[4] Fellow student Paul Nungesser, whom Sulkowicz accused, was found not responsible by a university inquiry into the allegations, and police declined to pursue a criminal complaint against him, citing a lack of reasonable suspicion.

[5] In 2015, Nungesser filed a lawsuit against the university and several administrators alleging that the school exposed him to gender-based harassment by allowing Mattress Performance to go forward.

Emma Sulkowicz attended Dalton School on the Upper East Side, and in 2011 began a visual arts degree at Columbia University.

[12] The case attracted wider attention when the three female students who filed complaints gave interviews to the New York Post, which broke the story on December 11, 2013, without naming those involved.

[19] On April 24, 2014, 23 students filed a federal complaint against Columbia and Barnard College, alleging violations of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a law upholding gender equality in federally-funded institutions.

As the idea for Mattress Performance developed, Kessler and Sulkowicz discussed the nature of endurance art and the work of Tehching Hsieh, Marina Abramović, Ulay and Chris Burden.

Sulkowicz told the Columbia Daily Spectator: "I do think that nowadays art pieces can include whatever the artist desires and in this performance art piece it utilizes the elements of protest ..."[27] Purchased online from Tall Paul's Tall Mall, the 50-lb (23-kg), dark-blue, extra-long twin mattress is of the kind Columbia places in its dorms, similar to the one on which Sulkowicz said that she was raped.

[31] After graduation Sulkowicz said she had known the university would not expel Nungesser, and had expected to carry the mattress for nine months, the length of a pregnancy, which was an important part of the work: "To me, the piece has very much represented [the fact that] a guy did a horrible thing to me and I tried to make something beautiful out of it.

"[30] Paul Nungesser said in a December 2014 interview with The New York Times that the mattress performance is not an act of artistic expression, but instead one orchestrated to bully him and force him to leave Columbia.

He also said that he was not permitted to use written communications between himself and the alleged victim as evidence, and expressed disbelief that anyone could believe he was guilty even after his accusers failed to meet the low burden of proof used in the university hearing process.

[33] Nungesser's parents criticized the university, including its decision to let Sulkowicz take the mattress to the graduation ceremony: "This has been a deeply humiliating experience. ...

[6][7] His lawyers argued that Columbia allowed Sulkowicz to create and propose "performances depicting [the plaintiff] as a rapist" even though the university cleared him of any wrongdoing.

[37] Among examples of what they described as "public harassment", they cited Sulkowicz's public display of drawings which the lawyers said depicted Nungesser's genitals as part of the project (Sulkowicz left open the question of whether these drawings were of him or stories about him[10]), as well as depictions of the alleged sexual assault, as violations of Columbia's gender-based misconduct policy, which prohibits "unwelcome remarks about the private parts of a person's body" and "graffiti concerning the sexual activity of another person".

Artnet cited it as "almost certainly ... one of the most important artworks of the year", comparing it to Ana Mendieta's Untitled (Rape Scene) (1973) and Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz-Starus's Three Weeks in May (1977).

[45] The New York Times art critic Roberta Smith described it as "strict and lean, yet inclusive and open ended, symbolically laden yet drastically physical", writing that comparisons to the Stations of the Cross and Hester Prynne's scarlet letter were apparent.

Social critic Camille Paglia described Mattress Performance as "a parody of the worst aspects of that kind of grievance-oriented feminism", adding that a feminist work "should empower women, not cripple them".

"[57] In an editorial for The Federalist, columnist Mona Charen stated that she believed Sulkowicz was likely "shading the truth" and argued that, while campus rape was a real problem, advocates did not pay enough attention to the possibility of false allegations.