"It's difficult to me to kind of grapple with that, that on one hand, this is supposed to be our success point, but nothing has really changed. At least not enough for me," Davis said. ||||| Updated June 28, 2018 at 7:11 p.m. 
 
 General Studies student Joel Davis was arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on charges of child pornography and attempting to sexually exploit children as young as two years old. 
 
 Davis spent years as a sexual assault prevention activist both on and off Columbia’s campus, helping to found Youth to End Sexual Violence and serving as the chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence. 
 
 After being arrested, Davis allegedly confessed to officers that he had sexually abused a thirteen-year-old boy in the past, and that he kept child pornography on his phone. 
 
 Davis was a columnist for Spectator in 2017, writing on topics including being a survivor of sexual assault (like most Spectator columnists, Davis was an outside contributor who was not a member of Spectator’s staff). In a 2014 op-ed in the Huffington Post, Davis condemned the sexual exploitation of children. 
 
 Justice Department officials said that over the course of several weeks, Davis exchanged text messages with undercover officers, repeatedly asking that one officer send Davis sexually explicit photos and videos of his nine-year-old daughters. 
 
 The Department’s criminal complaint also alleges that Davis described in detail the explicit sexual acts he intended to engage in with both the officer’s nine-year-old daughter and the two-year-old daughter of the officer’s girlfriend. 
 
 “Having started an organization that pushed for the end of sexual violence, Davis displayed the highest degree of hypocrisy by his alleged attempts to sexually exploit multiple minors,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr. said in a statement. 
 
 Davis and the Youth to End Sexual Violence did not immediately respond to Spectator’s requests for comment. He could face up to 70 years in prison. 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Davis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. In fact, the Nobel Committee does not publicize the list of nominees to either the media or the nominees themselves. 
 
 khadija.hussain@columbiaspectator.com | @ColumbiaSpec ||||| At General Studies, life experience—however disturbing or exceptional—is de rigueur. It is neither theoretical nor symbolic, but at the very core of what it means to be nontraditional. Thanks to its profound mission of bringing students to Columbia, often from uncertain and challenging circumstances, GS has come to epitomize a school where academia is possible for people regardless of their trials and tribulations. 
 
 But in its mix of good intent and cruel optimism, in its alchemy of authenticity, persistence, and intellectual sophistication, GS is a school in a transitional and oblivious environment. Like any university, Columbia contains a sprinkling of wealthy neophytes, raffish characters for Brooklyn grit, and a dash of people of color for unquestioned diversity. But unlike their CC/SEAS counterparts, most GS students matriculate after taking a break in their education, which can stretch anywhere from one year to several decades. I spent my own gap year working at the United Nations, and for the former Obama administration. When news broke that I was being considered for a Nobel Prize, I had a psychological breakdown—tormented by the recollection of my childhood sex abuse—and withdrew from Columbia. It was another year before I attended my first class. 
 
 Without having established any roots, I returned to Columbia unnerved. Those of us who have experienced such trials usually have gravitated toward people like us for support, validation, and collective identity, but because the indicators of trauma are invisible, we’re often forced to cope with its psychological shadow alone. But in my conversations at GS I felt at ease. There, trauma is consciously, unavoidably, the lingua franca. Deeply personal histories, ranging from familial instability to combat post-traumatic stress disorder, are commonplace, notwithstanding race, age, or gender. So it’s probably unsurprising that I found a group of students at GS with whom I’m comfortable being my whole self. 
 
 One of the first friends I made at Columbia came to GS after escaping a life of religious servitude. She left home, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to see her mother again, and made her way to the northern United States, where she took classes at a community college and lived out of her car. She was rejected by every college she applied to and was ready to give up until she met a GS rep at a recruiting event and decided to try Columbia. 
 
 The prospect of drawing lessons and evoking richer dialogues at Columbia writ large from experiences like this is a complicated notion. For young GSers like myself who have experienced trauma and are the same age as traditional students, the difficulty of straddling two environments is apparent. Although no academic contradiction really exists between traditional and nontraditional students, our life experience engenders an irreconcilable tension. Inevitably, behind wanting to have a regular college experience, is the fear, conscious or not, that we’re more stratified by our backgrounds than anything else. And within the mélange of Columbia undergraduates, you’ll find a generous but not overwhelming portion of these students trying to strike an ephemeral balance between being nontraditional and having a traditional experience. 
 
 I remember as my friend and I sat on the grass in front of Butler last year, listening to the thrum and chaos of Bacchanal, we both felt the same feeling of being woefully out of place. “Once you get exposed to a different reality and it becomes a part of you, you can’t just pretend like it doesn’t exist, or affects the way you think about everything,” she said. “Plus, seeing every experience I can’t relate to either as a product of this cult or a product of my [identities] (Latinx, first-gen, undocumented) is devastating. Even though I made it to Columbia, I’m still trying to rebuild my sense of self.” And that’s exactly where we exist, at the intersection of an imperishable reality and the lively intermingling of college life. “Did you hear that Michelle broke up with Brad? Fucking insane.” 
 
 When you come right down to it, fostering a vibrant, diverse community at Columbia has little to do with how students flourish in their respective schools, but everything to do with a commitment to creating opportunities for traditional and nontraditional students to share rich perspectives and insight. Until that time comes, know that we exist: a conglomeration of mostly invisible, self-sufficient, and inward-looking young people. In spite of no clear belonging—even those of us in GS don’t fit neatly into one clique—we’ve taken to supporting those like us, extending a hand and building an ethic where former sex slaves and cult escapees can take intellectual responsibility for one another. We know we’ll never fully understand each other, and loving one another can be its own kind of cruel optimism, but to live well and thrive at Columbia we need those consistent—if golden—moments to break down and ensure a growth that is as personal as it is inevitable. My life felt saved by the friends who did this, and my initial unhappiness at Columbia was redeemed. 
 
 Joel Davis is an ancient studies major in the School of General Studies, chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape, author of the upcoming novel Benevolence, and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Spotlit runs alternate Fridays. Follow him on Instagram at @supercoolkid212. 
 
 To respond to this column, or to submit an op-ed, contact opinion@columbiaspectator.com.
– His public push to end sexual violence against children was so significant it reportedly nabbed him a nomination for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Joel Davis' private actions couldn't have been more contradictory, say police. The 22-year-old Columbia University student, who started Youth to End Sexual Violence before becoming chairman of a group of more than 5,000 human rights organizations, was arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on charges of child pornography and attempting to sexually exploit children, reports the Columbia Spectator. Davis allegedly responded to a post left by an undercover FBI agent on a "fetish" website, per the Washington Post. In a series of text messages, he admitted to past sexual experiences with children as young as infants, including a 13-year-old boy he met in June through the Grindr app, police say. Showing "the highest degree of hypocrisy," Davis also tried to arrange meetings with children supposedly in the care of undercover agents, says the FBI's William F. Sweeney Jr. "As if this wasn't repulsive enough, Davis allegedly possessed and distributed utterly explicit images of innocent infants and toddlers being sexually abused by adults." US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman calls the development "as unfathomable as it is sickening" given that Davis has rubbed elbows with Angelina Jolie, served as a youth ambassador for the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, and is now leading the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence. Davis, who last year described being "tormented by the recollection of my childhood sex abuse" and spoke out about child rape in war zones in a 2014 Huffington Post op-ed, could face up to 70 years in prison.