LUCATZIMAS

PERSONAL TESTIMONY · DOCUMENTARY RECONSTRUCTION · INSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS

On April 22, 2022, at a Phi Alpha Delta gathering in Amsterdam, New York, Luca Tzimas raped me in a downstairs bathroom. On May 28, 2024, a University at Albany student conduct process found him not responsible for the charges brought in that proceeding. Those are two distinct propositions. One describes what I experienced and reported; the other describes the conclusion of an administrative process. Readers deserve to encounter both without either being disguised as the other.

I am not asking anyone to confuse an allegation with an adjudicated fact. Nor do I believe that an institution’s inability to make a finding settles every question raised by the people, documents, and decisions surrounding it. I wrote this account to make the distinctions visible: what I remember; what I wrote or said at the time; what contemporaneous records document; what others reported, sometimes in conflict; what various bodies decided; and what I now infer. The inferences are mine. They are open to examination.

My perspective is not neutral. It is mine. My method, however, can be fair. I can state my account without making every uncertainty disappear. I can question the conduct of institutions without pretending that each failure has already been legally established. I can discuss the ways in which a story was handled without diagnosing the people who handled it. There is no intellectual virtue in softening my account until it becomes unrecognizable; there is equally none in sharpening an inference until it masquerades as proof.

The chronology that follows is not simply the chronology I lived. I could not have known, in April 2022, what records I would obtain in August; or in October, what a student conduct hearing would look like in 2024. The reader sees the pattern at once. I had to discover it piece by piece. That difference is central to this site. Hindsight turns a life into a diagram. I refuse to let the diagram erase the conditions under which I actually made decisions.

THE STANDARD OF THIS SITE
A serious allegation deserves serious evidence. A disputed event deserves precisely identified disputes. A person describing harm should not have to pretend to know what she does not know. An institution exercising authority should not be excused from explaining what it did and why.

The site has a second purpose. It is an invitation to read any consequential dispute more intelligently: notice when a fact becomes an inference; when a witness becomes an advocate; when an administrative threshold is mistaken for a factual verdict; when social consensus is presented as evidence; and when the question quietly changes from “What happened?” to “What is wrong with the person asking?”

Reading key: My account identifies personal recollection or interpretation. Documented identifies a record I have described or supplied. Disputed marks conflicting accounts. Institutional outcome identifies a decision, not an independent endorsement of its correctness. Analysis explains a concept without declaring a person clinically or legally guilty.

What I am not publishing

I am not posting unredacted medical documents, private emails, personal identifiers, recordings of other students, or screenshots that could expose people who did not choose public attention. Some records are privately retained and described here; their existence is not an invitation for readers to contact witnesses, employers, family members, or other institutions. The purpose is education and scrutiny of decisions—not public pressure on individuals.

The life he entered

I was already moving toward the law when I met Luca. I was studying public policy and English, working in government, and helping build a community inside Phi Alpha Delta, the pre-law fraternity at the University at Albany. That community was not a backdrop assembled for him. It was a network of friendships, responsibilities, and ambitions I had invested in long before he became part of it.

I say that because a familiar error runs through the social record: once an allegation becomes contentious, the person reporting harm can seem to be the disruption, while the institution she already belonged to remains the unquestioned center. But I did not enter his fraternity. He entered mine. The question is not who owned a student organization. It is how membership and credibility changed after a serious allegation was disclosed. Before I became the person whose presence seemed to require explanation, I was simply a person who belonged there. That is what social exclusion so efficiently reverses.

The law course: analysis and self-disclosure

In January 2022, Luca was assigned to my small, law-focused Writing and Critical Inquiry course in a student-support role I understood as that of a teaching assistant. In text messages exchanged after April 22, Luca and I explicitly discussed his ability to control my grades. At the April 2024 hearing, he instead described himself as a peer mentor without grading authority. Those statements are in tension. The messages are evidence of how he described his influence to me; the extent of formal grading authority would need to be assessed against the university's actual course records and role designation. Whatever his official title, he was an instructional point of contact with access to my academic work and personal writing.

The course was built around analytical writing and self-disclosure. We were expected to examine difficult questions, make claims, test those claims against evidence, and sometimes use our own experiences as the material of the inquiry. I had sought out the law-focused section because I was already serious about pursuing the law. Among the work I drafted there were my first attempts at a law-school personal statement. These were not impersonal exercises. They asked me to describe how I understood myself, what I had lived through, and why I wanted the future I was working toward.

In that early writing, I returned to something I had been told about myself growing up: that I had a “victim complex.” I had heard variations of “stop acting persecuted,” and I had spent time wondering whether I was too quick to see myself as hurt or misunderstood. I was trying to examine the distance between a label someone else put on me and the way I actually experienced my life. I was not writing a retrospective account of the assault; it had not yet happened. I was writing about self-doubt, credibility, and the uncomfortable question of who gets to define another person's experience.

Luca read and responded to my work through his instructional role. Contemporaneous messages from March 2022 show him giving detailed feedback about the difference between analysis and argument, the need to support claims with sources, and the importance of making a paper's conclusions follow from its evidence. I sought out that feedback and thanked him for it. The fact that I welcomed academic help is part of this history. It explains why I would share personal material with him in a legitimate classroom setting; it does not establish that I invited a personal or physical relationship beyond it. He was someone the course placed in a position to see my writing, my ambitions, and some of the doubts I was trying to understand.

Only with hindsight did the contrast become so difficult to sit with. By the end of that semester, the teaching assistant who had helped me examine whether I had been too quick to think of myself as a victim was the man who raped me. I do not cite the content of my essays as proof of his private intentions. The significance is what this sequence meant to me: I had spent part of the semester learning to distinguish evidence from assertion, and I would spend years making those same distinctions about an experience I had never expected to have to defend.

This was an ordinary educational arrangement, and that is precisely why its boundaries matter. Students are supposed to be able to submit honest, even vulnerable work without wondering how that information might figure in their lives outside the classroom. Access is not proof of predatory purpose; it is the condition in which trust and boundaries become consequential.

Then my instructional contact entered the fraternity

Only a few weeks into the semester, Luca told me he was considering interviewing for and joining Phi Alpha Delta. He already knew I belonged to the fraternity and held an organizational position. Our law-focused writing course involved self-disclosure; through his instructional role, he had learned about parts of my academic and personal life, including my involvement in Phi Alpha Delta. I did not help him join or guide him through the application process. He told me he was considering joining a community I had belonged to long before he entered it. At the time, the conversation did not strike me as extraordinary. I knew him as my teaching assistant, and he knew I was involved in the organization.

I did not yet understand what it could mean for an instructional relationship to become a shared social relationship. He entered the fraternity's joining process and built connections in a part of my life that had previously been separate from the classroom. My disclosures in class gave him information about my existing world; his later relationships within the fraternity gave him access that no longer depended on mine. This is a chronology of access, not proof that joining an organization establishes predatory intent. Knowing the doors that opened is different from knowing what a person intended to do after entering them.

The important change was structural: an academic connection had become social access. The classroom, fraternity and friendships were no longer separate settings. That overlap later made withdrawal costly. Avoiding one person could mean losing contact with a much larger part of my life.

During his interview, he acted out a scene from Game of Thrones in which, in my account, I was placed on a table and instructed to shout “rapist.” Luca later disputed my description of it as a rape scene and disputed that he selected me to participate. I will not resolve that factual disagreement by editorial insistence. The important point is that the event remained an uncomfortable memory I later reevaluated.

I did not see a clear warning at the time. I treated it as a bizarre performance that an interview panel permitted. That retrospective discomfort is not proof of what he would do next; it illustrates the limits of hindsight. We live forward, with incomplete information. The reader is given a finished sequence and can mistake the ability to recognize a pattern for the ability to have prevented it.

February 27: the meeting at Chili’s

The message log preserves a surprisingly ordinary scene. On February 27, 2022, Luca and I arranged a Phi Alpha Delta one-on-one meeting. The location changed from the Cheesecake Factory to Chili’s. My roommate and I decided to combine two separate new-member meetings at the same restaurant. Luca, who was then going through the fraternity's joining process, picked me up; another new member drove my roommate. These were still separate rides and separate one-on-ones, with established members meeting prospective members.

When I got into Luca's car, “All of Me” was playing. I found the music choice so strange that I took a photograph and told him he was insane for playing it. At the time, I interpreted it as a theatrical joke. I did not know whether he intended anything beyond that, and I do not treat the song as evidence of romantic intent. He was both a prospective fraternity member and someone I knew through my law-focused course. Those overlapping roles made the interaction feel familiar even as parts of it struck me as strange. I could notice an unusual gesture without knowing what, if anything, it meant.

Messages exchanged that night and the next morning refer to photographs from the restaurant. I am not publishing those photographs.

That was the setting in which Luca and my roommate began speaking to each other in a more substantial way. Their relationship subsequently grew through the fraternity, and she became his “big,” or mentor. I did not think a dinner with two separate one-on-one meetings could become important to the history of who knew whom. It mattered later because his place in my social world no longer depended on me introducing him. He entered that world through a connection to me; he could remain in it through relationships of his own.

My roommate became his independent access point

I was initially part of the reason Luca knew people in my social world. As the joining process continued, relationships formed without my involvement. My roommate became his fraternity mentor, known as his “big.” She developed a connection with him that did not depend on my presence. By April, Luca no longer needed me to remain socially included; he had his own place within a network whose members I also relied on.

There is no misconduct in forming friendships. The later significance lies in the structure: when a person is accused by one member of a shared network, the accused may retain other channels of trust, information, and presence. Support for one person, loyalty to another, and the wish to keep a group intact can become entangled. Independent access can become independent credibility. That is a sociological observation, not proof that every later interaction was coordinated.

