My general comment right now is: focus, folks.
This isn’t whether there is SOME story or two out there, where some problem arose or some reaction is unpalatable to a poster or two. Or some one punishment at some college seems excessive or unfair or insufficient. I keep getting visions of Roseanne Roseannadanna.
Yes, there are some posters who are discounting the campus sex assault issue. (Whether or not they re-read their own words and see it.) It’s a form of reductio. As if the problem elsewhere makes it not matter on campus. As if one college’s historical mishandling means no case can be properly attended to. As if one case where “she” was either the aggressor or thought to be too compliant somehow makes all the rest of the cases…invalid. Or suspect.
What sort of thinking is that?
Marie has now recently referred twice to my comment, “Rape happens.” As if it is somehow offensive I felt the need to say it. As if it preaches to the choir. But the comments that swirl here don’t seem to acknowledge the campus issue. And the very real campus issues with sexual violence and etcetera…are the point.
I don’t have time to read your link - but here are the bullet points from the wire service from DOJ in short form - probably duplicated by the pdf handout you linked. Regardless I think the findings will hold that there are not statistically more rapes among college students than the general population now that the 1 in 5 statistics have been disproven as long as they are comparing apples to apples. It’s not a “college issue” it’s a “national issue” although if colleges want to take care of the lesser than rape, misdemeanor or lower equivalents I don’t have an intellectual problem with that and I’ve said that time and again. I think the important point is that non students are slightly more likely than student to experience rape or sexual assault and both of our links point that out. I’m not convinced that many colleges and universities have the budget or the depth and breath of experience to actually create a parallel adjudication system including investigation and prosecution to “try” felony offenses with legal fumbling and I don’t see the necessity of colleges trying felony offenses we already have a system for that and if it’s imperfect then fix that.
[quote[Other findings for the period 1995–2013 include—
Among college students and nonstudents, the offender was known to the victim in about 80 percent of rape and sexual assault victimizations.
Nonstudents (34 percent) were more likely than students (24 percent) to experience rape or sexual assault committed by an intimate partner. Among female student victims, half of victimizations were committed by friends or acquaintances.
For both students and nonstudents, about 70 percent of rape and sexual assault victimizations occurred either at the victim’s home or the home of another known person.
No statistically significant difference was detected in the percentage of student (47 percent) and nonstudent (40 percent) victims who perceived that the offender was drinking or using drugs.
Fewer than 1 in 5 female student (16 percent) and nonstudent (18 percent) victims of rape and sexual assault received assistance from a victim services agency.
Among females living in rural areas, the rate of rape and sexual assault was almost 2 times higher for nonstudents (8.8 per 1,000) than students (4.6 per 1,000).
[/quote]
Additionally, what is to say the the recollection of the poster is correct on the details or the generality? Or worse, and what is to say the poster did not remember just the opposite of what was stated? I think I will pass on recollections of anything.
I think the findings will hold that there are not statistically more rapes among college students than the general population…
So what? (Sorry to be blunt.) I’ve sat through all the back and forth on this thread about how much where, whose figures are more accurate, what attention should really paid to the problem in the outside world.
The colleges have to respond to the issues on campus. If there are 50x as many rapes in another part of town or another city, the colleges still have to respond.
(And now I suppose some will get right back to critiques of how some college responded this year or last year or X years ago. Or how some accuser made sorme sort of fuss. Or some accused has filed a lawsuit. Doesn’t change what T9 is very specifically about.)
It seems to me that it’s sensible to ask whether sexual assault on campus is a problem that is different from the broader prevalence of sexual assault in the society, and whether it needs to be addressed in ways that are different from the overall societal response. If you ask the question this way, it’s not so important to know what the relative rates are. It seems to me that the social setting of the typical college is quite different from the general social setting outside of college, making it more likely that there are unique elements of the problem. For example, on one hand, college campuses may be particularly fruitful places for sexual predators to operate. On the other hand, college campuses also feature a substantial amount of both drinking and sexual activity by inexperienced persons. In my judgment, the problems of sexual assault on campus do have some special elements, requiring special treatment.
A second question is whether there is enough sexual assault on campus to warrant strenuous measures to address the problem. In my opinion, strenuous measures would be justified by pretty low rates, so I’m not terribly concerned about whether 1 in 5 or 1 in 50 college women are sexually assaulted. To me, there is sufficient evidence that the numbers are substantial.
The third question, of course, is what, exactly, colleges should do about the problem. That’s harder. I think they should get the police involved in clear cases of criminal behavior, and have fair procedures for dealing with infractions that are short of criminal behavior (and for dealing with the consequences of criminal behavior). The challenge is creating a fair but workable balance of the interests of accusers and accused, while also developing strategies to prevent the problem in the first place.
“How many male lives are destroyed”? Just like one rape of a female or male is one too many, one male having his life destroyed is also one too many. it’s not an either/or for me…
Agree in terms of numbers and figures on campus rapes , doesn’t matter if it’s one in 5 or one in 50. It’s an issue and colleges and society need to deal with it.
How many would it have to be to justify strenuous measures to prevent such an unfair outcome? My answer here would be the same: not many, because I care a lot about fair treatment for the accused.
I mean, it might be that rape doesn’t happen as much as some people think, and that inappropriate accusations of rape don’t happen as much as some people think–but it appears to me that both of them happen, and are at enough risk of happening, that a fair system should take into account both possibilities. This is what our criminal law system does, over a much broader range of possible crimes.
I admit that I’m a stickler about some of this. I’m the kind of person who would prohibit all executions if there is even a small possibility that an innocent person could be executed. For lesser, but still serious, punishments, I want there to be a substantial burden before a person can be punished.
Note: I say “inappropriate” accusations of rape because I think using the term “false accusations” creates confusion, because it suggests cases in which the entire claim is made up out of whole cloth. With “inappropriate,” I’m trying to get at accusations that, while truthful, would not be considered to be rape by impartial adjudicators.
momofthreeboys, That entire study you’re referring to, (again, [here](http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf)), is a misleading piece of work, even independent of the unreliability of the underlying data.
It’s represented as comparing the rape risk of being in college, versus not being in college. You, because you didn’t read the study, are wrongly interpreting it that way. But in fact, it’s not answering the question of the effect of college attendance on rape rate at all. We want to know, does going to college in itself, independent of other factors, increase our daughters’ chance of being raped? Unfortunately, the study doesn’t tell us the answer. It doesn’t even try to compare college women to similar women not in college.
Also, that data is really noisy. Have a look at Figure 2. It shows that the rape rate for nonstudents of college age declined by a quarter from 2012 to 2013, from about 6 to 4.3. Oh come on, that didn’t happen. That’s noise because of a too-small sample size.
LOL!!! OK. Please post the link to your recollections of what you “counsel” has told you in various conversations, or studies/link quoting your son and his recollections of college life. While you are at it maybe you can post a link to proof of your recollections that you “can’t control yourself” once you get started (as others have labelled your predilections). Maybe your recollections weren’t entirely accurate and you aren’t as big a _____ as they claim you are. I am truly LOLing and you have made my day. Thanks!
Hunt there is much of that I have agreed with - I would add that I cannot separate alcohol behavior issues on college campuses from sexual misconduct - at least until there are some decent statistics that prove that the incident of rape is close to identical on and off college campuses and/or that age is not a factor.
[quote=momofthreeboys]
at least until there are some decent statistics that prove that the incident of rape is close to identical on and off college campuses and/or that age is not a factor.
[quote]
So you are discounting the DOJ study that CF pointed to which proves the incident of rape is identical on and off campus?
“We want to know, does going to college in itself, independent of other factors, increase our daughters’ chance of being raped?”
Do we agree that campus rape risks are considerably lower for the non-partying student? They do exist. Lifestyle is a risk factor on and off campus if anyone wants to talk about prevention. But, I don’t hear much of that at all. Just counting.
Hunt: I oppose capital punishment, but am okay with those convicted being locked up the rest of their days. I am okay with “advocates” working on their exoneration.
This doesn’t seem to me an apt comparison to rape, but I dropped out of law school. This stuff goes over my head. If we are going to take utmost care to protect the innocent man, will there ever be a rape conviction? There will obviously be some unconvicted rapists walking around campus together with their victims.
That is why I just try to think about prevention rather than punishment.
I also keep thinking about the fat man experiment. Is there sometimes a greater good in sacrificing one innocent? I don’t know the answer to that either. It’s possible I don’t even understand the point of the fat man.
