Yes technically he must be treated as innocent. I presume the reason Emma filed a complaint with the police was to cover her ass so she wouldn’t be sued for the fact that his name became public as she was just too closely associated with the campus advocacy that was vandalizing bathrooms with graffiti with people’s names…I could be wrong but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone advised her to do that…because then she redrew her support…after the record was created. I’m stealing this from someone else, but I agree it’s feminism on steroids…and right now that are hating on Cathy Young. Makes me laugh out loud. What’s the old adage h-e-double hockey sticks hath no fury like a woman scorned?
Nobody gives a crap about Cathy Young.
Greenwitch, fantastic post.
Threeboysmom, your concern for Emma’s rights for a fair hearing are heartwarming.
Your guy lied. 
Yes Greenwitch…I don’t use the word “hate” but I do not like her at all. She did not get him found guilty so she appealed and did not get him found guilty again. She filed a police report…then dropped it. Meanwhile she was doing everything in her power to manipulate people through her “protests” and media attention. Nah, i don’t like her much and it’s her “type” that hurts the message that rape is a serious crime and deserves prosecution.
And if you really want to know what I think… carting a mattress around is ludicrous…almost the antithesis, more like “I can have sex anytime I want and if I don’t like the sex I’m going to protest.” OMG. She didn’t come off as a survivor or even a victim…she came off as a willful young women, with enough money to launch a media campaign who didn’t get what she wanted who still needed her mom and dad to write a public letter to the university…but she’s a young kid so part of me can’t truly hate. Maybe it’s my Scandinavian upbringing, a culture that is different (for men and women) than the US. I can almost relate to the male’s reluctant to launch an all out assault in the media - it’s not typically how European’s react - that is a very American culture…to try things in the media. And I couldn’t agree more with the man’s father. Couldn’t agree more.
Let’s not forget that he was found “responsible” of one of the three complaints. And then he appealed and won because the victim could not participate over the summer after she had graduated. Columbia U just redefined incompetence in this case.
http://columbiaspectator.com/opinion/2014/10/02/open-letter-president-bollinger-and-board-trustees
@momofthreeboys - Emma is a visual arts major. Good for her for combining some therapy with anger management with an art project. I hope she got a decent grade. I don’t think she was looking for wider media coverage off of her campus but it sure arrived, like it or not.
In another Columbia fiasco, one of her friends was found “responsible” of talking about Emma’s case and was sentenced to write an essay about how her talking about the case could affect the accused. And this paper was graded! Do they think it’s Kindergarten and these are kids having to write an essay about throwing snowballs on the playground?
She’s lucky she only had to write an essay instead of being sued by an American male (and his parents) 
Ok my rant is over…I still don’t “like” her on paper. or digitally. She might be a great person - that’s why I can’t really hate…I don’t know her. I also remember vividly from time in Europe at age 20 that I never “got” young European men…the South Africans and the Australians socially reminded me of American men, but the Europeans were harder to read and understand and i partied enough with them to recall being confounded at times. It’s interesting that two of the most 'notorious" media cases where the men appear to appear innocent they are both foreign born and foreign raised. I think about that sometimes.
In this kind of he-said she-said situation, deciding that there wasn’t a preponderance of evidence doesn’t let me conclude anything. He might be telling the truth. She might be telling the truth. True, it’s not the OJ kind of “innocent” where everyone knows he did it, but neither, to me, is it the “we now know someone else committed the crime” kind of innocent. It’s nothing at all.
The reality is we don’t know what happened and whether this guy is a rapist or not. I can completely understand Emma’s frustration at the findings and having a case that is difficult to prove. I remember reading her article in Time last year and certainly found her credible.
What I am having a hard time with is the apparent support for what appears to be vigilante justice in that someone who does not like a verdict (or college finding) can then freely malign the person that was exonerated. If he is guilty, the argument would be that getting his name out may warn other women. But even if he is guilty, this seems like a dangerous precedence to me. In this case, Emma is a sympathetic figure but if you support her (and others) broadcasting this guy’s name even if he was found not responsible, what is to stop individuals in other disputes from doing the same?
I am happy to hear why I am wrong in thinking this could be a slippery slope.
I genuinely do not understand this attitude against her.
From her position, she’s a young woman who was brutally raped. “What she wanted” was punishment for the man she believed to be her rapist. I think it’s completely natural for a person who thinks that he or she was wronged - particularly in a way that is driven by sociological power differentials, like rape is with sexism - to launch a public campaign against it. I don’t see how her “type” diminished rape as a serious crime. What is her “type” anyway? A woman who is willing to speak publicly, and loudly, about something bad she feels happened to her?
I feel that you are misunderstanding her performance art/protest. Sulkowicz has explained before why she is carrying the mattress around - and it has little to do with trying to make Nungesser look bad. She’s explained that it’s more about Columbia’s reaction to her case; she feels like it was mishandled and that she was treated badly during the proceedings. She’s understandably upset about the fact that the man she feels sexually assaulted her is still on campus, and she has to see him at regular intervals. The mattress is a symbol of her sexual assault; it’s supposed to be a reminder to people on campus that rape happens on campus, “here,” in this space, but that it’s rarely brought into the public space and talked about. It’s also a very real physical reminder of the “weight” that sexual assault victims carry around with them - usually privately and unseen, but in her case, she has a visible reminder of that weight. The kids who come up to her to help her carry the mattress are, quite literally, helping her to “carry that weight.” It has nothing to do with sexual freedom, although young women should be able to have sex any time they like. And she’s not protesting because she didn’t like the sex; she’s protesting because in her experience she was forcibly raped.