The tracker and the date I cannot establish

I found a tracking device in my backpack at approximately 2 a.m. while cleaning it out before I had to be at the Capitol building the next morning. I associate the discovery with approximately April 11, 2022, but the important date is the date I found the device—not a date I can establish for its placement. I removed its battery. I later gave the device back to Luca directly during our class. That was our interaction concerning the device: I discovered it, and I was the one who brought it to him.

After the fraternity event around April 9, I saw Luca on two separate days. He did not tell me on either of those days that a tracking device had been put inside my bag. I cannot independently establish the precise time it was placed there. I can distinguish those two facts: I had contact with him, and I received no disclosure about the device before finding it myself. I did not learn about it from him.

The fraternity held an event around April 9, and I originally assumed that was when the device had been placed in my bag. I did not see Luca place it there. I cannot independently establish the day, the hour, or how long it had been inside. It may have been there longer than I knew, but I cannot present that possibility as a fact. My earlier assumption supplied a possible explanation, not a timestamp. I believe the placement crossed a serious personal boundary under the apparent cover of a fraternity activity. Whether it was intended to test what I would tolerate is an interpretation I cannot prove about Luca's private purpose. The absence of disclosure matters on its own: someone had placed a tracking device in my property, and I was left to discover it.

At the April 2024 student conduct hearing, Luca acknowledged placing a Tile-type tracker in my bag but disputed the stalking allegation. He described it as connected to the fraternity activity and maintained that he did not intend a sexual purpose. Other witnesses described that activity; their description of a social context does not erase the separate question of consent to a device being hidden in my property.

What concerns me, looking back, is the asymmetry between his knowledge that the device was there and my lack of knowledge. The activity offered an explanation; it did not provide my consent. A social occasion is not a waiver of personal boundaries. Whether the placement legally satisfied the applicable stalking definition was a question for the adjudicator, which ultimately found him not responsible. For me, it remains a lesson in how easily an intrusion can be treated as a joke when it arrives wrapped in familiar social customs.

As far as I knew, no other person had a tracker placed inside a bag that day. I cannot make an exhaustive claim about every attendee’s belongings, but I can explain why it did not feel like a harmless, universally shared part of a game. I discovered the device in my own backpack, without having agreed to that intrusion.

WHAT THE RECORD ESTABLISHES / DOES NOT ESTABLISH
The later hearing records his acknowledgment of placing the tracker. I discovered it and removed its battery. The available material does not independently establish its installation date, duration, any particular location history, or an intent to test my reaction. My interpretation that the intrusion functioned as boundary-testing must remain an interpretation, not a demonstrated state of mind.

What I remember in the bathroom

On April 22, the fraternity held a mock wedding event, followed by a gathering at an Airbnb in Amsterdam, New York. I drank alcohol and became intoxicated. My memory of the night contains distinct images and gaps. I can describe the assault I remember without claiming to possess a continuous recording of the hours around it.

I remember being in a downstairs bathroom with Luca. I say he forced me to the floor and used his body and hands to hold me there. I remember his weight restraining me and his fingers closing around my upper arms and upper thighs. I struggled to pull my arms free and move my legs, but I could not get away. I remember him tearing the fishnet tights at the crotch during the struggle. I say he choked me repeatedly and forcefully, slapped me across the face at least twice, and penetrated me without my consent. In my October 2022 appeal, I also recorded the tears in my tights alongside the bruising I observed. I remember the pressure of his hands, the effort of resisting him and the physical violence. I remember asking, more than once, what he was doing and why he was doing it to me. I remember telling him that I would go to the police and that he would not get away with it.

The damaged clothing and the bruises were physical observations I could describe and document afterward. I recognize the finger-shaped marks on my upper arms and thighs as the places where I remember him gripping me. Neither a tear nor a bruise, standing alone, identifies who caused it. That limitation does not change what I remember happening in the room; it clarifies what each kind of evidence can establish.

One image is exceptionally clear to me: after a slap turned my face, I looked toward the lower left portion of the bathroom door. I cannot say what I was thinking in every second. I can say where I was looking and what I remember feeling. The door became a fixed point in a room I wanted to leave.

I do not clearly remember standing up from the bathroom floor or precisely how I exited. That missing transition matters. I will not fill it in for narrative symmetry. I remember what came after: I asked whoever controlled the music to play “Family Don’t Matter” by Young Thug, and the song was played. I withdrew from the group and sat near the piano. A friend arranged our ride back to campus. I remember Luca carrying me out of the property and into the Uber; Luca denied carrying me, and witnesses differed about what they saw. I keep that conflict visible rather than writing everyone else’s testimony out of the scene.

At the 2024 hearing, a witness said he could not find me for approximately 20 to 30 minutes and noticed a change in my behavior when I returned. Other witnesses offered accounts placing Luca with someone else during portions of the relevant period. These accounts are not interchangeable. An absence from a person’s view does not identify a perpetrator, and an asserted alibi requires careful examination rather than either automatic belief or automatic dismissal.

My account is unequivocal: Luca Tzimas raped me in that bathroom. I am stating what I experienced. He has consistently denied sexually assaulting me. The university ultimately found him not responsible. The point of preserving the complete record is not to hide this disagreement, but to show exactly where it lies.

After the room

My next recollections do not arrange themselves into a seamless movie. I recall wanting to be alone, pain, confusion, and a bodily sense that something was wrong. Back on campus, the people around me supplied pieces of a timeline that I could not yet test. Some of those pieces later conflicted with transportation and building-access records. That is how the aftermath began: not with a neatly formed accusation, but with an injured student, scattered memories, and a dependence on other people’s descriptions.

A missing interval in memory is not a missing interval in life. I can name the song I requested afterward, recall withdrawing near the piano, and remember someone arranging a ride without pretending that these details complete every missing minute. The difficulty is evidentiary: what can be shown about that interval, and how do we avoid making either the absence or a later recollection carry more weight than it can bear?

The bruises I brought to work

In the days afterward, I saw bruises on my upper arms and upper thighs, in the very places where I remember Luca gripping me. The marks had the shape and spacing of fingers: what looked to me like five distinct impressions from a hand pressing into my skin. They were not simply soreness I had to explain to myself. I could look at my body and see the outline of a grip. When I say it looked as though he had left his fingerprints on me, I mean the visible, finger-shaped bruising—not a forensic comparison of fingerprint ridges. I remember whose hands were on me. The photographs document the injuries; they do not, by themselves, identify who caused them.

In the first days afterward, I went to a shift at the New York State Attorney General’s office while still carrying those marks. I asked my supervisor to speak privately in a conference room and showed her the bruises on my arms and upper thighs. I was still trying to understand what had happened. I needed someone else to see what I could see, and I remember how much it mattered that she treated those injuries, and me, with seriousness.

She comforted me and reminded me of the strength I possessed at a moment when I had little confidence in my ability to name what had happened. I remember that exchange because it was not a hearing, an interview, or an argument over credibility. It was a person taking me seriously before anyone had managed to construct a complete timeline.

April 26–27: what the emergency record actually says

My Albany Medical Center discharge material records an emergency-department arrival at 10:45 p.m. on April 26, 2022. It identifies the visit as an evaluation for sexual assault; the record’s diagnosis field reads “Sexual Assault.” It also documents the sexual-assault-related discharge instructions and treatment, including preventative medications. The printed material is contemporaneous medical documentation, not a retrospective description written for this website.

This matters in two different ways. First, it contradicts any suggestion that I never sought medical evaluation or that the experience existed only as a much later allegation. Second, the record must not be asked to prove something a medical discharge summary cannot: a clinical label and treatment do not, on their own, determine the identity of a perpetrator or prove a legal element beyond dispute. The absence of a particular forensic finding also does not establish that no assault occurred. The relevant question is what each form of evidence can and cannot establish.

MEDICAL RECORD · DOCUMENTED
Albany Medical Center, April 26–27, 2022. Visit reason: evaluation for sexual assault. Diagnosis field: “Sexual Assault.” This is meaningful documentation of clinical care. It is not, by itself, a legal finding about Luca’s responsibility. The full record includes private identifiers and is deliberately not displayed here.

The difference between medical care and criminal proof is not a competition between doctors and police officers. They answer different questions with different tools. A doctor evaluates, treats, and documents a patient. Investigators assess whether available evidence supports legal action. Neither profession should be misquoted as having conclusively answered questions its evidence cannot answer.

The first report and the danger of borrowed certainty

The first report was made while I was injured, distressed, and still attempting to reconstruct the night. I relied heavily on two people close to me for times and movements around the party and return to campus. Based on those accounts, I initially believed an assault may have occurred in my dorm after I returned from the event, and suspicion was directed toward a different person.

That first account was not a final, independently verified reconstruction. In a later recorded call, a University Police employee explained that the times attributed to those friends were estimates and that the initial chronology did not necessarily match later information. Importantly, the employee told me that university police did not believe I had intentionally given false information. The fact that I corrected an account should not be repackaged as evidence that I manufactured it.

I am also careful about my criticism of the friends who supplied the initial version. An inaccurate time is not, by itself, proof of a deliberate lie. I can document the inconsistency, describe the effect it had on me, and explain why I came to distrust the people involved. Establishing their intentions is a different task.

This was the initial report, not the completed reconstruction. In July 2022, I identified Luca by name to New York State Police, told my parents, and returned to Albany. My independent collection and comparison of the surrounding accounts and records began afterward. In August, I began speaking with people connected to the night, starting with my friend, whom my roommate had accused first. The photographs, messages, transportation times, and competing accounts were assembled and compared through that later work, which I describe in the next section.

July and August: identifying Luca, then testing the timeline

I did not begin independently collecting and comparing witness accounts and timestamps immediately after the assault. In the first weeks, I was dealing with my injuries, a medical examination and an initial report shaped in part by what people close to me had told me. My independent reconstruction began only after I had identified Luca Tzimas by name to New York State Police in July 2022, told my parents, and returned to Albany. I was not waiting to complete a perfect timeline before identifying the person I accused. The identification and the reconstruction were related, but they were not the same step.

