northwesty, there are certainly things that your daughters can do to reduce their odds of being raped–don’t drink anything alcoholic, don’t accept soft drinks from someone you don’t know and haven’t watched carefully, don’t leave your drink unattended, don’t walk alone at night, in some places don’t walk alone during the day, don’t go to fraternity parties, don’t work in a university building unless someone known to them (and known to be safe) is in the room with them, don’t go back to a man’s dorm room, be careful about letting man enter her room, lock the doors when alone or sleeping, . . . . Self-defense instruction only helps if there has been so much instruction that the response becomes automatic. (Three weeks in phys ed class is not enough.) They might carry pepper spray. When you go to visit a campus, you might take a look at the fraction of young women who are carrying pepper spray.
However, there is nothing that your daughters can do that will keep them 100% safe. (Well, full-time bodyguard service might work, if you could afford it.). One of my friends was attacked when she walked from her kitchen door to her car–about 5 feet to the car, maybe 12 feet to the driver’s side of the car. This was in a small suburb, where such incidents were extremely rare.
In my era, the British universities were safer, to the very best of my belief. I would guess this is still the case, though I don’t really know.
There really is no good credible data that people can agree on. All the surveys have massive problems that severely undercut their credibility.
One thing that has made me, as a father of two college daughters, very skeptical of the 1 in 5 claims and (while concerned) overall comfortable letting my girls attend co-ed colleges rather than convent schools. Which is the fact that the data pretty consistently shows that the incidence rates for non-students of college age are a bit higher than the incidence rates for students. So my girls appear to be safer in college (despite rape culture and the on campus rape epidemic) than if they were not students. Hmmmm.
Even if the cited incidence rates can’t be 100% relied upon as hard facts, the relative rates between students and non-students are pretty consistent. But we never hear much about the non-student side, because those less resourced girls don’t have the benefit of federal oversight, big media coverage, big advocacy coming from campus groups, and lots of well-resourced college parents who hear all of the same.
Maybe the non-student situation requires more attention. Maybe the student situation has been over-hyped. My guess is both are true.
From 2014 USDOJ statistices: “The rate of rape and sexual assault was 1.2 times higher for nonstudents (7.6 per 1,000) than for students (6.1 per 1,000).”
Hanna, I think you would be correct in that assumption. I’m on the record as being a Laura Kipnis “fangirl” but really I think the atmosphere on colleges these days does a real disservice to young women and young men who for all of mankind have had to move through the ups and the down of the ritual of “finding a mate” How we ever got to a point where colleges administrators got required by the federal government to manage kids sex lives is beyond my comprehension. One in five women are raped in college…ummm no, that is such a ridiculous statement I cannot fathom how it even got put out there. Rape is pretty well defined at least in the world I live in and I will go to my grave not believing that ridiculous statistic. These entire past couple years have totally degraded the real survivors of rape. Sexual panic on campuses…more to the point. This statement resonated with me months ago and I hope with these upcoming changes some sanity returns to campuses.
What about the possibility there is less than one in a thousand chance a male student will be falsely accused? Did that number surprise anyone?
Of course, I have no idea of the validity of those numbers either. And it may be a misinterpretation. I am not mathey.
I’m just wondering if false accusations are uncommon when you all discuss Title IX. It is just interesting to me to consider how disadvantaged males actually have been, during the last few years under Title IX.
Here’s the problem with the DoJ numbers, northwesty: The assault has to be reported to turn up in the statistics.
While I don’t advocate sending your daughters to convent schools, I think it would be wrong to imagine that there is no danger, for a young woman who generally acts sensibly.
Perhaps some other posters on this thread are fortunate enough that they know of no one who has been raped. I certainly hear of quite a few cases at my university.
One way to get an idea of the actual figures is to go through the set of your acquaintances, and think about those you know well enough that they would tell you if they or someone close to them had been raped. In my part of the country, this would mean that they are extremely close friends or very close family members. Then look at the fraction of that set who have been raped. If you try to run this calculation over all of your acquaintances, you will almost certainly wind up underestimating, because many people just don’t tell.
I went through the Clery Crime log of my university, which is required to list only the most recent 60 days of reports to the police. Currently, it seems to be listing three months; but you can’t multiply by 4 to get an accurate number of reported incidents, because for half of that time, regular classes have not been in session, and the summer program is very small. In that period, there were 4 reported instances of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (labeled as penis/vagina), 2 of third-degree criminal sexual conduct (defined as penetration by object), and two of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct (which is categorized as sexual contact). Of these, 5 occurred in dorms, 1 somewhere else on campus, and 2 in the area right around the campus. There were also reports of stalking/intimidation, but I did not enumerate these. I will take a look at this again when classes have been in session for more than a month. (Please bear in mind that these are only the incidents reported to the police, and only from a limited period.)
