Senior Washed Up Girls at Yale

<p>I tried to find some stats to address the relative danger of college living arrangements.</p>

<p>YIKES!! Living in a sorority house makes a female 3 times more likely to be raped than living off campus. Dorm living makes her 1.4 times more likely to be raped. </p>

<p>[Sexual</a> Assault Statistics - Article - Campus Safety Magazine](<a href=“http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/Public-Safety/articles/2012/03/Sexual-Assault-Statistics-and-Myths.aspx]Sexual”>http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/Channel/Public-Safety/articles/2012/03/Sexual-Assault-Statistics-and-Myths.aspx)</p>

<p>One stat that may provide me a little comfort is that:

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<p>I would agree, and thank you for your restraint. </p>

<p>Since I am the parent of a recent grad who was – gasp! – a member of a fraternity (who bears no resemblance to the stereotypes so often thrown around here), I have less compunction in bringing it up. :)</p>

<p>Mini, if you know nothing about the cases of the individuals who withdrew/were expelled from Williams, how can you so confidently refer to them as “criminals”? They may well BE criminals, but how would you know? Given the gross incompetence exhibited by most of these internal panels, I have little confidence that they “got the right ones,” so to speak; i.e. the repeat offenders that we all agree seem to be responsible for a majority of rapes.</p>

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<p>Indeed. Then again, I’ve always felt it made much more sense to never limit your friendships solely to those of your own age group. </p>

<p>Not only does it allow for more social opportunities, but a wider pool of personal experiences to draw upon.</p>

<p>“Mini, if you know nothing about the cases of the individuals who withdrew/were expelled from Williams, how can you so confidently refer to them as “criminals”? They may well BE criminals, but how would you know?”</p>

<p>What I know is that the President of Williams stated (in February 2012), based on data that he believed (as a renowned social scientist), that there had been 44 people raped on campus in the previous year (including three men) - this is not counting sexual assaults, etc. Nor is it the number of rapes, because we don’t know how many people were raped more than once. And we do know that they expelled the students based on the rapes. </p>

<p>And, no, I know nothing about the individuals. Absolutely nothing. I trust the President of the college to know. That’s what he gets paid the big bucks for (or to cover it up, which he chose not to do.)</p>

<p>According to the Department of Justice, only one of of three perpetrators of rape are intoxicated at the time of their crime.</p>

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<p>I really don’t know what to think of this information. I admit to being a bit shocked about this statistic, having spent my junior and senior years (admittedly back in the dark ages) living in a sorority house. I felt much safer there, Ted Bundy notwithstanding, than I would have in the dorm and certainly more than in an apartment.</p>

<p>What would cause a girl to be more vulnerable in a sorority house?</p>

<p>^maybe socializing with fraternity members?</p>

<p>“What would cause a girl to be more vulnerable in a sorority house?”</p>

<p>Criminals who use their identity as fraternity members to commit crimes.</p>

<p>“Fraternity men have been identified as being more likely to perpetrate sexual assault or sexual aggression than nonfraternity men.”</p>

<p>The introduction to this paper provides a lot of data:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.academia.edu/577175/Bannon_R.S._Brosi_M.W._and_Foubert_J.D._Sorority_womens_and_fraternity_mens_rape_myth_acceptance_and_bystander_intervention_attitudes._Manuscript_submitted_for_publication[/url]”>http://www.academia.edu/577175/Bannon_R.S._Brosi_M.W._and_Foubert_J.D._Sorority_womens_and_fraternity_mens_rape_myth_acceptance_and_bystander_intervention_attitudes._Manuscript_submitted_for_publication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>That’s what I was going to respond, too.</p>

