Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, used her platform as Barnard College’s commencement speaker on Sunday to discuss campus sexual assault. She cited a familiar story. The problem was, the story she referred to has recently been called into question.
Power spoke of a “mattress” being carried around to bring attention to “victims” who are treated unfairly by their college or university.
“And yet, even as we are aware of the seriousness of this problem, it takes a woman picking up a mattress and carrying it around her campus to make people really see it,” Power said to applause. “A mattress that a good number of the women in this graduating class have helped carry. And men from Columbia, too.”
The mattress carrier Power was alluding to is Emma Sulkowicz, who made international headlines last year when she claimed that she had been raped by a fellow student, and that Columbia University (Barnard’s affiliate) failed to hold her alleged rapist accountable. In reality, neither the university nor the police found evidence to support her rape claim. After that, she started an art project for college credit in an attempt to shame the man off campus or force Columbia to overturn its “not responsible” finding.
But Power either did not know or chose to ignore Facebook messages between Sulkowicz and the man she accused of rape, Paul Nungesser. They tell a very different story than that of a woman brutally attacked and overwrought with pain. Sulkowicz sent Nungesser multiple Facebook messages in the days, weeks and months after the allegedly brutal assault (which supposedly included choking and punching) that professed her love and admiration for the man she would eventually accuse of rape. Nungesser is now suing Columbia for its role in facilitating Sulkowicz’s smear campaign against him.
On Twitter, Power seemed to analogize Sulkowicz’s situation to that of women in Afghanistan:
From a wmn carrying a mattress on her campus to Afghanistan’s Wmn’s Nat Cycling Team, reaching true equality req showing change is possible.
— Samantha Power (@AmbPower44) May 17, 2015
In her speech, she explained the plight of Afghanistan women (although this came several minutes after she discussed Sulkowicz’s mattress):
The difference is that women in Afghanistan faced real oppression. They weren’t just spurned by a man and decided to get back at him with a sexual assault accusation. Women in Afghanistan are fighting for the right to an education and the right to leave their homes without a male guardian.
But perhaps Power believes the ends justify the means.