In August, I began speaking with people connected to the night to test the timeline for myself. I began with my friend, whom my roommate had accused first. Contacting him was an attempt to examine the version of events I had been given, not a new accusation by me. Through that outreach, I began assembling photographs, transportation times, messages, witness recollections and records side by side. The discrepancies changed my understanding of where and when the assault had occurred. They did not erase the injuries that had prompted me to seek help.

The times that changed the map

The turning point was not a dramatic new witness who suddenly explained everything. It was a more basic exercise: checking clocks. I gathered receipts, photos, videos, messages, recorded calls, and witness accounts and began to compare them. I obtained an Uber request time around 11:54 p.m. and learned that a university record described three people believed to be seen at a campus residence entrance around 12:38 a.m. Earlier accounts I had relied on had placed the group’s movements differently.

The exact strength of each data point matters. A transportation receipt may establish when a ride was requested; it does not automatically establish every passenger’s movements. A video identification described as believed to be an individual is not identical to a confirmed face identification. A witness’s estimate is not a timestamp. This is the discipline I eventually had to teach myself, because the consequences of a misplaced half-hour were enormous.

I had mistaken closeness for accuracy. The people I trusted were familiar; the records were not. Learning to check one against the other was painful because each corrected time also changed my understanding of a relationship. Reconstruction required me to question the sources of my certainty, including my own.

The phone calls that show the work

In an October 2022 call with University Police, I asked repeated questions about the difference between the first report, supplemental witness statements, camera timing, and building-card entries. The officer did not confirm every inference I proposed. They did distinguish their records from witnesses’ guesses and explained the limits of university jurisdiction. The recording is valuable not because it produces a miracle answer, but because it captures the labor of correcting a record in real time.

The paper trail with New York State Police Investigator Russell V. Dennie makes the evidence-delivery problem more concrete. On October 3, 2022, I sent a working reconstruction of April 22 and asked whether he could access the timeline and associated evidence. He replied that the attachment could not be opened. I sent a different Drive folder link on October 5. On October 11, I followed up with an updated timeline and links to documents, photographs and videos. The next day, he confirmed that he could open and was reviewing the first link, but not the separate media folder.

I continued. In an email dated December 29, 2022, I supplied further testimony and supporting materials, explained that I had left a voicemail, and offered to put the material on a disc if that was what his office needed. On January 3, 2023, Dennie wrote that he was reviewing the material and that the second link in that email still did not work. The record establishes the repeated submissions, his replies and the access problems; it does not prove that every file reached him, that every attachment was reviewed, or what ultimate investigative conclusions followed.

That series matters for a reason more exact than perseverance as a virtue. Evidence cannot be evaluated merely because a sender believes it was delivered. Someone has to confirm that the receiving system can access it, preserve what arrived, and say what is missing. I could do the work of collecting and organizing the material, and I could follow up when a link failed. I could not verify the contents of an investigator's case file from my own outbox. Sending evidence and establishing its receipt are two different events.

The closure I learned about elsewhere

January 3, 2023 is the last written response from Investigator Russell V. Dennie I have located. He said he was reviewing materials and that another link remained inaccessible. I received no subsequent phone call, email or letter notifying me that the investigation had closed. I learned it was no longer proceeding while pursuing other avenues of accountability. I had spent months gathering evidence and checking access without knowing the process had ended. The official police closure date remains unconfirmed: the last email is not a closure notice. PAD Nationals’ separate inquiry ended on November 24, 2023; that date does not establish when the police investigation ended.

When I later sought an investigative case file, I was unable to obtain one. I want to distinguish my experience from a legal conclusion I cannot yet verify. Not receiving a case file does not prove that no investigation occurred, that no records were created, or that every possible avenue of inquiry was exhausted. Records may be maintained by different agencies, withheld under a legal exemption, or not located in a particular search. Nor does the absence of a charge by itself explain what evidence was assessed or why the matter ended. What I can state is narrower and consequential: I was not notified of the closure, and I did not receive the investigative record or an explanation I could examine.

This is why closure without notice matters. The outcome of an investigation and the ability of the person who reported it to understand that outcome are distinct responsibilities. I cannot know what an investigator concluded from records I have never seen. I can know how much I supplied, how often I asked for access to be confirmed, and what it meant to learn the process was over from somewhere else. A person should not have to discover the end of an investigation by accident.

The July 4 call and written question to Luca, discussed in the next section, preserve a different kind of evidence: my effort to obtain an explanation directly from him. The message establishes what I asked. It cannot supply a transcript of the call or turn an unanswered question into an admission.

A separate October 31, 2022 conversation with a Senate leader, is instructive for a different reason. I described having heard that someone waiting on a stairwell had seen me being carried as people left the gathering. The reported observer could not confidently identify who carried me. That is not an independent identification of Luca; it is a lead worth distinguishing from my own recollection and from witnesses who later denied seeing the event. The same conversation explored how a fraternity president had approached student-government leadership before my public remarks and how social discussion shifted after the speech. It preserves my understanding at the time, not proof of the private motives of everyone involved.

I retain recordings from the October 27 fraternity meeting and multiple later institutional conversations. Their value is not that every speaker must be believed or that my own statements cannot be questioned. They allow a reader to compare what people knew or claimed to know at a particular date with what they said later. A contemporaneous recording cannot make a mistaken claim true, but it can prevent that claim from being rewritten as though it was never made.

Trauma, memory, and the temptation to claim too much

I sought therapy and spent time processing what I experienced. The testimony I later gave included details I did not describe immediately after the event. That temporal development deserves to be acknowledged instead of disguised. Traumatic experience and intoxication can affect attention, encoding, recall, and a person’s ability to make sense of an event. But psychology does not authorize the shortcut “a later memory must be true because trauma explains the delay.” Nor does a gap prove that an event did not occur.

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism distinguishes fragmentary blackouts—partial memory formation, with gaps—from en bloc blackouts, during which memories are not formed. Recollection after trauma and memory change after therapy are also complex, contested topics. My responsible claim is narrower: I can describe what I recall, when I reported recalling it, and which independent records do or do not support surrounding details. I need not pretend that the science is simpler than it is.

When the people I trusted made reality harder to understand

In May, relationships I had expected to provide stability became an additional source of uncertainty. I heard alarming explanations concerning my phone and my safety from people I trusted. Later, some of those conversations were described by others as evidence of serious psychiatric illness. In a recorded fraternity meeting that autumn, people discussed a claimed mental-health crisis even though they were not in a position to diagnose me.

I will not turn uncertainty into a psychiatric assessment of myself or anyone else. Nor will I present a contested allegation about somebody’s motive as a settled fact. What I can establish from the recording is that mental-health claims became part of the public conversation about my credibility. A person can be distressed, mistaken about a particular event, or receiving mental-health care and still deserve an impartial examination of a separate allegation.

The injury to trust did not have to be a coordinated conspiracy to matter. Each time I tried to understand the assault, I also had to understand how a new account of me had been constructed. That is a second burden: the work of explaining a violent experience, followed by the work of explaining why one is considered qualified to speak about it.

Why the days afterward do not read like a clean break

For a long time, I assumed that someone reading my messages after April 22 might expect an immediate and permanent separation. The record is more complicated. I kept attending class, answering questions, exchanging messages about coursework, and participating in a fraternity whose calendar and relationships did not stop because I was trying to understand what had happened to me. The texts show ordinary conversations continuing after the night Luca raped me. I do not hide them, and I will not permit those conversations to stand in for consent to violence that I remember resisting.

The messages document academic feedback on April 25 and into May, conversations about classes, and later disputes. They show contact. They cannot, on their own, explain my emotional state on every day or decide whether an earlier sexual encounter was consensual. Conduct after trauma does not retroactively supply consent to conduct before it.

The poetry course, in its actual place in the sequence

Luca and I had previously discussed taking a poetry course together. In May 2022, after the assault, I cut off contact with my roommate and former friends as I began questioning Luca’s behavior and piecing together what had happened. By then, I was already onto him. It was only after those relationships had changed that Luca told me he was no longer taking the poetry course.

This detail does not belong in a neat theory of what Luca planned before April 22. It belongs here, after the break in my social world, because the meaning of an ordinary future plan had changed. I was not merely reconsidering a class schedule. I was reconsidering who had access to my life, who knew what, and what I could trust.

July 4: asking him directly

On July 4, 2022, Luca and I were on the telephone shortly before I texted him. The conversation itself was not preserved in the message export. Moments after that call, I sent a direct question: “Can you tell me what occurred on April 22nd in all honesty?” The written exchange contains his assertion that he had been honest, but it does not show an answer to that specific question.

I have described that silence as him “pleading the Fifth.” That is how his failure to answer felt to me—not a claim that he invoked the Fifth Amendment in a legal proceeding, and not proof of guilt. It is a description of the moment when I asked him directly to account for the night I remember and received no written explanation. The question is documented. What was said on the preceding phone call is not. I will not invent a transcript in order to make an already difficult record sound more conclusive than it is.

What the continued contact does—and does not—mean

The temptation is to divide people into perfect behavioral categories: a survivor who always withdraws, an accused person who always disappears, a friendship that ends on the exact day harm is reported. Real life does not arrange itself that cleanly. I was still a student and a colleague in a small institutional world. I still needed to learn who had said what. Some of my own decisions now embarrass me; embarrassment is not evidence that my account is false. My task is to account for the contradictions, not edit them out of my life.

