Columbia University students post list of campus rapists

NEW YORK, May 15 (UPI) -- Victims of sexual assault at Columbia University are fighting back by distributing the identities of their alleged assailants around campus on flyers and with graffiti. Earlier this month, 23 students filed a federal complaint against the Ivy League school, saying it has been brazenly mishandling the issue of sexual assault on campus.

"I don't trust the University to take my experience or my safety more seriously than they take their own public image," said one student in the complaint.

Columbia is more willing to silence and punish survivors and their supporters than serial rapists. Because of this reality, students have decided to file ... (the complaint) to hold the university accountable for its deliberate mishandling of campus sexual violence and mental health.

Now the student body is taking matters into its own hands.

"People feel so scared and so desperate that they're turning to scrawling warnings to other students on bathroom walls," Zoe Starr, one of the complainants, told ABC News.

The University tried to censor the lists by painting over the walls they were written on, but students responded by handing out flyers.

"If we felt protected and safe, this wouldn't be an issue," Starr said in an interview with PIX11 in New York. "I'm really glad that I saw the names on that list because I can use the information to better protect myself and my friends, when the university has clearly failed to do that."

Starr says she has no knowledge of who created the list or flyers.