New London — Connecticut College students Sal Bigay and Sammi Brown carried a dormitory mattress down the walkway to Fanning Hall Wednesday as part of "Carrying the Weight Together," a national day of action at colleges and universities across the country to support survivors of sexual assault.

"Carrying the Weight" evolved out of the work of Columbia University art student Emma Sulkowicz, whose endurance performance art piece "Mattress Performance: Carry That Weight" started with a pledge to carry her dorm mattress around her campus as long as a student she had accused of sexually assaulting her was still enrolled.

Students at the college took turns carrying the mattress from class to class and collecting signatures to show solidarity with the cause.