This is a question on which I am utterly unqualified to offer an opinion. My sex life at college was zero; my sex with women at grad school was not mainly (ahem) at my instigation; and all my boyfriends were off-campus. I knew of no alleged rapes when I was at either place; and have … Continue reading Just How Common Is Campus Rape?
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown A reader writes: I have been involved in student affairs at a college campus in some capacity for over twenty years. I have some, not a lot of, experience with sexual assault investigations. Police should always be notified, and it is their job to conduct investigations according to their established procedures. … Continue reading What Can Prevent Campus Rape? Ctd
by Elizabeth Nolan Brown Judith Levine published a beautiful piece this week on how “to stop campus rape,” an issue that’s recently been getting attention from far outside its usual feminist bounds. In Congress, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and a bipartisan team have been trying to pass a federal Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA) which would, among other things, … Continue reading What Can Prevent Campus Rape?
Annie Lowrey floats the idea: According to government research, every year, 97,000 students are “victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape,” with alcohol consumption having a profound effect on perpetrators’ behavior. … [T]here is some evidence that young people tend to substitute pot for alcohol. They either burn one down or chug one down; more pot means less beer. And there’s also … Continue reading Get High, Lower Rape?
by Dish Staff Several more readers open up: To echo the sentiments of those before me, thank you so much for continuing this discussion. It has been one year since my rape. I have made a conscious decision not to report the incident and I don’t regret that decision for a minute. I was 100% sober … Continue reading Would You Report Your Rape? Ctd
by Michelle Dean At the New Yorker, Harvard law professor Jeannie Suk writes that it’s getting harder to teach the law of rape on campus. She describes a collision course between her desire to teach the hard cases – ones where the parameters of consent may be tested – and the sensitivities of students. Her list of the … Continue reading Talking About The Law Of Rape
by Dish Staff The personal thread takes a new direction: Thank you so much for continuing the discussion on rape. My rape story is a little different. I never felt a tremendous weight of shame, but rather anger that some jerk could think it was okay to do that to me. And anger at the ways … Continue reading Would You Report Your Rape? Ctd
by Dish Staff Rape on college campuses is undoubtedly a real and serious problem, but as Michael Brendan Dougherty reminds us, it pales in comparison to rape in prisons, where victims get no publicity, no sympathy, and no justice. Hell, we even joke about it, even in children’s cartoons (as seen above): In prison, men may become the … Continue reading That Other Rape Crisis
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, new data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics suggest that college women are actually less likely than their non-student peers to become victims of sexual assault: The report estimates that 6.1 of every 1000 college students are raped or sexually assaulted every year; assault is slightly more common among college-age nonstudents (7.6 … Continue reading A More Complex Picture Of College Rape
As several commentators noted when the UVA rape story broke (and before it unraveled), the campus rape reporting system mandated under Title IX clearly isn’t working properly, as universities tend to prioritize covering their own asses over ensuring that charges are handled justly. As UVA is hardly the first university to make a mess of this process, … Continue reading Why Should Colleges Adjudicate Rape Cases?