Filing and the federal jurisdictional gate

In September 2022, I filed a formal sexual misconduct complaint at UAlbany naming Luca. At that stage I had contacted law enforcement, sought medical care, and assembled an extensive reconstruction. The university’s Office of Equity and Compliance handled the initial filing under the Title IX Grievance Policy framework. The 2020 federal Title IX rules in force then had specific jurisdictional requirements, including whether alleged conduct occurred within the institution’s education program or activity.

UAlbany issued initial notices and restrictions. A September 14, 2022 letter directed me to cease contact with Luca under the university’s Community Rights and Responsibilities, described the measure as non-disciplinary, and permitted us to occupy the same public spaces without initiating contact. A September 19 email from the Title IX coordinator also described a schedule intended to separate us at fraternity activities. Those are concrete interim measures, not findings that the underlying allegation was true or false. They also did not, by themselves, remove him from a fraternity role or a university instructional position.

My complaint was then dismissed from the Title IX Grievance Policy process on jurisdictional grounds. I challenged that application. To my mind, the office had moved from discussing an apparently available process to concluding that the same allegations did not satisfy its jurisdictional threshold, without adequately explaining the change.

There is an important distinction readers should not miss: a jurisdictional dismissal under the federal Title IX grievance path is not a finding that the alleged conduct did not occur. The policy expressly allowed some matters dismissed from that path to be reviewed under the university’s other sexual misconduct procedures. But the change in route mattered to me because it affected which rules and procedural safeguards governed the case.

The October 12 appeal

I prepared and submitted an appeal dated October 12, 2022 exceeding one hundred pages, with a substantial record of emails, photographs, chronology, and asserted procedural errors. The appeal challenged the university’s dismissal and the way my clarifications had been treated. It was also an attempt to insist that procedural questions receive precise answers rather than generalized reassurance.

The appeal was rejected. The complaint did not proceed to a finding of responsibility under the federal Title IX Grievance Policy. Instead, the allegations later moved through the university’s Sexual Violence Response Policy and Community Rights and Responsibilities student conduct process. Calling the subsequent 2024 proceeding a “Title IX hearing” would be misleading. It was a sexual misconduct matter managed through a different institutional procedure.

TWO PATHWAYS, NOT TWO VERDICTS
Title IX grievance route: the federal-rule-based process UAlbany considered and dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, subject to appeal.
Campus sexual misconduct route: the university’s Sexual Violence Response Policy and Student Code process used for the later investigation and hearing.
A dismissal from one path did not mean the allegations had been adjudicated in the other. Neither path is a criminal trial.

The administrator, the office, and the unanswered questions

Dr. Amelia Barbadoro was the Director of Equity and Compliance and Title IX Coordinator associated with the initial handling and dismissal. She later left that university position. My understanding has been that her departure occurred during the same fall semester as the appeal and my Student Senate speech; I have not independently confirmed the precise departure date, that she was terminated, or any causal connection to my case. Public professional biographies establish that she subsequently held roles outside UAlbany, not why she left.

Even if the timeline of personnel change is confirmed, it would answer only one question: who occupied the position. It would not answer why the jurisdiction decision was made, whether the communications were adequate, or what changed institutionally. A change in officeholder is not an explanation of an office’s decisions.

The office changed hands; the questions remained

After the original Title IX coordinator left her position, Michelle Pena took over the sexual-misconduct-policy work with which I was dealing, as I understood the transition. I distinguish that firsthand understanding from an independently verified personnel record: I have not confirmed the precise effective date or her formal title for every period involved. My question was not simply who had the job. It was whether the policy, its interpretation, and the assistance available to reporting students had become clearer.

Greek Life and the limits of responsibility

I also informed university personnel associated with Greek Life about what I was experiencing in the fraternity, including isolation, leadership changes, and the continued organizational presence of the person I had accused. I provided information and sought intervention. My understanding is that no intervention I could observe restored my standing or addressed the social conduct I was reporting. That is a statement about my experience and the outcome visible to me—not proof that no internal review ever occurred.

There is a documented point of institutional notice worth placing precisely. On November 6, 2022, Student Affairs official Sari H. Khatib wrote to me that communication had been sent to Phi Alpha Delta nationals the previous Friday requesting a meeting about chapter concerns. He said he was awaiting a response, would follow up if necessary, and intended to update the chapter’s four senior executive-board members about any next steps. I do not recall receiving a subsequent update and cannot establish from that screenshot alone whether the proposed meeting occurred or what it produced. The important fact is not a conclusively failed meeting; it is that university Student Affairs had documented direct outreach to the national organization in 2022.

Other correspondence shows that Raymond J. Webb directed my concerns to Khatib and that Khatib proposed meeting with the chapter president about concerns brought to his attention. These messages establish awareness and proposed follow-up, not an adjudication or proof that any particular remedy was implemented.

Title IX, Student Conduct, Greek Life and the national fraternity held different kinds of authority. I needed to know which office could investigate an allegation, which could address exclusion, and which could change a procedure. A referral can move a complaint without resolving it. The administrative question is who accepted responsibility for the next step, whether that step occurred, and whether anyone told me the result.

The September birthday and the question of belonging

By September 2022 I had identified Luca to investigators and was assembling a university complaint. At my twenty-first birthday party, friends from college and Buffalo were with me. Some did not attend UAlbany; others had no relationship to Phi Alpha Delta. These were people who knew me in my own life, not members attending a fraternity proceeding. I was intoxicated and called Luca. I would not make that call again, but I refuse to edit it out merely because trauma is sometimes expected to produce perfectly consistent conduct.

More than one person at the party tried to stop me from calling him. My fraternity president was among those present; other friends also tried to stop the call. Their interventions were not all the same, and I do not assign them one shared motive. What I remember distinctly about the president was her anger when she realized that my friends outside the fraternity knew what had happened to me and that I was accusing Luca. I had already told her about Luca in July 2022. She was not hearing my allegation for the first time. I understood her reaction as anger that friends outside the fraternity knew; I cannot establish every private thought behind it. After I went to bed, I understand that she spoke with some of my friends, who raised concerns with me afterward.

The distinction matters because I was not revealing confidential chapter business. I was talking to the people who loved me about my own experience. Whatever disagreement existed about my allegation, I was not required to keep my life inside the boundaries of the organization in which I had been a leader. A fraternity can have private business. An allegation of sexual violence is not a proprietary secret of its officers.

There is a difference between protecting someone’s privacy and controlling whom she may tell. Privacy should preserve the reporting person’s choices; it should not become a reason to isolate her from support. I was entitled to seek care and perspective outside the group whose response I was questioning.

The president and the position she occupied

My Phi Alpha Delta president occupied a different position from the other friends who urged me not to call Luca. She had an organizational leadership role; I had confided in her months before my birthday; and she was present when my other friends learned the gravity of what I was describing. Her reaction that night is part of my firsthand account. Later, before my October Senate remarks, I learned of contact involving fraternity leadership and student-government officials about my planned speech. I identify the president by office rather than by name. The available record allows me to describe actions and timing, not to assign every participant a single motive.

My objection was not that chapter members were required to accept my allegations as adjudicated fact. My objection was that a group devoted to legal professionalism could treat questions of reporting, fair process, retaliation and organizational welfare as threats to its own normalcy. Its ordinary members also deserved a fair process, including those who privately disagreed with the direction of the conversation.

Declared values, actual decisions

Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, International publicly describes devotion to integrity, compassion, courage, professionalism, service, diversity and innovation, and service to the student, school, profession and community. Those are values I wanted to recognize in an organization I had cared about long before Luca joined. They are not evidence that any particular member acted well or badly. They provide a standard against which to ask concrete questions about what chapter leaders did.

For the reader: separate what the chapter said, what the national organization could investigate, and what the university was empowered to adjudicate. These are overlapping communities, not one decision-maker.

What I went to the Senate to say

In late October 2022, I spoke to the University at Albany Student Association Senate. The subject was not a request for fraternity members to decide who had committed a crime. I wanted to address the university’s handling of my complaint, the policy choices governing sexual misconduct, and the gap between the protections I had been told existed and the procedures I experienced. I had already written an extensive appeal, and I intended the speech to make the administrative issue visible beyond an exchange of emails.

Before I spoke, others had already met about whether I should be heard

On October 27, 2022, before my allotted public comment at the Student Association Senate, my Phi Alpha Delta president and fraternity alumni approached the Senate chair about my planned remarks. As the chair later described the encounter to me, my president urged her not to allow me to speak because she feared I intended to damage the fraternity. I was not present for that conversation; I am describing what was subsequently relayed to me, not claiming to possess a transcript of it.

My president had also been my fraternity “big”—someone who had mentored me—and I had told her in July 2022 that I identified Luca as the person who assaulted me. This was not a concern raised by a stranger who had no way to ask me what I intended to say. She knew me, she knew what I had reported, and she had another option: she could have spoken to me directly.

The chair did not bar me from public comment. As she later explained, another student organization's apprehension about my speech did not justify excluding me from an open forum. Fraternity members, including my former roommate, were also present for my Senate remarks. I had five minutes to address Title IX procedure and the university's handling of my complaint. I did not ask the Senate to decide Luca's guilt or to punish the fraternity.

The part I still find extraordinary is the order of events. Before I had spoken, my words were already being treated as a risk someone else needed to manage. After I spoke, a chapter emergency meeting was convened to discuss the speech, the allegation, and me. I cannot know every person's intentions. I can describe the two meetings, the people involved as I knew them, and how my opportunity to speak became the subject of others' efforts to control the conversation.

The emergency meeting after the speech

An emergency Phi Alpha Delta meeting followed the Student Senate speech on October 27, 2022. I was not present for its beginning. My transcript and recording include people who had attended the April gathering, chapter leaders, and members connected to Luca. Several participants were asking what others believed; I was still asking what they actually knew. The meeting should not be summarized as a single unanimous position, and the transcript cannot reveal everyone’s private motivation. Recordings capture members offering competing accounts of the night, discussing my reported injuries, reviewing my earlier police timeline, and raising questions about my mental health. Some members said the conversation should not be conducted without me or Luca present. Others described the meeting as necessary to restore unity or counter a narrative they said had become dominant. Those distinctions are crucial: the room was not a single voice.

