As part of the National Day of Protest Against Rape Culture, about one hundred Cornell students gathered to give speeches, read poems, and dragged around a mattress in order to bring about the end of “rape culture.”

From the Review Blog:

“End Rape Culture” Protest at Cornell Targets President Skorton

Students gathered on Ho Plaza this afternoon to take part in the National Day of Protest Against Rape Culture, during which several Cornell students gave speeches and read poems in order to bring about the end to “Rape Culture.”

Shortly after the event started, it began raining heavily and the event was moved inside Willard Straight Hall, the central campus student union adjacent to Ho Plaza. The poor acoustics of Willard Straight’s main atrium, in addition to the noises of rain, thunder, and incoming and outgoing students, made it difficult to hear everything the speakers said. Therefore, Review correspondents could not determine the names of the first two speakers, the first of whom, a female, spoke about how anyone can be a rapist, and the second, a male, who read a poem.

Students responded favorably to the first speech, but looked confused when listening to the poem, whose central theme remains unclear. After the male student finished reciting, nobody clapped or applauded until he started snapping himself.

After a brief lull in activity, one of the event’s three organizers, Bailey Dineen, read an approximately 9-minute speech/poem (it had qualities of both) concerning her personal experiences and attacking rape culture, saying that the institutions that promote it–Cornell, the Justice System, and the “white supremacist, imperialist, capitalist, cisheteropatriarchy”–must be destroyed.