Which is exactly why concerned parents should look at crime statistics if that is of high concern.I just looked and my undergraduate alma mater had 3 reports of forcible assault in an entire year 2016…but it was/is in the midwest in a town with a big state uni nearby so who knows. I’m sure it varies region to region, area to area, college to college. Maybe the midwest is “midwest nice” or maybe we are “made of sterner stuff”. Frankly I’m 60 and not one close woman friend has ever confided they were raped…and we’ve talked about it. Now interestingly, both my siblings and I do each know someone who was falsely accused…in all three cases the woman recanted because she had “bent the truth” to put it bluntly. I’ve written about my son’s friend in high school. So someone can take a microcosm of society and find whatever statistics they want. Regardless, even your statistics quant don’t equal 1 in 5 for rape nor 1 in 5 for rape even combined with sexual assault. There never was 1 in 5 rape per se…and that’s the problem.
“Here’s the problem with the DoJ numbers, northwesty: The assault has to be reported to turn up in the statistics.”
Not correct. The DOJ study I linked above is a survey commissioned by DOJ. It is not reported crime statistics. Take a look. It has data, for example, on how often assaults do not reported.
To my eyes, it is a much better survey than the 2015 AAU survey (which was reported in the press as confirming 1 in 5)primarily because of the response rates. AAU had self-selected response rates below 20% and that study’s authors note that there could be a huge self-selection bias in the reported data – those who had been assaulted being much more likely to respond than those who did not. The DOJ survey/study had response rates at 74% and higher.
The incidence levels are not in the same solar system as one in five. 6 assaults per 1,000 student women per year. 2 completed rapes per 1,000 student women per year.
But my key point is that the DOJ survey/study (whatever its deficiencies may be) reports that things are worse for non-students than students. Hard to see how the survey would have systematically under-reported student assaults or systematically over-reported non-student assaults.
If, in fact, campus is safer than off-campus then it really raises the possibility that the perception of the size of the campus problem may have a lot to do with how big the megaphone has been on the campus side vs. the non-campus side.
The other data point I take from DOJ – campus assaults in 2013 were half the rate of 1997 student assaults. You’d never get that from the press coverage either.
The DoJ numbers were based on a survey of 90,000 households, with “nearly 160,000 persons.” That’s not even a couple and one child, on average. It’s not even 2 people per household on average. I know that there are statistical estimators that make small numbers of respondents apparently sufficient, but I would not just take the results of that survey at face value.
However, suppose we go with the 80% of student victims not reporting the rape to the police. Then as an estimate, my university would already have had 20 instances of rape (with the penis/vagina definition) in one month of normal classes being in session. I don’t believe that we are an outlier in high numbers of incidents, relative to the student population. Actually, I think my university is safer than many.
Admittedly, this does not project to 1 in 5. However, it becomes somewhat larger if you add the penetration with object numbers, including the the projected number of non-reported incidents of that type.
I have not run the odds that I would know as many rape victims as I do know, based on the supposed fraction of women who are raped. But either I am living in a hotbed of crime–unbeknownst to me–or this situation is pretty bad.
Is momofthreeboys the only person who is so fortunate as not to know anyone who has been raped? And/or so unfortunate as to know of three men who have been falsely accused? Personally, I think your data is way skewed, momofthreeboys.
Not data by any means…merely anecdotal. There have been thousands of these investigative hearings if not multiple thousands since 2011. I think it is interestingly and certainly has given me insight to the other side of the coin so to speak…probably more insight than I ever wanted. I don’t know three…I know one and each sibling ( in other states) each know one. I have shared my story and that happened in a public high school. My sibs friends’ kids were in college. None of our kids just close friends’ kids.
If you have a problem with their statistical methodology from the above five phds please let us know what it is and who in your opinion has done a better study. 12,727 interviews were conducted for the CDC study. How big are the sample sizes from the studies you are referencing
momofthreeboys; I am so sorry your sons’ friend was falsely accused.
I am a mom of sons. None of my sons has been accused of rape or assault. I have friends with college age kids all across the country. No one has shared with me a false accusation of rape or assault, against their child or someone else’s child. People might not want to share this, so I tried to think of kids who might have left school unexpectedly. No luck.
I never studied statistics. Momofthreeboys reports she and two siblings in different geographic areas know young men falsely accused. If the 1 in 1000 is correct (and I have no idea if it is) is this a statistical anomaly? What are the chances?
QM: Thank you very much for doing that research. Since reports say first few months are most dangerous for first years, I would appreciate your updates.
alh That is what the men claim! Any criminal defense attorney will tell you that most of their clients are falsely accused. By those standards OJ was falsely accused of a double homicide. Most of the police officers who get charged with murder get off so does that mean they are falsely accused?
dad13 – I don’t think those CDC studies say anything about what happens to college students while at college. Those are lifetime stats I believe. Study says 38% of the assaults happen between age 18-24 (not just college students) but 40% occur prior to age 18.
So pre-college age is more dangerous than college age. That’s another hmmm to me. Just like how non-students of college age have lower risk than enrolled college students. Hmmmm.