If you’ve heard of Emma Sulkowicz then you probably know about her “mattress activism” where she started dragging a large mattress around from class to class in order to try to pressure Colombia University to punish the students she accused of rape, even though he was cleared of the charges. Liberals love her because she’s making such an ostentatious show of her case, but if the accused wins his case against Colombia University then they might think twice about these kinds of protests.
Paul Nungesser claims the university, which ultimately cleared him in the case, failed to protect him from a “harassment campaign” by Emma Sulkowicz, who carries a mattress around campus in her “Carry that Weight” campaign to protest the way the university handled the alleged assault.
Nungesser, a German citizen, said the university’s “effective sponsorship” of gender-based harassment and defamation resulted in intimidation and hurt his chances of getting a job in the United States.
“By refusing to protect Paul Nungesser,” the lawsuit says, “Columbia University first became a silent bystander and then turned into an active supporter of a fellow student’s harassment campaign by institutionalizing it and heralding it.”
Sulkowicz drew national attention in September when she began carrying the mattress everywhere she went to protest the university’s decision not to expel Nungesser. Nungesser said the sex was consensual.
This highlights the extremism of the advocates on the other side of this issue that want all men accused of rape to be automatically found guilty and punished without due process and without an investigation. Hopefully lawsuits like this will force colleges to respect the rights of the accused as well as the accusers.
Here’s a video of the story before he filed his lawsuit: