A New Study on campus rape and the one in five number

Parents Forum
481

True, in Michigan it is a misdemeanor and requires force or coercion to be charged with criminal behavior. One could still be charged with jail time or a fine, but I imagine judges use jail time for those cases that involve mental impairment or alcohol or drug incapacitation, under age children etc. without any kind of penetration.

So technically if someone goosed you as you walked the quad you could technically maybe charge the person, but I can’t imagine a policing or justice system wasting time and taxpayer dollars on a groping charge. And if you were walking and the person who goosed you was walking the addition of having to prove force or coercion would be very difficult. I could see the police giving the person a stern lecture and I think this is the perfect case where a college could do some of that ed-u-ma-ca-tion. That same person who was goosed might have been terribly offended and answer in the affirmative if ever asked on a survey if they were assaulted (because they might associate being goosed with the word assault in their mind.)

482

Ohiodad, someone upthread said that women who were victims of unwanted fondling would say they were raped, either on this Syracuse survey or elsewhere. And someone said that unwanted fondling was rape. I say, rape requires penetration. That’s true in every state, and it is also the standard used in the Syracuse survey we’ve been discussing- the survey reported rape, attempted rape and nothing else. Not fondling.

If some strange guy walked up right now and fondled your junk, that would be a crime. But it would not be the crime of rape.

483

@ohiodad51, lol. The title of the thread does not say 1 in 5 college freshman are raped.

484

Considering I am sitting behind my desk pretending to work right now that would scare the bejesus out of me, but yeah, I agree.

Such conduct would fit the definition of proscribed conduct in pretty much every disciplinary policy we have been discussing. As I keep saying, I think things get messy when we try and apply statutory definitions to conduct in the context of college disciplinary codes.

485

This is becoming bizarre. What point are you trying to make, dstark? The article does in fact say,

Did you not read it? You asked where does it say that? There it is! Are you saying the HuffPo got it wrong? What are you trying to say?

486

@dstark, what is your point in repeating this? Do you think that somebody on this thread, or elsewhere, thinks that women are not sexually assaulted?

Has anybody said that sexual assault, including sexual assault on campus, isn’t a problem, or that nothing should be done about it?

And would it annoy you if, every few pages, somebody posted that “Men are falsely accused of sexual assault?”

487

Rape is not the same as attempted rape, Bay.

488

@dietz199: I’ve already pointed out the irony:
He says that he (and other parents) won’t send their D to a high-rape-rate school. But he (and probably other parents) seem to think that any high rape numbers are bogus. Which means that he’d still send his D to a high-rape-rate school even if the real rape rate is indeed extremely high.

489

Actually, @Hunt, there is a thread on men falsely accused of rape.

Bay, read what you wrote earlier.

Some of you exaggerate findings and then complain about your exaggerations. :slight_smile:

It’s implied the sexual assault issue is not important. Both by using strawman arguments and by using phony solutions the issue of sexual assault is diminished.

Gotta go…

490

I think this is an unfair slam. You are implying, apparently, that skepticism about a particular study with high rates means that the person would reject any study with high rates. So would it be fair for me to say that you will believe any study with high rates, no matter how defective the methodology?

I read statistics all the time that don’t pass the initial smell test to me. Sometimes, I find out that I was wrong, but lots of times, there really is something wrong with the statistics.

Note: if it’s true that most (many? a large percentage of?) rapes are carried out by serial predators, couldn’t this result in some colleges having much, much higher rates than others if they happen to have a few more of these predators?

491

@Ohiodad51, re #1, um no, some girls may not consider violent forceable penetration to be rape (if, for instance, it isn’t by a stranger or she wasn’t 100% against it).

492

“He says that he (and other parents) won’t send their D to a high-rape-rate school. But he (and probably other parents) seem to think that any high rape numbers are bogus. Which means that he’d still send his D to a high-rape-rate school even if the real rape rate is indeed extremely high.”

My real point is this. I would expect that most schools have pretty similar rates of incidence. So if 12.3% of freshman female students are raped at Syracuse, then you’d probably have similar rates at many/most other schools too.

If 12% of our daughters were actually being RAPED at college during freshman year (not attempted rape; not unwanted touching; but actual completed RAPE), I doubt that many of today’s heli parents would send their girls to co-ed colleges. How could you in good conscience? I know my daughters would be going to all-girls schools, and I’m guessing many of yours would too.

12% actual rape in one year is a rape factory, not a college. Triple the rate that is reported in maximum security prisons. This study also says that 15% of our daughters have been actually RAPED before getting to college. So our own homes and high schools are rape factories too.

I don’t believe that either. Especially since overall crime stats and overall rape stats show all time lows. It just doesn’t add up.

493

I don’t have a daughter, but if I believed that that many young women were being subjected to forcible rape at the exploded rates being tossed around here and there, I would keep a daughter home until I felt confident she could navigate the drinking and partying scene and was mature enough to deal with her sexuality.

