Nov 07, 2014 04:20 PM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

About a week after the Carry That Weight Together demonstration at Columbia University, the student activist group behind it finds themselves fined $1,500.

According to the Huffington Post, No Red Tape said the school levied the fine for not cleaning up after the sexual assault awareness demonstration. The group reserved a space for their Oct. 29 demonstration ahead of time, which concluded with participants stacking 28 mattresses in front of Columbia President Lee Bollinger's residence.

"The symbolism of them literally dumping the mattresses in the trash within an hour," SWS organizer Michela Weihl told the HP. "It's so indicative of how they handle sexual assault on this campus - they literally throw out rape cases without a second thought."

No Red Tape is not an officially recognized Columbia student group, so Student Worker Solidarity (SWS) had to reserve the space for them. For the protest, demonstrators showed up carrying either their mattresses or pillows and some wrote anti-sexual-assault messages in red tape.

A visual arts student, Emma Sulkowicz began carrying her mattress around campus because it is the one she said she was raped on as a freshman. As part of her project and demonstration, she cannot ask for help carrying it, but may accept help if it offered.

Sulkowicz described her experience with Columbia's disciplinary board to the New York Times in May. She said it was hard enough to recount her rape, but even more difficult to feel like the school did not take her claim seriously.

"The fact that I had to tell an embarrassing story and then teach them an embarrassing subject on top of that felt really gross," she told the Times.

Sulkowicz has said she will only put down her mattress when the man she says raped her is removed from campus, but in the meantime she has become a prominent figure in the protest against Columbia's sexual assault policies and practices. 

See Now: Covert Team Inside Newsweek Revealed as Key Players in False Human Trafficking Lawsuit