We, of course, do not know what happened and we don’t know whether Nungesser is guilty or innocent. People are found not guilty all the time of crimes that they actually did commit because of procedural mistakes or good defenses. People are also accused of crimes that they did not commit (although, by all measures, it seems to happen quite infrequently with sexual assault and rape). But even still, looking at it from her perspective, she feels terribly violated and as if an injustice has occurred.
I don’t understand what people think Sulkowicz would have to gain from lying about her sexual assault, though. If she wanted to carry the mattress around as an art project, she could’ve easily made it about generalized sexual assault and rape that happens on college campuses and made the mattress symbolic of the weight that survivors often carry around with them, without personalizing it to herself.
greenwitch: The open letter in the Columbia Spectator is not very convincing on these points. At least according to the Daily Beast, the entire groping proceeding, including the original hearing, happened after the complainant graduated, and long after the conduct alleged to have occurred. Many recent Columbia graduates live and work in places that are minutes away from Columbia by public transportation. Was the complainant among them? No one says. She made it to one hearing, and not to another. Maybe they should have postponed the second hearing, but it was entirely reasonable to exclude that accusation from consideration in Sulkowicz’s case.
Nungesser’s story is that it was an entirely made-up allegation solicited by an officer of his house who wanted to kick him out regardless of what happened with Sulkowicz’s complaint, and more or less crafted to create a house rules violation that was not susceptible to much proof. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Same as the accusation. It could have been fabricated out of sympathy for Sulkowicz, or it could have been a woman’s response to learning that this kid who bothered her had also hurt others and was bad news.
In any event, had this case been heard in a real court, there is not a chance in hell that the other allegation could have come into evidence, with or without the reversal. And it’s inconsistent enough with any version of the Sulkowicz story that it really has practically no probative value for Sulkowicz, even if it was true. If losing that evidence “hamstrung” Sulkowicz’s case, she was going to lose no matter what.
I tend to believe Sulkowicz, by the way, although I don’t believe every detail of her story. But this is not, and never was, a case that was going to be handled in a satisfactory way by any kind of formal fact-finding process. Had she complained to the police rather than to the university when she did, she would have gotten nowhere (and she got nowhere when she did complain to the police). She maybe deserved better treatment by Columbia, but she got a kangaroo court convened and even then she couldn’t pass the lowest evidentiary hurdle. At some point, the most effective way to deal with the injuries you have suffered becomes therapy, or art, not legal redress.
One thing I disagree with Sulkowicz is that she wants her attacker to leave because she wants him to. That’s the part that’s unfair with this whole thing for me. He was already found innocent by CU’s courts.
It also was not on any planet in our known universe a “brutal rape.“ Something might have happened to her that turned the consenual sex into something she feels she didn’t consent to, but “brutal rape.” uhm sorry no. She did her best to prove that 1% she needed to…and she tried two times. But she couldn’t let it go. She had to turn it into a media circus to “prove her point” in the only court she had - public opinion.
Columbia is not a court of law. Columbia can look at all three cases and decide that the odds are the accused is guilty of one of three accusations. Then Columbia can act accordingly.
Supposedly Columbia has improved the way they do things. Both sides can have a lawyer now I believe.
Momofthreeboys, you are inside Emma’s head and now you are in her body too?
Your guy lied.
Remember, when the guys lose, they had their chance to prove that 1 percent over 50.
Let’s not have any more talk about due process. You lose… you lose.
WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SAYING, momofthreeboys? If someone suddenly shoves his **** in someone else’s anus without their permission, and keeps shoving it, that’s a rape and it sounds pretty damn brutal to me. I can’t imagine that if someone did that to one of your boys you would say it wasn’t a brutal rape.
We don’t know if Sulkowicz is telling the truth, but saying an anal rape is not a rape is outside of my comprehension.
CF, that was gross.
I’m the father of a daugther who’s a college sophomore, and am an attorney. What is obvious to me having read much about the Columbia, Virginia and Hobart cases over the past year is how absolutely inappropriate it is for accusations of sexual assault to be “tried” by some pseudo-judicial board at colleges and universities rather than being handled within the judicial system – as imperfect as that system admittedly may be.
@momofthreeboys - raises an interesting point. Of course anal rape (without lube, remember?) is brutal. BUT, Emma’s case is not one that makes her a “good victim”. This is for people who have trouble with the seriousness of rape and are very concerned about false allegations.
Emma was not visibly bruised, cut, or suffering from broken bones.
She did not go the hospital or police that night - she waited months.
She wasn’t publicly tearful and wounded sounding - she was angry.
She had a relationship with the accused, both before and after the incident.
All of those things make her seem like less of a victim and allow people who don’t look deeper to brush off her accusation. But really, they don’t make her more or less of a rape victim, they don’t make her story more or less true. It just means she doesn’t fit the comfortable stereotype we have of rape being a violent act perpetrated by a stranger.
Most rapes don’t fit that stereotype and most victims don’t come forward for that reason (and others). Why don’t we start giving those victims a fair shake by dropping some of our prejudices?
Agree Greenwitch that there should be a presumption that the woman is more likely to be telling the truth as she perceives it. But when there is no evidence, it is very difficult for either a college or the legal system to make a finding of guilty. How is that problem solved? Should he have been found guilty based solely on her account of the events?
I just think that calling it a “brutal” rape is an overstatement, something that advocates seem to do with regularity and frequency and could be antithetical if advocates are tying to gain an audience and support…call if rape if you want to, although even that might be overstepping - non-consenual sex is probably more accurate - but brutal rape, not really and frankly insulting to victims who actually have survived brutal rapes. It’s that kind of frantic waving of the arms and push-back against people that actually support the heart of the issue and imprecise language that turns me off the latest feminist anti-rape crusades. Say what you want to say but generalities are like water off a duck with me.