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.
The president of Columbia at the time refused to shake her hand when she crossed the stage at graduation.
Moar like she should have refused to shake the hand of the rapist enabling president
Good. She’s better than him and he doesn’t deserve to shake her hand. Fuck him.
I’m sure Socrates and Plato turning over in their graves looking at MBAs running educational institutions.
Probably should have picked two philosophers who didn’t have significant portions of their works dedicated to defending slavery and the literal Greek patriarchy.
he was clearly picked due to the idea of the philosopher king (in Plato’s famously undemocratic Kaliopolis, which is a lot like the caste system)
Slavery then was very different from the horrors that are chattel slavery. From my reading Socrates and Plato both reject the Greek patriarchy, but if you have writings of Plato’s that shows otherwise I’d love to see them.
You’re a trash person who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and even if you were right, you’d still be a garbage heap for thinking “but it wasn’t about race” or “but their children wouldn’t always be slaves as well, unless of course they fell into debt while their slave parents died in the mines” is a defense.
Just straight up LMAO at them not defending Greek patriarchy btw.
Shit, you ignorant fucking ape, they had chattel slavery too, and what the Spartans did to their helot class was as bad or worse than anything the South did.
Homie’s off his meds again lmao.
Woah buddy everything is alright man. Take a chill pill.
You triggered them, sure.
You’re gonna address the point they made though? How they had chattel slaves AND the alternative ancient slave systems you defended are literally worse?
No, they were right and I was wrong. Socrates and Plato had ideas different that typical Greek life, but they were still far from ideal by today’s standards. It is something that I had to do more research on and I’m grateful for that.
That guy is a real fuck though, and can eat a whole cactus.
How about you know one goddamn thing about ancient slavery systems before you defend it based on shit you’ve seen fascist adjacent redditors who unironically want to bring those systems back say and then I’ll chill?
Did she carry the mattress on stage?
Yes. He hadn’t been expelled at that point.
So, not sure how a handshake could have been possible.
Carrying it around everywhere doesn’t mean she didn’t regularly put it down to do other things.
Someone that cared about the issue would have made an effort to figure something out. Then again someone who cared about the issue would do more to remove rapists from the campus they are in charge of.
one can have two hands at once