Columbia Student Sues For Gender Bias, Claims School Failed to Protect Him After Being Accused of Rape
Claiming Columbia University failed to protect him against harassment when a female student went public with her accusations that he had raped her (despite school and law enforcement authorities rejecting the case), Paul Nungesser, a Columbia student from Germany, has sued his school.
The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, was filed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court.
Defendants in the case include the school, its board of trustees, President Lee C. Bollinger and Professor Jon Kessler.
As reported by The Associated Press, the lawsuit states, "Columbia University's effective sponsorship of the gender-based harassment and defamation of Paul resulted in an intimidating, hostile, demeaning ... learning and living environment."
Robert Hornsby, a spokesman for Columbia University, said the school had no comment to offer.
In his lawsuit, Nungesser asserted that a Columbia-owned website had presented as a fact the information that he had sexually assaulted Emma Sulkowicz, a senior majoring in visual arts.
The Daily Beast reports Nungesser described his onetime friendship with Sulkowicz as basically platonic, although it did include several sleepovers in Sulkowicz’s room. One sleepover turned into a make-out session that ended in sex, which led to occasional future contact.
The two kept in touch through social media and then got together one fateful last time after a party.
The lawsuit claims that Columbia allowed Sulkowicz to carry a mattress into classes, the library and campus-provided transportation, as part of a senior thesis that professor Kessler had approved.
The "Mattress Project," aside from being protest, served as a course credit for Sulkowicz, who pledged to carry her mattress on to graduation.
The suit claims for Nungesser, "Day-to-day life is unbearably stressful, as Emma and her mattress parade around campus each and every day."
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