23 year old Emma Sulkowicz a senior visual arts student at Columbia University said she was raped on her mattress the first day of her sophomore year.

"Rape can happen anywhere," she explains in the video above. "For me, I was raped in my own dorm bed. Since then, it has basically become fraught for me, and I feel like I've carried the weight of what happened there with me everywhere since then."


Sulkowicz' senior thesis, titled "Mattress Performance" or "Carry That Weight," is a literal expression of that emotional weight. In what she calls an endurance art piece, she will drag her mattress everywhere she goes on campus until her rapist is expelled or leaves. The project, she says, could extend for one day or for the entire remainder of her time at Columbia.

"The past year or so of my life has been really marked by telling people what happened in that most intimate private space and bringing it out into the light," she says. "So I think the act of carrying something that is normally found in our bedroom out into the light is supposed to mirror the way I've talked to the media and talked to different news channels, etc."


When Sulkowicz's case made it to a university hearing seven months after the actual incident occurred, administrators were confused about how anal rape could happen and she had to draw a diagram. The experience left her feeling physically ill.

The alleged attacker was found not responsible by the university, and remains at the school.

"I was so naive that I guess I thought they would just believe me because I was telling the truth," Sulkowicz told The Huffington Post in February. "I didn't expect the school was going to try to not take my side."

- See more at: http://www.whonaija.com/2014/09/columbia-university-student-will-drag.html