The governing shift nevertheless appears in the questions people chose to debate. Rather than examining what student leaders should do when a member reports sexual assault and continuing isolation, discussion repeatedly turned toward whether my memory, behavior, or decision to speak publicly was itself the problem. I entered part of the conversation and objected to the meeting becoming a forum for other people to narrate my experience. I reiterated that I had addressed the Senate about administration and procedure, not to ask a joining class to adjudicate a crime.

I had chosen a public forum to scrutinize policy. The chapter responded by convening a private one in which my credibility was scrutinized. Whether or not anyone intended the inversion, the effect was profound. A complaint about institutional procedure became a conversation about the person who had made it. The emergency did not need to be invented; it only needed to be relocated.

My objection was not that members must agree with me. It was that an organization was making practical credibility judgments while disclaiming any role in the case. An institution need not issue a formal verdict to shape whose presence feels normal, whose claims are repeated, and who becomes socially expendable.

The two-hour meeting and the one-hour recording

That absence matters. What remains audible permits careful analysis of what people actually said during the recorded portion; it does not provide a complete account of what happened after the phones were collected. A reader deserves the missing-hour disclosure as much as the words that survived.

The emergency meeting lasted approximately two hours, as I understand its duration. The recording I retain captures only about one hour. Around the one-hour point, the chapter president entered and required members to come to the front of the classroom, display that their phones were turned off, and place them on a table at the front. My account is that the recording ended in connection with that instruction. I cannot present the unrecorded portion as though I possess a verbatim transcript.

The social theory, without the amateur diagnosis

Groupthink is not merely a room full of people sharing an opinion. It describes pressures toward consensus that may reduce critical examination. Pluralistic ignorance occurs when individuals privately doubt a position but believe others support it, sometimes remaining quiet as a result. Normative influence helps explain why preserving membership or avoiding social penalties can shape public positions. These concepts can illuminate questions about the meeting, but the recording alone does not prove the private psychological state of every participant.

The better questions are observable: Who opened the discussion? Who introduced allegedly medical information? Who objected? Who requested the complainant be present? Did anyone separate documented facts from speculation? Were boundaries established about sharing private information? A group becomes more accountable when its behavior can be examined without inventing what everyone secretly thought.

The emergency became me

The public dispute increasingly included a second storyline about my reliability. Mental-health labels circulated in conversation. The fact that people voiced those labels is documented in the recordings; their accuracy is not. I object to the substitution of a supposed diagnosis for engagement with the alleged conduct, but I do not have to declare a coordinated plot to explain the effect.

Researchers use the term DARVO—deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender—to describe a pattern in which attention shifts from an allegation to attacks on the person raising it and claims of being the real victim. The idea is useful for analyzing rhetorical structure, not for diagnosing Luca, determining his intent, or proving the rape allegation. The question for the reader is simply whether any response to an allegation assessed the evidence, or primarily asked the audience to assess the character of the person speaking.

The cost of being the person who spoke

Over time, I saw my position within Phi Alpha Delta change. I was removed from a leadership role without the notice or conversation I believed the organization’s bylaws required. People stopped contacting me. Communication and decisions moved into rooms I was no longer part of. I also discovered that the chapter’s Instagram account, @ualbanypad, had blocked me. A social-media block is a small act; in the context of exclusion from an organization I helped lead, it registered as one more visible boundary around belonging. I had also blocked many members myself as those relationships deteriorated; the two facts belong together. I later posted criticism of the fraternity on social media and say I received a student conduct referral afterward. The screenshot of the post and my recollection differ on the exact February 2023 date, and I do not infer from sequence alone that a particular individual initiated the referral. I retain this as a private lead pending the official notice. A March 2024 recap image in which someone’s face appears covered is similarly not evidence, by itself, of an intent to conceal anything; I have not used it to make that accusation.

The two members who were removed

After my October 27, 2022 Student Senate speech, two other fraternity members were removed from group chats on the same day I was removed. Their circumstances were not identical. One member held a chapter position and was removed from both that position and the group chats. The other was removed from the group chats but held no position to lose. That difference matters; I do not want to flatten two people’s experiences into a single description simply because the timing overlapped.

My own chapter title and the title of the member who had held a position were also changed without either of us knowing in advance. It is one thing to disagree with a member, another to change that member’s standing and their access to organizational communications without notice. I want the record to ask what authority was exercised, what procedure was followed, and whether the people affected were ever told why.

I know that not everyone who remained in Phi Alpha Delta necessarily agreed with the treatment I experienced. I am not identifying either of these members without their consent. Their experiences are not exhibits whose only purpose is to prove mine. Both deserve to have what happened to them taken seriously on their own terms.

The question is not whether a university must immediately expel any person who is accused. Fair process matters to respondents too. The question is what an organization owes to all of its members while an allegation is unresolved: notice, anti-retaliation protections, impartial leadership, access to the same activities, and consistent application of its rules. An organization can be formally neutral while distributing the real burdens of that neutrality unequally.

Organizational exclusion can look administratively small: a title altered without notice, a chat one can no longer access, a meeting one learns about afterward. Yet communication is how membership becomes participation. Removing someone from a channel can change who receives information, who can speak, and who even knows a decision is being made. The record should ask who authorized those removals and changes, under which rules, and what notice was provided. Timing alone does not establish a retaliatory plan; it does establish the sequence that deserves an explanation.

The unanimous vote—and the leadership that followed

I do not believe every member agreed with how I was treated, and the October 27 emergency discussion contained different views. At a later chapter leadership meeting, however, the vote to remove me as secretary was unanimous. At that same meeting, my replacement was selected and Luca was elected treasurer—one of the chapter’s top four officers, serving alongside my successor. These were decisions made at the same meeting, distinct from the October 27 emergency discussion. In one meeting, I lost my office and the person I had accused gained senior authority.

That vote was not a judgment by an investigative tribunal about what happened on April 22; it was an organizational decision about who would hold authority. It also did not prove every member privately agreed. It did establish that the chapter acted collectively to change its leadership, replacing the person who had publicly raised the complaint while electing the person she had accused to a senior office. I describe the outcome as I experienced it; the exact vote records and governing bylaws should be read alongside this account when available. A unanimous vote can establish a decision. It cannot, by itself, establish that the decision was fair.

The power shift was practical, not merely symbolic. An officer has a recognized place in the organization; a removed member must negotiate access from outside its leadership. Whatever individual members believed, the resulting structure gave him authority while taking mine away. That consequence deserves examination separately from whether the chapter had authority to decide the assault allegation.

The opportunities that continued—and the one I kept

According to my account and the organizational materials I retain, Luca continued in fraternity leadership and a university instructional role while the university matter was unresolved. I also understand that he later helped establish another student group with faculty support. The exact periods of each role require dated rosters, employment records and registration documents. My concern is the allocation of opportunity during an unresolved process: formal restrictions can exist while the everyday distribution of access remains largely intact.

I was fortunate to retain my internship at the New York State Attorney General’s office. I was grateful for that stability. But gratitude for keeping something I had earned should not distract from the fact that I had already lost other forms of belonging, leadership, and trust. It is possible to believe fiercely in a respondent’s right to fair process and to examine whether the reporting student’s opportunities were meaningfully protected during that process.

I was not asking an institution to hand me a future. I was asking why the pursuit of accountability threatened the future I was already building.

The limits of “returning to normal”

Classes continued. Meetings continued. New members joined. The organization had an ordinary institutional interest in surviving the conflict. But normalcy is not neutral if one member can remain comfortably embedded while another must repeatedly explain why she should be allowed to participate. The measure of procedural fairness is not whether people were able to carry on; it is how the costs of carrying on were allocated.

When a group says it wants things to return to normal, ask whose normal it is protecting. A group can comply with every meeting rule and still fail to ask whether the social costs of its decision fall on the same people. Procedural neutrality is not always distributive neutrality. That is not an accusation that every bystander conspired; it is an invitation to calculate who lost access to what, and when.

2023: the national fraternity investigates

On September 19, 2023, I contacted national Phi Alpha Delta leadership about the urgent situation in my chapter. On September 28, Deputy Director Emily Baranoski notified chapter officers that Luca’s membership was temporarily suspended pending an investigation into alleged PAD policy violations. The email barred him, during suspension, from chapter activities and social-media participation and from contacting members about the matter outside the disciplinary committee. This is written evidence of an interim institutional action—not a finding that he violated policy.

On October 4, 2023, a disciplinary committee member, Phil, interviewed me about the night of April 22 and what had happened within the fraternity afterward. We discussed the Tile tracker, my relationship with Luca, the initially inaccurate time information, and the removal of my leadership role. He told me the committee could examine problematic chapter leadership conduct separately, asked for a written account of possible retaliation, and explained that recommendations could include leadership consequences. Those were possibilities described by an investigator, not sanctions that I can claim were imposed.

On November 15, 2023, committee member Jen conducted a detailed follow-up call. She questioned the timeline’s creation, the medical photographs, the sequence of my interactions with Luca, the competing witness accounts, and the different university procedures. The recording also shows the committee distinguishing its own process from campus and criminal decision-making. I sent materials and answered questions; I cannot independently establish which interviews or documents the committee ultimately relied upon beyond what its representatives told me.

On November 24, 2023, Jacqueline called to say that the PAD investigation was closed without a determination that any PAD policies had been violated. She told me Luca’s temporary suspension had been lifted, and that later university findings could be supplied for possible reconsideration. He was not expelled. The national process had acted, reviewed, and reached a result I disagreed with. The open question is whether its conclusion encompassed the separate concerns I raised about leadership conduct and the treatment of members after disclosure.

