark room during my class time. I started crying and hyperventilating. As long as he’s on campus with me, he can continue to harass me,” she said.
Sulkowicz says she has lost friends because “some people just don’t understand what it means to be raped”.
” They say girls are confusing and it’s hard to tell when you’re supposed to stop,” she said.
“When I was raped, I was screaming ‘no’ and struggling against him. It was obviously not consensual, but he was turned on by my distress.”
If you or anyone you know has been the victim of a sexual assault. Help is available. Call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic, Family Violence Counselling Service 24/7 on 1800 737 732.
Top Comments
I was hoping the update would be that the school had taken action against the alleged attacker but this is very sweet and I'm glad she has support
For better or worse we have a system in this country that requires proof before allegations are acted on and have consequences. The only thing we know about this case is that she made an allegation and for whatever reason neither the police nor the university decided it could be substantiated. In these circumstances the University doesn't have any choice - if they suspend someone who has paid thousands of dollars to attend because somebody has made an allegation that doesn't have enough evidence to sustain it, they'd be taken to the cleaners. He may be a rapist, he may not be, we just don't know. But do we really want a system where he is expelled on her say so and apparently insufficient evidence to justify either criminal charges or administrative procedures? Some might answer yes, that women either never lie or rarely enough that the benefits to society outweigh the odd innocent. But this is inconsistent with any outcome that results in Bill Shorten remaining as Opposition Leader (am I alone in suspecting that Mamamia's respect for the law, nothing to see here etc might have a slightly different tone if it was someone from the other side of politics?)