Columbia, the New UVA

Article here. Excerpt:

'Uh--oh: Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia senior who’s been lugging a mattress around campus for months to protest her supposed rape by a classmate during their freshman year, is fast turning into another “Jackie,” the University of Virginia student whose claimed gang rape in a fraternity-house basement turned out to be a tall tale concocted by Jackie to get the romantic attention of a young man she had a crush on.

Paul Nungesser, now a Columbia senior like Sulkowicz, she says conducted a brutal anal assault on her in her dorm room following a session of consensual sex—and whom she made a public campus pariah despite the fact that he had been cleared by a Columbia tribunal—finally told his side of the story, to libertarian journalist Cathy Young, writing for the Daily Beast.

In Nungesser’s telling, not only was the entire sexual episode between him and Sulkowicz on Aug. 27, 2012 entirely consensual—the two had an off-and-on “friends with benefits” relationship that grew out of their joint participation in a freshmen-orientation program at Columbia—but Nungesser had the Facebook messages between the two to prove it. For two full months after the supposed assault, Sulkowicz was sending Nungesser friendly texts and Facebook postings expressing hope that the two of them could get together again. Nungesser provided screenshots of the since-deleted messages to Young and the Daily Beast.'