10/11/2026
No means no!!!!!!!
As outrage continues to spread over a lawsuit alleging that seven Cornell University students drugged and r***d a 20-year-old undergraduate -- and that the school and prosecutors failed to act -- the case echoes a protest that raised the very same questions more than a decade ago. In the fall of 2014, a Columbia University student named Emma Sulkowicz began carrying a 50-pound dorm mattress everywhere she went on campus, in protest of how the university had handled her sexual assault case -- and in doing so helped define a national reckoning that is far from over.
The mattress was the same kind she said she was r***d on, by a fellow student, on the first day of her sophomore year two years earlier. A visual arts major in her final year, Sulkowicz made the act her senior thesis -- a work of endurance art titled "Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)" -- and she set herself unbending rules: she would carry the mattress any time she was on university property, she could not ask anyone for help though she could accept it if offered, and she would put it down only when the man she accused left the school.
"I was r***d in my own dorm bed, and since then, that space has become fraught for me," she said. "I feel like I've carried the weight of what happened there since then." She had reported the assault to Columbia; after an investigation, the university found the accused student "not responsible," and he was never charged with a crime. He has always denied the allegation. Sulkowicz was not the only one to come forward: two other students brought their own complaints against him, neither of which resulted in a finding of responsibility -- in one case, the accuser dropped out of the process, saying she had been worn down by the university's questioning.
Rather than let the matter rest there, Sulkowicz turned her daily life into a protest against the university's unwillingness to act. "I will be carrying this dorm room mattress with me everywhere I go for as long as I attend the same school as my ra**st," she said. "The piece could potentially take a day, or it could go on until I graduate."
For the entire school year, through a New York winter, she carried the mattress to class and across the quad, often with other students stepping in to help shoulder it -- and when she walked at her 2015 commencement, she carried it across the stage. By then the image had become one of the defining symbols of the movement against campus sexual assault. Students at colleges across the country staged their own "Carry That Weight" demonstrations; Sulkowicz appeared alongside Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to press for reform, at a moment when more than 90 schools were under federal investigation over how they handled such cases.
More than a decade later, the questions her protest forced into the open -- whether institutions protect survivors or themselves, and whose account is believed -- are being asked all over again. Sulkowicz could not make her university act. But at a Columbia solidarity rally during her protest, one speaker described what the movement was reaching for: a day when the weight would lift "not because there is silence, but because the conversation is building and building until all of us are carrying the weight so that none of us have to."
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For several powerful memoirs by young women who survived and courageous spoke out after sexual assault, we highly recommend "Know My Name: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/know-my-name), "Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/notes-on-a-silencing), and "I Have The Right To" (https://www.amightygirl.com/i-have-the-right-to), recommended for older teens and adults
If you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The S*xual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from S*xual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls
Raising kids to have empathy for others and an understanding of consent is one of the most important things parents can do to help reduce the incidence of sexual assault. To teach children -- girls and boys alike -- about the need to respect others and their personal boundaries, we recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
There is also a helpful guide for teens on topics such as consent and coercion, "Real Talk About S*x and Consent: What Every Teen Needs to Know," for ages 13 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/real-talk-about-sex-and-consent
For fictional stories that address r**e and sexual violence and offer a helpful way to spark conversations with young adult readers around sexual assault, we recommend "Speak" for ages 14 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/speak), "Girl Made of Stars" for ages 14 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/girl-made-of-stars), and "The Way I Used To Be" for ages 15 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-way-i-used-to-be)
