A Columbia University student suing the Ivy League college for failing to protect him against a fellow student’s accusations of rape also blames Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for helping destroy his reputation.
Paul Nungesser’s lawsuit, filed last week in Manhattan Federal Court, argues that Columbia violated his rights by allowing Emma Sulkowicz to earn course credit for a project in which she carried a mattress around campus to highlight her claim that he raped her in 2012.
Sulkowicz, 22, first spoke out publicly at a news conference with Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and was the senator’s guest at President Obama’s State of the Union address this year.
Nungesser’s lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg, said Gillibrand, who is not named in the suit, failed to investigate Sulkowicz’s account before appearing with her to publicize legislation to curb campus sexual assault.
His client, 23, who was cleared by Columbia and has never been charged by police, says he and Sulkowicz had consensual sex. “What (Gillibrand) did was take a fictional event and build an entire platform around it,” said Miltenberg.
Nungesser’s suit, which seeks unspecified damages, argues Columbia allowed a school-owned website to state as fact that he assaulted Sulkowicz, even though the university found him not responsible for assaulting her and two other women.
A Gillibrand spokeswoman pointed to the senator’s past comment on the controversy over Sulkowicz’s story. “I believe Emma,” Gillibrand has said.
Columbia did not respond to a request for comment.
