Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz, 21, says she was raped in her own bed at the beginning of her sophomore year. This week, two years after the alleged assault, Sulkowicz, a visual-arts major, has made a promise to carry her mattress around campus every day as part of her senior thesis. It is, she says, a symbol of the burden sexual-assault survivors carry with them every day.
“The act of carrying the mattress from inside my room out into the light has mirrored the way my life has changed, as I’ve brought my personal story out into the light,” Sulkowicz told TIME. “This project is a way to heal one of the most difficult things that happened to me. As I will build muscle and get stronger, hopefully I will also build emotional strength.”
Sulkowicz started the performance-art project on Tuesday, and she said she is determined to continue carrying the mattress wherever she goes — to class, the library, the gym — as long as her alleged rapist is still on campus. That means her project could last until graduation day in May 2015 — unless her alleged assailant is either expelled or chooses to leave the school. Last year, Sulkowicz and two other women reported the same person to the university. All three cases were dismissed.
That is also a problem. But getting kicked out of university for supposed rape when you’re innocent is a life sentence. No decent job will ever hire you.
The fact that this shit happens all the time doesn’t mean you have to normalise it. It’s not normal.
Actually it’s a pre requisite for being a politician or clergy member.
Earns you a golden toilet even
What do you think having to drop out of University because of the trauma of being raped does to a person?
So two wrongs make a right? This person had their life horribly disrupted for reason A so an unrelated person should have their life horribly disrupted for reason B?
People should not be subject to arbitrary harm from others and we should be against all forms of it, whether that’s sexual assault, economic coercion or lack of due process.
When universities hide evidence, don’t report to authorities, and otherwise dodge investigating rape accusations, then people aren’t going to trust when they exonerate these men.
This is on the system that protects these rapists.
Due process is also a system that can make things like racism, sexism, nepotism harder. Also outside of universities people often feel like the legal system protects offenders, but it in a well functioning system it also protects them. After all, without due process, rape victims themselves can also be expelled by universities.
And when a legal system doesn’t work, it needs fixing. People fought hard for legal protections to put in place in the first place.
Over 90% of perpetrators of sexual assault and rape never see the inside of a courtroom.
It needs fixing.
I don’t know about this case, if that is true then its terrible and he should have been arrested, convicted and thrown out of the university. But the larger point stands, denying some people of due process because others are harmed in other ways is not something to strive for.
The rape victims at these universities deserve due process as well. As in a legit investigation and not hiding of evidence to protect these men.
Absolutely, I haven’t seen anyone in this thread say anything suggesting otherwise, everyone deserves that. But that means not throwing people out of a university without evidence.
Universities don’t throw people out because they hide the evidence
Obviously being raped is worse. I’m not trying to start a competition or shouting match here.
My point is solely and entirely about the basic human right of due process: anyone should be considered innocent until proven guilty, no matter the gender or crime. That doesn’t mean don’t believe the accuser, but it means really take the charges seriously, investigate the crime to the best of your system’s abilities and if after all that there is insufficient evidence, there should be no conviction. Not by the justice system or the university. If he is guilty, as with any other crime, the system has failed. But until there is some major breakthrough, this is the best system we have.
As a more general point: the US is already falling into a society of lawlessness. Now you don’t have to go all Michelle Obama “When they go low, we go high” but at least don’t play their hand by inciting more lawlessness. I really don’t think you will win that war…
No, innocent until proven guilty is only the bar for the government to lock you up in a cage. It’s impossible for anyone to live their life using that standard.
Not when universities have the ability to hide evidence and obfuscate real investigations in order to protect these men. Which they have done time and time again.
This is not the best system we have. We can’t even get the police to process rape kits.
Then fight for a better system, like I said, but don’t incite lawlessness or start an argument with the one person advocating for due process.
Why do you think these stories are getting such traction right now?
These investigations were corrupt.
Then reinvestigate and improve the system, but don’t let yourself fade into even more lawlessness. Like I said before, this is an arms race you will not win against the likes of Trump and his cronies. They will always one-up you in ways your own consciousness won’t even let you imagine.
What the fuck do you think we’re doing when we talk openly about these things with righteous anger? What the fuck do you think we’re doing when we demand that universities no longer sweep these accusations aside?
Geez Velma, calm the fuck down please. What is it with you trying to get into an argument with whoever you can? Why are you even arguing with someone who wants the same thing you do?
Digging up every old case and publicly shaming the alleged perpetrators is, and will always be the definition of lawless. You’re simply not a judge. You don’t know the facts nor the evidence.