A suspension is not proof of guilt. Ending a suspension is not proof that every related institutional concern disappeared. Those propositions can both be true; the tension between them is the point of this chapter.

April 16 and April 30, 2024: the campus hearing

On April 16, 2024, a Community Standards coordinator explained the forthcoming hearing procedure, the right to advisors, witness questioning through the board, evidence limits, the impact statement, and appeals. The procedural orientation expressly distinguished the school process from a court of law and stated that preponderance of the evidence—more likely than not—would govern the decision.

The April 30, 2024 hearing was conducted under the university’s Sexual Violence Response Policy and Community Rights and Responsibilities student conduct procedures. The April 16 procedural orientation described an approximately 400-page investigative report; the April 30 hearing chair identified 57 exhibits and multiple witnesses called to testify. I appeared with an advisor, as did the respondent. Witness questioning went through the hearing structure; the hearing was recorded by the university. These procedural details matter because they show what the university said it was doing and what material it said it had. They do not, standing alone, prove that every inference anyone drew from those materials was sound. The referral described allegations of sexual assault in the first-degree category used by the Student Code, threatening or abusive behavior (including alleged choking and slapping), and stalking relating to the tracker. Luca pleaded not in violation and denied the allegations. The hearing included testimony from various witnesses; accounts conflicted about times, movements, the tracker, and what people observed.

Earlier stages of the matter also referenced harassment and Sexual Assault 2. Those references must not be presented as additional adjudicated charges without the operative notice or decision establishing that they were included. The charge list belongs to the hearing record, not to a shorthand description of the wider dispute.

At the hearing, Luca acknowledged placing the tracking device but maintained that the context did not constitute stalking. He disputed that he had academic control over my grades, despite our post-assault text exchanges discussing his influence over my grades. He denied touching or carrying me on the night in question and pointed to witness accounts and timing he said supported him. I testified to my memory, medical documentation, and reconstruction, including the ways I believed inaccurate information affected the original report. Both positions belong in the institutional record because they explain the dispute that the board was asked to resolve.

May 28, 2024: the finding

The university delivered its determination on May 28, 2024, the last day of the period I understood to be permitted under its process. The student conduct board found Luca not responsible on the charges it considered. In an administrative context, this is better described as a not-responsible finding than as a criminal acquittal or a finding of innocence. The board’s decision is a concrete and significant part of this story. I will not conceal it, and I will not misstate what it establishes.

I disagree with the outcome. That disagreement does not entitle me to claim a court found guilt where no court did, nor to pretend the university made a positive finding that I lied. A determination that the institution did not find its standard satisfied is precisely that. The remaining question for this site is whether the record, procedures, and institutional behavior can be examined intelligently even after formal adjudication has ended. They can, provided that readers are told the result.

THE OFFICIAL OUTCOME
April 30, 2024: hearing under the campus sexual misconduct/student conduct framework, not a federal Title IX hearing.
May 28, 2024: not-responsible finding on the adjudicated charges.
Interpretive limit: neither a criminal conviction nor a formal finding that my testimony was fabricated.

A case can have many doors and no single custodian

The systems I approached were not interchangeable. Every entity had a different jurisdiction, evidentiary standard, and potential remedy. Treating them as one investigation makes the history impossible to understand. The proper question for each is: what did it receive, what authority did it possess, what did it do, and what reasons did it give?

Some of these questions may have answers in records I do not possess. That is a reason to identify the missing document, not invent an explanation. The ledger distinguishes four milestones: receiving a complaint, providing interim measures, reaching a decision, and explaining what happens afterward. A process can reach an outcome while leaving its reasoning inaccessible to the person expected to live with it.

A behavioral analysis, not a diagnosis

When I describe Luca’s conduct as predatory, I am describing my interpretation of the conduct I allege, the placement of the tracker he acknowledged, and the ways access and credibility operated in my experience. I cannot diagnose him as a sociopath, narcissist, psychopath, or any other clinical category. A dramatic label may feel satisfying; it also makes a serious argument weaker if it cannot be established.

More precise questions are available. Did an individual obtain access through an institutional role? Did that role expose personal information? Were boundaries crossed without informed consent? Did a social network supply protection against scrutiny? After the allegation, was attention redirected to a competing account of the complainant? Which of these are documented actions, and which are interpretations? These questions are auditable. A speculative clinical personality is not.

I once thought danger would be unmistakable when it appeared. The hard lesson of retrospective analysis is different: many boundary crossings arrive in a context that gives them an innocent-sounding explanation. That does not prove every action was calculated, but it shows why consent and accountability must not depend on whether the explanation seems socially familiar.

Boundary testing

Boundary testing describes conduct that probes whether another person’s limits will be respected. I examine the tracker through that lens because a device capable of location tracking was placed in my backpack without my knowledge. Its presence does not establish that anyone actually obtained my location. After the April 9 event, I saw Luca on two days without being told about it. I found the device, removed its battery and returned it myself. I cannot establish that he intended to test my reaction. The intrusion and the lack of disclosure are the conduct I can describe.

Triangulation and credibility

Triangulation can refer to relationships in which communication, reassurance, or conflict are mediated through a third person. In my story, the relationship between Luca and my roommate is relevant because it created independent channels of closeness and information. That network structure matters. It does not prove that she or anyone else knowingly coordinated a deception.

Social shielding describes how a person’s reputation and relationships can discourage scrutiny. It need not be a formal plot. The ordinary preference to believe someone familiar, keep friendships intact, or avoid admitting a group failed can affect the distribution of doubt. This is an explanation to test against observable behavior—not a claim to know everyone’s motives.

The reversal of scrutiny

During the recorded meeting and later proceedings, commentary about my memory and mental health sometimes competed with discussion of the conduct I alleged. Those comments can be analyzed as narrative displacement: the audience is asked to evaluate the reporter before evaluating the report. The point is not that credibility questions are forbidden. They are legitimate and sometimes essential. The point is that they must be relevant, proportionate, and tethered to evidence, not used as substitutes for it.

A person can be a questionable historian of one hour and still correctly report a different event. A person can be sympathetic, articulate, and wrong. Demeanor is not a forensic method. Neither popularity nor institutional status answers what happened in a bathroom.

The most consequential power in this account was often the power to set the question. Once the discussion became “Can we trust her?”, I had to answer an expanding account of myself before the allegation could be considered. Credibility must be examined; it cannot become an unlimited demand that the person reporting harm first defend every part of her life.

Patterns, power, and the limits of a model

I describe abuse before, during and after April 22 because, in my understanding, the harm did not start or stop at the bathroom door. The academic role, expanding fraternity ties, the device in my bag, the assault I remember, and the later social and institutional fallout are different kinds of events. They must be explained in their actual order. Some involve Luca’s own alleged conduct; others involve decisions by people and organizations whose motives cannot simply be assigned to him.

The Power and Control Wheel is a way of describing intimidation, isolation, coercion and other tactics in abusive intimate relationships. It can help readers ask questions about behavior; it does not determine that any particular person committed an offense, and it should not be imposed wholesale on a relationship that differs from the model’s original setting. The familiar cycle-of-abuse diagram is even less exact: many experts warn that abuse does not proceed in predictable stages and can be ongoing rather than cyclical.

Public prevalence research provides context, not case evidence. RAINN summarizes FBI data indicating that 76% of reported rapes involved a person the victim already knew (NIBRS, January 2021–December 2025, accessed in 2026). The denominator is reported rape incidents in that dataset, not all sexual assaults. The number does not tell us what occurred on April 22. It challenges a familiar misconception: that danger is necessarily unfamiliar or outside one’s own social circle.

July 2024: the diagnosis I never expected to need

I did not go to college expecting to leave with post-traumatic stress disorder. In July 2024, I was diagnosed with PTSD, more than two years after April 22. I had already spent substantial time in therapy directed toward sexual trauma, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). A diagnosis gave a clinical name to something I had been living with. It did not make the reality of living with it any less difficult to accept.

There is something almost impossible to reconcile about it. I was a college student who had wanted to learn, work, lead, make friends and build a future. Instead, I was trying to understand the aftermath of Luca raping me, reconstruct the hours around it, navigate proceedings that could not give me the answers I sought, and find a way to live with the isolation that followed. Some relationships I ended because I no longer trusted them. Others changed around me. The damage to my sense of safety did not respect the boundary between the event and its aftermath.

I should not have had to learn how to live with this. That is not a denial that PTSD has a medical explanation. It is the fact that I needed that explanation at all that remains so difficult to comprehend. There is a particular cruelty in surviving an experience and then discovering how much of your life must be devoted to surviving its consequences.

What post-traumatic stress disorder actually means

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental-health condition that can develop after exposure to an extremely threatening or traumatic event, including sexual violence, serious injury, or combat. Clinicians look for a pattern of symptoms lasting longer than a month, causing significant distress or disruption: intrusions such as unwanted memories or nightmares; avoidance of reminders; changes in mood or beliefs; and changes in arousal and reactivity, including feeling unusually on guard, startled or unable to relax. Not everyone exposed to trauma develops PTSD, and different people experience it differently.

PTSD is not a personality flaw, an inherited destiny, or simply a synonym for ordinary stress. It describes a persistent response to trauma that affects life beyond the moment of danger. I include the definition because the term is often used casually, while the experience of living with it is not casual at all.

The diagnosis people associate with war

The history of PTSD is closely tied to combat. During World War I, some similar symptoms were described as shell shock; during World War II, as battle fatigue or combat stress. The diagnosis of PTSD entered American psychiatric classification in 1980, shaped by work with veterans as well as survivors of sexual violence, the Holocaust, and other traumatic experiences. It is therefore inaccurate to call it exclusively a military disorder. It is equally inaccurate to forget that military trauma is part of how medicine came to recognize it.