<p>But, being more serious, here are some speculations:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>A greater tendency than average to mix sexuality with binge drinking, and to focus their attention on alpha-male types who feel entitled to a sexual reward. NOT that sorority women are the only women to mix sexuality with binge drinking and lust after studly, high-prestige guys, or that all of them do it to the same extent, but that the average for non-sorority women (an average encompassing extremes in both directions) may be at a lower point than the average for sorority women (also encompassing a wide range of behavior).</p></li>
<li><p>A lack of private space for sex. I don’t think the data say that women are raped more often IN sorority houses; I suspect what happens is that women who live in sorority houses are assaulted someplace else. Part of that may be a function of not being able to control their own private space, so that when they are facing critical moments they are usually on someone else’s turf, and therefore perhaps more vulnerable to pressure.</p></li>
<li><p>Here is my most controversial speculation, so feel free to rip me for it: Perhaps a greater tendency towards ambivalence about sex than the average for non-sorority women (subject to all my caveats above about both averages reflecting a wide, wide range). I think, in the college date-rape kind of situation, there are two fairly effective ways to avoid being raped. The first is to avoid altogether getting into “dangerous” situations as discussed above, where maybe on average sorority women take more risks than non-sorority women. And the second is to consent, to want to have sex and to feel unambivalently pleased with yourself if you succeed. I have no way of knowing this, it’s just a guess, but perhaps more sorority women than non-sorority women, especially younger ones, are caught up in the double-standard game, where they want to be intensely sexually attractive and “popular” with men but are conflicted about actually having sex, afraid they will lose their mystique and social standing if they “give in” too easily. So they may be more likely to feel they have been coerced into sex than that they had sex because they wanted to.</p></li>
<li><p>Or, it may be as simple as the population of non-sorority women includes a greater percentage than with sorority women of (a) women who are not sexually active at all, and (b) women whose sexual activity is limited to other women. While neither of those factors exempt anyone from rape, they probably reduce the incidence of rape in college by someone you know, at least enough to create a statistically significant difference between the two populations.</p></li>
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<p>i agree JHS, also sorority social life often centers around which “brother” fraternity the girls socialize with so a good deal of their social activities deal with pairing up with the boys even for non-drinking events like community service etc. Non-sorority girls have to go “find” the boys sometimes successfully sometimes less succesfuly while they are delivered to the doorstep for sorority girls.</p>

<p>Those are some sobering statistics. I always assumed living in a sorority house provided more protection rather than less, but I can see the logic in thinking that exposure to fraternities and alcohol related parties would certainly tip the scales.</p>

<p>I love the *No Girl Left Behind * policy.</p>

<p>JHS - your speculations are interesting, but I think my suggestion more serious, and far more likely.</p>

<p>We usually say that if you want to avoid being the victim of a crime, it is a good strategy to avoid places where criminals congregate. Well, criminals congregate in fraternities. It has nothing per se to do with drinking - there’s lots of that everywhere. And it doesn’t mean that all fraternity members are criminals - FAR FROM IT. Most are not. (Just as the overwhelming majority of people in gang-infested neighborhoods are not criminals.) But it does mean fraternities do provide those FEW criminals with good cover. And, as already noted, most rapists are not intoxicated at the time of their crimes. </p>

<p>Again, that link I provided is loaded with good stuff related to this.</p>

<p>Rape is a crime of opportunity. Of course there are more rapes in fraternity houses, and since sorority girls are more likely to be in fraternity houses, they are falling victim much more frequently than girls who choose not to join. </p>

<p>But, sorority women are not responsible for being victims of rape. That would be like saying someone who went to a bar in an iffy neighborhood was responsible for being killed in a drive-by shooting, or responsible for getting car jacked. </p>

<p>this is the peculiar thing about this crime. In no other crime does so much speculation go on about the victim’s behavior.</p>

<p>Also, there is no such thing as “date rape.” there is only rape. Acquaintance rape, if you want to denote that the young man or woman who was victimized knew the criminal before the crime.</p>

<p>To me, the more disheartening aspect of your link, Mini, is the finding that only five percent of rape victims report. alarming, to say the least.</p>

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This is actually not true at my kid’s school, more specifically at their sorority. They have mixers with various fraternities. At those mixers, they have sisters who are sobers. Their job is to make sure no one gets too drunk and lose their composure (not good for their reputation). No one likes to be on duty, but they all take turns. If anyone has too much to drink, she is given a bottle of water as a signal. The fraternity which is hosting the mixer is required to have designated drivers to take the sisters back (or they rent a bus). My kid told me that one time they caught those drivers drinking, and that was the end of having mixers with the house. I actually felt more comfortable with my kid going to parties while she was in a sorority than when she was out on her own freshman year.</p>

<p>I emphatically agree with Mini that all fraternity men aren’t criminals. The majority of the men in my family, including a son, belong to fraternities like oldfort describes. The statistic 07Dad cites would not have been surprising to me in the 70s but I am finding it very disturbing to think it is the case today. I am assuming the statistics are credible since 07Dad is posting them. </p>

