Four students at North Carolina State University have been met with both support and controversy for working to produce a nail polish that lets women test their drinks for date-rape drugs.

Tyler Confrey-Maloney, Stephen Gray, Ankesh Madan and Tasso Von Windheim have gotten press in recent weeks — from a BuzzFeed article to a Good Morning America segment — for their startup company, Undercover Colors. The company’s first product, not yet released, will be a nail polish that changes color when it comes in contact with Rohypnol, Xanax, GHB and other date-rape drugs.

“With our nail polish, any woman will be empowered to discreetly ensure her safety by simply stirring her drink with her finger. If her nail polish changes color, she’ll know that something is wrong,” the company’s Facebook page explains.

But the invention has led to controversy and conversations about rape culture on multiple media platforms.

The liberal blog ThinkProgress published an article saying that anti-rape activists “believe innovations like anti-rape nail polish are well-meaning but ultimately misguided.” According to the article, products like this nail polish actually reinforce rape culture in two ways: by putting the burden of prevention on the potential victim and by controlling women’s behavior.

“As a woman, I’m told not to go out alone at night, to watch my drink, to do all of these things. That way, rape isn’t just controlling me while I’m actually being assaulted — it controls me 24/7 because it limits my behavior. Solutions like these actually just recreate that,” Rebecca Nagle, co-founder of the activist group FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, said on the blog.

But Confrey-Maloney indicated in a post on the company’s Facebook page that reactions to their product had been encouraging. “Thank you so much for the positive response and interest in Undercover Colors,” he wrote. “We could not be more thrilled with the supportive feedback we’ve received so far!”

The founders of Undercover Colors and their social media director did not respond to The Daily Orange’s multiple requests for interviews.

The four co-founders are now seeking donations on their website to speed up the research and development process and put their product on shelves. In an Aug. 28 post on their Facebook page, the group wrote that they are $5,000 away from being able to hire another chemist.

In an interview with Higher Education Works, an organization that advocates for higher education in North Carolina, Madan explained how the undergraduates became entrepreneurs.

He said he and his co-founders met through their university’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program and found time to develop the product as students through “long hours, late nights,” and integrating Undercover Colors work with class assignments.

He said the co-founders were thinking of big issues in society when they came up with the idea for a nail polish that can prevent date rape.

“All of us have been close to someone who has been through the terrible experience, and we began to focus on preventive solutions, especially those that could be integrated into products that women already use,” he said.

The group has won funding from various entrepreneurship showcases and competitions: at a contest held by North Carolina State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative they won $11,250, and they were finalists at the K50 Startup Showcase, where they raised $100,000 from an investor who saw their product demo.

As both encouragement and criticism continue to pour in, the co-founders want to make their mission clear. They say their goal is not to make victims responsible but to make rapists think twice.

“Through this nail polish and similar technologies, we hope to make potential perpetrators afraid to spike a woman’s drink because there’s now a risk that they can get caught,” the company wrote on their Facebook page. “In effect, we want to shift the fear from the victims to the perpetrators.”

Published on September 4, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu