In awe of Emma Sulkowicz, who carried her mattress during her Columbia graduation
Earlier today, Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who garnered international attention for her senior thesis project, Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), graduated from college with her mattress right by her side. With the help of a few friends, Sulkowicz carried the mattress across the commencement stage in continued protest of how the school handled her alleged sexual assault in 2012. Its message was both incredibly powerful and entirely empowering.
“The past year of my life has been really marked by telling people what happened in that most intimate and private space,” Sulkowicz told the Columbia Daily Spectator in a video interview last September. “I was raped in my own dorm bed and since then, that space has become fraught for me. I feel like I’ve carried the weight of what happened there since then.”
“The [mattress art] piece could potentially take a day, or it could go on until I graduate,” she continued.
For those unfamiliar, Sulkowicz was allegedly raped by a classmate in her dorm room during her sophomore year, and Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) was her attempt to turn her pain into performance art. The project, in part, also came from frustrations with how her assault was handled by the university and police. Sulkowicz filed a complaint against her alleged attacker, Paul Nungesser, with Columbia University in April 2013, but he was found “not responsible” later that year. Two other women came forward to accuse him of assault on campus. Sulkowicz then filed a complaint with the New York Police Department (they did not pursue charges) and a Title IX complaint against the university in 2014 — a federal law that prohibits gender-based discrimination in federally-funded education programs. When her efforts proved fruitless, she came up with the idea for Carry That Weight. (Nungesser denied all accusations in an interview with The New York Times, and said that he had plans to sue both Columbia University and Sulkowicz’s thesis advisor, also for violation of Title IX.)
As part of the project, Sulkowicz would carry a mattress with her wherever she went on campus until she graduated or Nungesser was expelled. The project was meant to be a visual representation of the emotional weight she carried as a result of the attack, forcing a topic often hidden away or ignored to be brought to light. She would be allowed to accept help carrying the mattress, but only when offered — and soon after Carry That Weight began, many were more than happy to coordinate with her to make sure she wasn’t carrying it alone.