<p>I absolutely agree with JHS it has something to do with lack of private space. In my sorority house, in the 70s, the upper class women lived on the third floor and their fraternity boyfriends came up the balcony after the house mother was in bed. When those same young men moved off campus into apartments, my sisters reversed the procedure and went down the balcony into a waiting car. I hadn’t really considered it till now, but none of those women in relationships with fraternity men ever had sex in the fraternity house. I can not think of any woman in a serious relationship with a fraternity member, not the sweetheart, not a little sister, who ever had sex at the house. (ymmv - lots of campuses with lots of houses) However, for years I have been elaborating on poetgrl’s leave no girl behind advice and telling nieces and young cousins that if they want to have sex with a fraternity man to take him out of the house into an environment where they have more control. </p>

<p>After hearing right after rush my freshman year, about a pledge from the next door house, who “had sex with five or six guys on a pool table in the common room after she got way too sloppy drunk” I was really cautious. There were no words to even describe that event differently until some years later, but it was clear a few houses were very dangerous and my friends and I avoided them. So, in addition to consulting with the SWUGs about individual men, if 07Dad’s niece goes to a school with fraternity houses, she could ask which ones have bad reputations and avoid their parties.</p>

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<p>Emphatically agree. However, some environments are more risky for women - like fraternity houses. When I was in college it was clear to me women were getting raped in fraternity houses regularly, though that wasn’t how we described it. Some sisters and I spent the summer after freshman year touring honky-tonk bars. We drank way too much, flirted and danced with men we didn’t know and sometimes took them out to the parking lot or even home. I never felt unsafe and no one was raped. I guess those farmboys just weren’t criminals. Or maybe we just had more control of our environment: our cars, our homes. We also did spring breaks to the beach. We were never going upstairs in a beach house rented by a fraternity group. That felt too risky. This is all interesting to me to think about. Mini’s statement that criminals use fraternity houses for cover makes absolute sense to me.</p>

<p>Thank you for the link mini.</p>

<p>mini --I am trying to find the study that determined that only a third of rapists are intoxicated at the time of the rape. Is this the study? If so, can you point to anything directly related to rapes of women at college and the perpetrator’s alcohol use and/or level of alcohol consumption? </p>

<p>[Bureau</a> of Justice Statistics (BJS) - Alcohol and Crime: Data from 2002 to 2008](<a href=“Home | Bureau of Justice Statistics”>Home | Bureau of Justice Statistics)</p>

<p>I am trying to square this finding with the studies relating to rapes of women while attending college that find that the perpetrator has been using alcohol in close to 70% of the events.</p>

<p>I had thought to suggest to my niece that one way to lessen potential sexual assault problems was to limit her exposure to drinking guys.</p>

<p>“Mini’s statement that criminals use fraternity houses for cover makes absolute sense to me”</p>

<p>Maybe in some cases the illegal acts are committed by “criminals”, but I think in many cases they are regular guys who fall victim to lapse of judgement, and are supported by an environment of enablement, acceptance and even encouragement. They become “criminals” as a result of their crime, but were not originally.</p>

<p>gman – No one is a criminal until he commits a crime. However, once he performs the “illegal act” of forcing a woman to have sex, he is no longer a “regular guy” who just had a “lapse of judgement”. He is a criminal – no matter who he is.</p>

<p>gman11-- the really important thing to keep in mind is that this crime, contrary to popular myth, is not a “regular guy mistake.” It is a repeat offender crime. Very few young men in this day and age, or even back in the dinosaur days, have trouble distinguishing between a consenting woman and a drunk woman, and even fewer have trouble distinguishing between a woman who is consensually engaged in sex and one they are coercing physically.</p>

<p>the most recent studies show that most rapes are perpetrated by a very small number of young men. </p>

<p>Also, agree with Alh’s post, and with everyone who says most fraternity men are not rapists, but some houses harbor more criminal sexual offenders than others. Those houses do get reputations.</p>

<p>I am finding mini’s link really interesting, especially the part about fraternity culture. Some of the research used is from the 90s and I would have assumed the campus culture is different now than 20 years ago? Young men in college today have mothers (and fathers) who definitely came of age in a time of “rape myth” (from mini’s link) but who now have the language to teach their sons not to buy into those myths.</p>

<p>Well, when advising a student about the transition to college, do you simply not mention “risk factors?” Be they risky places, risky conduct of the student and risky conduct of those around the student, etc.?</p>

<p>I read the other day that Yale has had a urban rehabilitation effort in a part of town where there have now been several serious assaults on the Yale volunteers so Yale has pulled out. As a parent, do you keep quite about this or recommend the area as a place for cheap student housing without mentioning it because a student has a right to live where they want if they can rent a place and should not be assaulted?</p>