Why This Female Student Is Carrying A Twin-Sized Mattress Everywhere She Goes
A Columbia University female student plans to carry a mattress with her everywhere she goes until her alleged rapist is expelled or chooses to leave the school.
By Sadho Ram — 04 Sep 2014, 12:27 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
This is Emma Sulkowicz, a Columbia University senior and visual arts major. Emma says she was raped in her own dorm bed by a classmate on the first day of her sophomore year of college.
Emma Sulkowicz joined a federal complaint against Columbia University after officials dismissed her report about a rape
Image via nyt.comSince then, a substantial amount of her time at Columbia University has been spent trying to convince college administrators, police, and even friends that what happened to her really happened, that it was rape, and that her rapist deserves to be punished for what he did.
nymag.com
When she reported it to the university months later, the school claimed the alleged student was not guilty. Emma appealed, but lost. She then told the Columbia Spectator student newspaper that the incident wasn't properly investigated.
Students filed with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights against Columbia University
Image via nyt.comEmma is one of 23 students who are part of a federal Title IX complaint filed against Columbia in April for mishandling sexual-assault cases. Though she and two other students reported that the same student had assaulted them, all of their claims were swept under the rug, and the male student was not expelled from campus.
nytimes.com
Following what happened with her, Emma wrote in Time in May:
"Every day, I am afraid to leave my room. Even seeing people who look remotely like my rapist scares me. 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."
time.com
Emma has now devised a senior thesis rooted in performance art that will allow her to protest the fact that her rapist continues to study on the same campus as hers
Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz has taken her experience attending college with her rapist and turned it into her senior thesis project. "It's endurance performance art piece," Sulkowicz told the Columbia Daily Spectator about the endeavor, for which she will carry her mattress around to every one of her classes until her rapist is either expelled or chooses to leave the school.
jezebel.com
She has committed to carrying around a twin-size dorm mattress everywhere she goes on campus, to classes and appointments, "for as long as I attend the same school as my rapist"
"I was raped in my own dorm bed, and since then that space has become fraught for me," she says in a video about the piece, called Mattress Performance or Carry That Weight, published by the Columbia Spectator. "And I feel like I've carried the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then."
nymag.com
The use of her mattress was a specific choice, Emma notes, one that was representative of her experience
"I could have taken my pillow, but I want people to see how it weighs down a person to be ignored by the school administration and harassed by police," she told Guardian's Jessica Valenti.