I am not comparing my experience to serving in a war or asking readers to rank different kinds of suffering. What unsettles me is that I came to need treatment for a condition so widely associated with surviving extreme danger—not because I went into battle, but in the aftermath of what I say happened to me in college. I went to college to build a future. I did not expect to spend years trying to recover the ordinary sense of safety I had before it.

The assault and the isolation did not occupy separate lives

When I think about how I arrived at that diagnosis, I think about the violence I remember and also about everything I had to manage afterward: an early account built with information from people I trusted, the discovery that parts of that account were wrong, the work of reconstructing what records could establish, the change in friendships, and the loneliness of having my credibility discussed in rooms I did not control. I cannot assign every consequence to one person or every decision to a single motive. But I can describe what it meant to live through them together.

There is a difference between reading a chronology and occupying it. A reader sees the dates arranged in order. I lived through uncertainty before I knew what would come next. I could not skip ahead to the documents I would eventually obtain, or reassure myself with conclusions I had not yet reached. The isolation mattered because the moments when I most needed trustworthy relationships were also the moments when trust became hardest to extend.

Isolation also changed the conditions under which I had to participate. I was trying to locate witnesses, read policies and meet deadlines while losing confidence in the people who might otherwise have helped me do those things. The work demanded clarity at a time when ordinary life had become difficult. I do not describe that burden to settle the allegation by emotion. I describe it because a procedure is experienced by a person, not merely completed in a file.

The injury was not only what I remembered. It was how difficult the world became to inhabit afterward. That is the human meaning of this section. It is not a request to treat a diagnosis as evidence of anyone's guilt. It is an explanation of the life that continued after the incident and after the procedures ended.

EMDR: treatment directed toward sexual trauma

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a structured, clinician-led, trauma-focused psychotherapy used to treat PTSD. Following assessment and preparation, a therapist helps a person attend to distressing memories and associated thoughts or physical sensations while using alternating eye movements, sounds or tapping. Its purpose is to help traumatic memories become less disruptive and less distressing in daily life. EMDR is supported by clinical research, although its precise mechanisms remain an active subject of study.

This is not hypnosis, a technique for recovering supposedly hidden memories, or a forensic method for establishing who committed an offense. I sought and received treatment because I wanted to function and feel safe again. I found EMDR profoundly important in that work. What I was trying to reclaim was not a verdict from a therapist. It was my ability to exist in the present without having to fight the past for control of every ordinary day.

Care is not a verdict. Neither is a rumor about someone's mental health.

I have described receiving mental-health care and being diagnosed with PTSD. Neither fact proves the particulars of an allegation, independently identifies an assailant or determines legal responsibility. But neither provides a reason to dismiss my testimony. The university hearing procedure itself stated that mental-health diagnosis or treatment unrelated to the alleged conduct should be excluded from the responsibility stage. Care is a response to suffering, not a measure of someone's entitlement to be heard.

My medical materials document the care I received; the photographs of my injuries record marks on my body. They do not, by themselves, determine every disputed question of cause, timing, identity or consent. Conversely, inconclusive forensic testing cannot automatically prove that no violence occurred. An intellectually honest account gives each piece of evidence the weight it can carry—no more, and no less.

I reject two equally simplistic assertions: that imperfect memory makes a person incapable of truth, and that traumatic memory must always be accurate. I distinguish what I remember from what other people told me, what later reconstruction established, and what remains contested. That discipline is not a concession about my experience. It is how I make a serious argument answerable to evidence.

Groupthink is a question, not an insult

A crowded meeting that reaches a reassuring consensus may appear to have resolved something. Yet consensus can be produced by conformity, fatigue, loyalty, or limited information, not just by good reasoning. Groupthink is most useful here as a research question: Were competing accounts actually examined? Were members encouraged to dissent? Did leadership distinguish protecting the fraternity from evaluating the concern? Were people afraid of becoming the next person excluded?

The audio also records dissent. Some members protested the conversation, noted the absence of the people directly involved, or said the issue belonged with trained professionals. That matters. An honest account of group pressure cannot pretend the dissenters were silent.

The bystander problem

Bystanding is not a binary label distinguishing heroes from villains. Someone may witness one part of a conflict and know very little about another. An ethical bystander can refuse to speculate, preserve records, avoid spreading private claims, encourage appropriate reporting, and interrupt retaliation. Doing nothing is not always neutrality; speaking carelessly is not always help. Both actions have consequences, and neither should be judged by association alone.

What I want readers—especially those entering legal, public-service, or leadership professions—to consider is how easily the language of fairness can become merely a style of speaking. Procedural fairness is something people practice when a difficult issue threatens their own relationships, not merely something they admire in a classroom.

The institution is not a person

An institution cannot remember, regret, or apologize the way a human being can. It acts through policies, delegated authority, records, deadlines, and choices made by officials. When a complaint crosses from Title IX to student conduct, or from chapter leadership to nationals, the reader must ask which responsibility continued and which ended. An institution can perform its procedures yet fail to explain them meaningfully to those most affected. Equally, the fact that an institution reached a result I dispute does not prove its employees acted in bad faith.

The central administrative question is not “Was there an office?” but “What did the office have authority to do, and what did it actually do?”

The 2022 legal and policy landscape

In 2022, UAlbany operated a federal Title IX grievance process under the 2020 federal regulations, alongside a separate Sexual Violence Response Policy and Student Code framework. Title IX jurisdiction was not simply “anything sexual that happened to a student.” The applicable federal grievance policy contained limits concerning educational programs or activities. A campus’s other policy could still reach some conduct beyond that federal procedural route, subject to its own scope and due-process protections.

My appeal challenged how the university applied the jurisdictional gate. My later sexual misconduct case was adjudicated through Community Standards, with the university’s preponderance of the evidence standard. This distinction does not establish that the university had “no federal obligations whatsoever.” It means the specific grievance route used to decide responsibility was different. Precision about that difference is essential to criticism of the process.

What readers should demand from any policy

A well-designed process should explain, in writing and in ordinary language, what allegations fall within its scope; who decides the route; what counts as evidence; who receives the investigative record; when the parties can respond; how conflicts are handled; what anti-retaliation safeguards exist; and what a finding actually means. The policy’s promise of neutrality is tested in the details: who receives notice, what is redacted, which witnesses are available, and how a person appeals a mistake.

The 2024 hearing and the meaning of the finding

At the April 16 orientation, I was told the hearing would use more likely than not as its standard. The board had a complete report and specific alleged Student Code violations. On May 28 it found Luca not responsible. No ethical publication should rename that decision to make the story easier to tell. But neither should it inflate “not responsible” into a finding that nothing happened. Those are different kinds of statements, and responsible analysis preserves their difference.

Do not apply a later rule retroactively

UAlbany’s online policies have changed since 2022 and continue to change. A 2025 or 2026 webpage cannot automatically be treated as the controlling version for an alleged incident in 2022 or a hearing in April 2024. This site distinguishes historic policy from current informational guidance and links to the university’s policy archive where available. That protects readers against one of the easiest ways to get a legal chronology wrong: importing today’s language into yesterday’s decisions.

Policy as something I worked on, not merely criticized

After the Senate speech, I worked with student-government members on policy discussions and proposals. I understand that a related measure advanced and passed. I also worked with university personnel on changes to sexual misconduct procedures. Those are contributions I am proud of; the precise scope of each change requires the bill, vote, adopted revision and effective date. My participation should neither disappear from the record nor be inflated into the claim that I rewrote university policy on my own.

I did not approach those conversations because I believed a policy change could retroactively repair what had happened to me. I approached them because the gap between a rule on paper and a rule as implemented had become painfully clear. Policy is not a promise because it is written. It becomes a promise only when people can use it and institutions can explain it.

I did not intend to become a lesson in why these procedures needed to work. I went to them because I needed them to work. Any improvement that followed matters, but it does not make the cost necessary or redeem it after the fact. Reform should spare the next person a burden, not require the person who carried it to call the burden worthwhile.

Gratitude without turning anyone into evidence

I remain grateful to the people who helped me move through these years. My parents provided therapy access and steady support. Friends whose loyalty began long before Phi Alpha Delta continued to show up after the fraternity became difficult to inhabit. At UAlbany, Mackenzie Bachar later served as an advocate through another sexual misconduct matter and gave me Say My Name before I had to testify in Luca’s presence. Kelly Gorman worked with me on advocacy and operational and policy questions. Their help mattered in different ways.

I am also grateful to professors who made remaining at the university intellectually worthwhile—James Searl, Vesna Kuiken, Jeffrey Berman, Andrew Butt, Ashley Fox, and others. I do not list them as witnesses to events they did not witness. I thank them because education should remain more than the institution’s failures.

The careers that continued

In the public LinkedIn post cited in the source list, Tim Tzimas described his son Luca as having completed U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidates School at Quantico and as returning to Notre Dame Law School. The public post does not itself establish whether he currently holds a commission, his assigned unit, or any particular role within the Navy. The Marine Corps is a separate service branch. I include the information as a carefully attributed public professional update, not as proof of conduct in 2022 or proof that his later institutions reviewed this record.

Other people who were in or near the fraternity may also be pursuing law or public-service careers. I do not propose listing their institutions or treating proximity to the story as guilt. My question is harder and more useful: what responsibility do future lawyers, public servants, and leaders have to learn how group loyalty affects judgment? The point is not to chase a person’s career. It is to ask how professional ethics should operate before anyone has a title.

What the outcome does not erase

Luca’s denial remains part of the record. The university’s not-responsible finding remains part of the record. My medical care, contemporary reporting, correction of the timeline, the recorded fraternity discussion, the national fraternity’s actions, and the consequences I describe remain part of the record as well. Different elements answer different questions. The website’s purpose is not to turn every question into the same answer.

