In 2013, Emma Sulkowicz, then an art student at Columbia University, filed a formal complaint with the university administration alleging that she had been raped in her campus dorm room by a fellow student, Paul Nungesser. The two knew each other and had previously had consensual sexual relations, but Sulkowicz said this encounter was nonconsensual and violent, including choking. Nungesser denied the allegations and maintained that the entire encounter was consensual.
Columbia conducted an internal investigation that found Nungesser “not responsible” and decided not to take action against him. Sulkowicz’s appeal was rejected. Three additional complaints filed against Nungesser by other female students were also dismissed or dropped. Sulkowicz filed a complaint with the New York Police Department, but authorities determined there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges.
Sulkowicz then decided to turn her trauma into a performance piece that also served as her senior art project. During her final year at Columbia, she carried a dorm-room mattress with her everywhere she went on campus. The mattress was intended as a physical representation of the weight of trauma that survivors of sexual assault are forced to carry every day.
Before her 2015 graduation ceremony, the university asked Sulkowicz not to bring the mattress, but she refused and walked across the stage accompanied by friends who helped her carry it. Two years later, Columbia reached a financial settlement with Nungesser and issued a statement expressing regret for “the damage to his reputation.” Sulkowicz received nothing from the university.
Sexual assault on college campuses across the United States is a long-running epidemic that has never been resolved. Cornell University became the latest flashpoint this week, but it is only another example in a broader pattern involving elite institutions, political systems and American society at large that protects men accused of sexually assaulting women.
Cornell University in New York. The latest controversy
(Photo: Lauren Petracca, REUTERS)
The numbers are staggering. According to data from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in five female students experiences sexual assault while in college. Nearly 90% of campus perpetrators are known to the victim. Alcohol or other substances are involved in about 70% of reported assaults, and perpetrators sometimes deliberately use them to incapacitate victims, leaving them unable to resist and, of course, unable to consent.
More than 90% of campus sexual assaults are not reported to law enforcement or the appropriate university authorities because of fear, social stigma or a lack of confidence that anything will be done. At Cornell alone, more than 1,200 reports and complaints of sexual assault were filed between 2018 and 2024. According to a USA Today investigation, the university brought disciplinary charges in just 162 cases. Of the 51 students found responsible, only 14 cases resulted in suspension and just seven resulted in permanent expulsion.
As in many other areas, the political winds blowing from Washington have a significant impact here as well. During the first half of the previous decade, universities appeared to make substantial progress in addressing the issue. In 2011, the Obama administration reminded institutions of higher education that Title IX — the landmark 1972 law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at any educational institution receiving federal funding — required them to address sexual violence and instructed them to step up investigations. Colleges and universities responded with major educational initiatives and strengthened their Title IX offices, creating an environment that led to more reports and more women coming forward.
Critics, however, argued that the Obama-era guidelines went too far. The first Trump administration rescinded those guidelines in 2017, the Biden administration reinstated them and the Trump administration has now rolled them back again — coincidentally or not, just this week.
Discussion of sexual violence at Cornell. 'Groups of boys and men routinely bond over humiliating and exploiting women'
(Photo: Matt Rourke, AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
“In a deeply misogynistic society, groups of boys and men routinely bond over humiliating and exploiting women,” Kate Manne, a professor of philosophy at Cornell University, wrote in New York Magazine this week. “As a professor at Cornell, I have had many, many victims in my office, confiding in me their experiences of sexual assault and harassment. Many didn’t even try to report them to the police or the university, and, for those who did, the experiences and the outcomes have rarely been positive.”
In the case of “Jane Doe,” who has alleged for two years that she was raped by seven Cornell students, the district attorney declined to bring charges after relying on an investigation conducted by campus police. Investigators did not even interview the men involved.
The university allowed five of the seven students to complete their studies and graduate. Meanwhile, “Jane Doe” was forced to leave Cornell, and her request for a tuition refund so she could transfer to another university was denied. Only the lawsuit she filed against the university last week prompted authorities to reopen the investigation and thrust the issue of campus sexual assault back into the headlines.
In her article, Manne argued that U.S. universities often take a much tougher approach and impose far harsher penalties on students who participate in political protests or are accused of academic cheating than on students accused and found responsible for sexual assault.
“She ['Jane Doe'] hence,” she wrote, “faced more severe consequences than most of the men who she alleges gang-raped her. And rape can effectively be a punishment for the crime of being female..”