Today is graduation day for students in Columbia College at Columbia University, and student Emma Sulkowicz, who said she was sexually assaulted by a fellow student in 2012, walked into the ceremony toting the dorm room mattress she's been carrying around campus all year in protest.

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Emma Sulkowicz carrying her mattress into graduation at #ColumbiaCommencement pic.twitter.com/8m2fCzwi73 — Tess Koman (@tessie_the_mess) May 19, 2015

The university announced a last-minute rule Monday banning the carrying of large objects onto the graduation stage.

"Graduates should not bring into the ceremonial area large objects which could interfere with the proceedings or create discomfort to others in close, crowded spaces shared by thousands of people," the Columbia Spectator reported the administration said in an email to graduating seniors.

Sulkowicz carried the mattress both as a form of protest and as part of her senior visual arts thesis, titled "Carry That Weight." She says after she reported her assault to the university, her alleged assailant, Paul Nungesser, was found "not responsible," despite being accused of assault by two other women on campus as well. Sulkowicz's attempts to appeal the university's decision were denied, and Nungesser remained on campus.

"The past year of my life has been really marked by telling people what happened in that most intimate and private space," Sulkowicz told the Spectator in September. "I was raped in my own dorm bed and since then, that space has become fraught for me. I feel like I've carried the weight of what happened there since then."

Her case has been a controversial one. Sulkowicz has drawn support from activists and politicians including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who brought Sulkowicz as a guest to the State of the Union earlier this year. But Nungesser says he never assaulted Sulkowicz, telling The New York Times, "What was alleged was the most violent rape, and that did not happen." He is now suing Columbia, as well as one of Sulkowicz's thesis advisors, for what he says is gender-based harassment, a Title IX violation.

Both Nungesser and Sulkowicz are both scheduled to graduate this morning.

Update 5/19, 12:00 p.m.: Sulkowicz, with the help of several other graduating students and to overwhelming cheers from the crowd, carried her mattress across the graduation stage. Neither Sulkowicz nor any of the students who helped her carry the mattress shook Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's hand.

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Emma Sulkowicz carrying her mattress across the stage at #ColumbiaCommencement pic.twitter.com/oF9sYwVYKX — Tess Koman (@tessie_the_mess) May 19, 2015

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Update 5/19, 1:47 p.m.: Sulkowicz and the women who helped her carry the mattress onstage kept it beside them after the ceremony. When approached after the ceremony, Sulkowicz declined to comment. Fellow '15 graduate Kaneisha Letrese Payton said of Sulkowicz's decision to bring the mattress on stage: "I'm sad she had to do it, but I'm impressed. I'm really proud that she had the strength and determination to do it."

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Tess Koman Senior Editor Tess Koman covers breaking (food) news, opinion pieces, and features on larger happenings in the food world. Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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