Four columns a careful reader keeps separate

1. Testimony: my firsthand description, including memories recorded later. 2. Documents: time-stamped images, ride records, hospital paperwork, written submissions, meeting recordings, and correspondence. 3. Competing accounts: statements by Luca and other witnesses, which must be identified as such. 4. Decisions: institutional conclusions under a stated policy and standard. The four categories overlap, but none can silently stand in for another.

This site deliberately omits medical record numbers, personal phone numbers, private addresses, images revealing another person’s confidential information, and unredacted student records. Some evidence remains privately held. Private retention is not a claim that the reader has independently examined it. Where I summarize a record not publicly posted, I say so.

I welcome fair disagreement with my conclusions. The more difficult challenge is to disagree accurately: cite the specific statement, distinguish a date from an estimate, name the governing policy, and avoid using personality or a rumored diagnosis as a substitute for reasoning. A record should survive even an unsympathetic reading. My task is not to make disagreement impossible. It is to make careless disagreement difficult.

A short research library

• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism — Interrupted Memories: Alcohol-Induced Blackouts. Explains fragmentary and complete alcohol-related memory gaps, without assuming what happened in any particular case. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/interrupted-memories-alcohol-induced-blackouts
• National Sexual Violence Resource Center — Role of Exam Findings in Case Investigation and Prosecution. Explains what a forensic examination can and cannot establish. https://nsvrc.org/sarts/toolkit/5-9/
• Smith & Freyd (2014) — Institutional Betrayal. Research on institutions’ responses to traumatic experiences. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25197837/
• Harsey & Freyd (2020) — Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender (DARVO). Evidence about how rhetorical reversals affect audiences, not a diagnosis of any individual here. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926771.2020.1774695
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — About Sexual Violence. National population-level prevalence data, not evidence about an individual complaint. https://www.cdc.gov/sexual-violence/about/
• UAlbany Title IX policies — the university’s current policy collection; consult historically effective versions for 2022 and 2024 decisions. https://www.albany.edu/title-IX/laws-policies-procedures
• University at Albany — Title IX Grievance and Sexual Violence Response Policy. Publicly available policy materials; text and amendments may have changed after the incident. https://www.albany.edu/risk-management-compliance/policy/title-ix-grievance
• New York State Police investigator emails, privately retained — October 3, 5, 11 and 12, 2022; December 29, 2022; January 3, 2023. These establish transmissions, attempts to fix inaccessible links and responses acknowledging only partial access. The January 3 email is the last written response located. No unredacted correspondence or third-party contact details are published.
• New York State records-access law and police guidance — Public Officers Law § 89 and New York State Police investigative-records guidance, for the limits of conclusions that can be drawn from an unavailable file.
• National Fraternity email / calls, privately retained — September 19 and September 28, 2023 correspondence; October 4 and November 15 committee calls; November 24 closure call. Described, not posted unredacted.
• University Student Affairs correspondence, privately retained — referral to Khatib and November 6, 2022 confirmation of outreach to nationals. Described, not posted unredacted.
• Student Conduct orientation and hearing transcripts, privately retained — April 16 and April 30, 2024. Described, not posted unredacted.
• Public LinkedIn post attributed to Tim Tzimas — later Marine Corps officer-candidate and law-school update. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tim-tzimas-9165921b7_usmc-marineofficer-leadership-activity-7493243803131142145-Lbma

Numbers in context

The CDC reports that more than one in five U.S. women have experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime in the national survey summary linked here. The figure is about population prevalence, not about whether this allegation is true. The NIAAA explains that intoxication can impair the formation of long-term memories without a person necessarily losing consciousness. The NSVRC explains why a forensic exam cannot be treated as a stand-alone verdict. These research findings illuminate the broader problem; none can identify who was in the bathroom on April 22, 2022.

What the private messages show

The preserved February-July 2022 conversation log contains contemporaneous exchanges about the Chili's meeting, coursework, continuing post-April contact, future course plans and my direct July 4 question about April 22. My account also places a telephone call with Luca shortly before that text. A message can establish that certain words were exchanged at a given date; it cannot reveal a person's internal motive, prove the contents of an unrecorded call or resolve the assault allegation by itself. The later emails with Investigator Dennie provide a separate kind of record: dated proof that I sent evidence links, followed up when delivery failed, and received acknowledgments of partial access. The last written reply I have located is dated January 3, 2023. My lack of notice about closure and my unsuccessful attempt to obtain a case file are part of my account; a formal records-search determination is not supplied here. This is why I quote sparingly and explain how each source bears on each claim.

Images of private messages, photographs of third parties, identifying phone numbers, the complete PDF, and sensitive medical records are not published with this preview. If a document is summarized rather than posted, it is labeled as privately retained. That is an editorial limit, not a claim that every reader has independently verified the evidence.

You do not have to know exactly what to call an experience to ask for help

This part of the site is for readers who recognize something of their own lives, friends trying to respond responsibly, and students navigating overlapping procedures. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not require anyone to take my account as evidence about their own situation. The point is to give people credible places to begin.

How to be useful when you are not sure what happened

Do not appoint yourself an investigator, a psychologist or a judge. Be precise about what you personally observed. Keep someone’s disclosures confidential to the extent the law and your role permit. Offer practical help, listen without demanding a perfect sequence, and avoid discussing a person’s diagnosis as a substitute for examining evidence. Support and due process are not mutually exclusive. One is not earned by abandoning the other.

If someone is in immediate danger, contact emergency services. For a non-emergency, a confidential sexual-assault advocate can explain options without requiring an immediate police report. If you are a student or employee, check whether the person you are speaking with has mandatory-reporting obligations before disclosing identifiable details.

WHY I AM MAKING THIS RECORD

I used to imagine accountability as something that would arrive in sequence: I would report what happened, records would be collected, questions would be asked, and someone entrusted with authority would explain the answer. I expected a process to mean that the essential question stayed in view. Instead I spent years learning the difference between an investigation and an explanation, between the authority to decide and the willingness to see what a decision leaves unresolved.

There is no court judgment or institutional finding in this record holding Luca Tzimas guilty of rape or stalking. The university found him not responsible in May 2024. He has denied sexually assaulting me and disputed that the tracker he acknowledged placing in my backpack constituted stalking. Those results and denials are part of this record. I will not omit them. But the absence of an official finding that recognizes what I experienced is why I am writing this. An institution’s decision is a real fact. It is not a replacement for my memory or the entire history that surrounded it.

I know what happened in that downstairs bathroom. I remember resisting Luca. I remember the choking, the slaps, the penetration without my consent, and his hands gripping my upper arms and upper thighs as I tried to get away. Afterward, I could see what looked like five finger-shaped bruises marking the places where I remember those hands. I showed the injuries to another person. They were documented. I will not pretend a photograph can identify an individual by the outline of a bruise, or that an institutional finding says what it does not say. But the marks were real. The pain was real. What I remember happened to me does not cease to exist because an institution did not hold him responsible.

I am stating this in my own name and without ambiguity: Luca Tzimas raped me. He is the man who raped me. I also maintain my account that Luca stalked me. That is my firsthand account and my conclusion, not a claim that a court convicted him. I believe Luca knows what happened. I cannot force an admission or narrate his private thoughts. I can say why I have spent years refusing to let an incomplete public account become the only account.

The violence I describe was not the end of what I experienced. There were timelines to correct, relationships to reconsider, institutions to navigate, and decisions whose consequences outlasted their explanations. I remained certain about the assault I experienced. The work of explaining it and documenting its aftermath kept expanding. I was trying to understand what happened while also learning how much of my life could change because I asked.

There are moments I would handle differently now. I would ask more questions, preserve some messages sooner, and distinguish more carefully between what someone told me and what they witnessed. I can acknowledge those choices without assuming responsibility for the violence I describe. Self-examination requires honesty about my decisions; it does not require me to claim control over someone else’s.

Nor do I believe every person who failed me shared the same motive. Some might have been frightened, loyal, misguided, uncertain, or simply unprepared to respond to a serious allegation. Some people showed courage. Others offered genuine support without pretending they had become jurors. My parents, advocates, friends and professors helped me continue building a life while I learned to live with what had happened. Their care matters too. A record devoted only to failure would be incomplete.

I feel a responsibility to women and girls, to survivors, and to friends who may one day be trusted with a story they do not know how to hear. I cannot promise an outcome. I can show the work: preserve the awkward detail, correct the mistaken time, distinguish testimony from corroboration, and keep asking what an institution’s decision actually answers. That is something another person can use even if her story is nothing like mine.

Being part of a community built around the law gives me an obligation to act on the principles we say we stand for. Integrity, fair process and service cannot matter only when they are easy to defend. For me, acting on them means preserving the record, correcting my own errors, naming the limits of what I can prove, and questioning how power was exercised—even when the questions reach people or institutions I once trusted. I do not need a professional title to take those commitments seriously. If our principles cannot guide us when loyalty becomes uncomfortable, we have reduced them to ceremony.

I do not ask a reader to replace the university’s decision with my words. I ask the reader to understand exactly what the university decided, exactly what it did not decide, and what I continue to say happened to me. I ask people who study law to practice it with humility. I ask institutions to make the protections they promise intelligible and real. I ask friends not to confuse loyalty with silence.

I once expected the truth to prevail because a responsible process would recognize it. I now understand the work that expectation leaves out: someone must preserve the record, notice what is missing, and insist that difficult questions receive intelligible answers. I still believe that work matters. I also want a life larger than the work this experience imposed on me. Finishing this account is part of making room for that life.

Luca Tzimas raped me. That is my testimony, stated in my own name. I have preserved the record, acknowledged its limits, and stated the outcome I dispute. I will keep holding myself to the precision I ask of others. I will also keep building a life with room for work, friendship, love, and joy. I have given this record years of my life. The rest of my life belongs to me.