Face it, if our politicians and media were spewing story after story and headline after headline (and I’m stealing this analogy from somewhere I can’t remember) that we as a country had a problem with ants, I guarantee you the country would think we had a problem with ants.

494

@purpletitan, is there some percentage less than “100% against” that means there is no consent to a sex act? Does that vary by the person/circumstance, what? Is saying “I’m not sure, oh go ahead” evidence of lack of consent?

495

@northwesty I think a lot of your posts bring up some very good points and more than anything I appreciate your civility on these more contentious threads. But the above post caught my attention.

Do you really think that women (or men for that matter) would deprive our daughters of the opportunities offered by some of the best schools in the country because data suggests that some men are behaving badly? I think we are being underestimated here. Our daughters have earned the right to attend any school to which they have received an acceptance letter. What message would my H and I be sending to our D if we suggested that she decline attending her first choice school because of those statistics?

Sure, things are pretty tough for a lot of women on college campuses today. Do H and I fear for our D? Yes we do. Have H and I educated her to the extent that she has some fear herself? Yes, and that is just the unfortunate reality of what our D’s face in 2015 as they head off to college.

496

This is certainly true, but is it relevant to this discussion? If the issue is womens’ risk of being raped on college campuses, shouldn’t we include the number of women towards whom rape was attempted, whether it was completed or not? According to the HuffPo article, men attempted to rape 20% of the women on campus, although only 12% were completed. Does that make you feel safer than if all attempts against the 20% were completed?

497

@Ohiodad51, there’s lots of gray and note that the Brown survey questions did not ask about consent (OK, we can assume that sex under threat is almost certainly not consensual, but someone could feel taken advantage of under the influence of alcohol and even forced in to sex (say with arms pinned) without being 100% against it.

@Hunt, there’s been more than one survey mentioned in this thread. The rape and attempted rape numbers of all of them (besides the one outlier) are in the ballbark of each other. @Northwesty embraces the outlier and simply doesn’t believe the other studies.

So if 12% of girls are being raped but most parents (like you) don’t believe that number, they would still send their D to college. I don’t see the inconsistency here. BTW, the number of rapes in max secuirty prisons is almost certainly underreported as well. The number of rapes out in society is definitely severely underreported.

498

I’m not implying, I’m saying that the posters in this thread who reject the Syracuse study ARE rejecting any study with high rates.

And my point is, that’s exactly what we are seeing. Have a look at Data10’s excellent post #301 again.

Numbers for rape only:

Princeton, all years:
Vaginal without consent – 15.9%
Oral without consent – 12.3%
Anal without consent – 3.3%

Erie County Households – First year, Multiple colleges
Incapacitated “Rape” First Year – 12.1%

**National Institute of Justice/b – Mixed years, Force or incapacitation IS required, Multiple colleges
Forced Oral or Penetration – 4.1%
Incapacitated Oral or Penetration – 11.1%
Either Forced or Incapacitated – 13.7%

SUNY Geneseo – Mixed years, Data available for both forced and unforced
Physically forced or incapacitated oral or penetration – 10.0%

Oregon – Mixed years, Force or incapacitation is NOT required (“without consent”)
Vaginal or anal penetration – ~15% seniors, ~6% sophomores
Oral or penetration – ~18% seniors, ~7% sophomores

MIT – Mixed years, “Force, physical threat, or incapacitation” IS required
Oral – 3%
Sexual Penetration – 6%

Given that we know, or at least strongly suspect, that rape risk is much higher in the freshman year, the Syracuse numbers fit right in here. They’re on the high side, but the Princeton numbers are higher and so are the Erie County numbers. So if you reject the Syracuse numbers as too high, you’re rejecting all these studies as well. It’s not just one study. It’s seven studies, eight if you count Cal Poly.

How would parents know if their daughters were raped? If I had been raped in college, my parents would never have known. Do you have evidence that most women who are raped tell their parents? I’m pretty sure I can dredge up evidence that they don’t.

499

“Do you really think that women (or men for that matter) would deprive our daughters of the opportunities offered by some of the best schools in the country because data suggests that some men are behaving badly?”

I’m being totally honest as a Dad. There is absolutely no way in the world that I would send my daughter to any location that really posed a 12% risk of being raped in the next year. Sorry Harvard and Princeton, my kid is going to Smith or Wellesley. Sorry Rwanda, my kid will be doing semester abroad in Italy.

Would you let your kid get on an airplane if they told you there was a 12% chance of it crashing? Of course you wouldn’t. You would be a horrible parent if you did.

But all of you good parents do keep letting your daughters go to Harvard, Princeton, Syracuse, wherever. Which proves to me that none of you believe that those stats are anywhere close to being real.

Rightly or wrongly, I don’t believe the Syracuse numbers for a second. And neither do other parents, based on the colleges they pick and pay for for their daughters.

500

@Cardinal Fang I quoted the actual wording of the MIT survey a few pages ago and the data in that survey does not include only “force, physical threat, or incapacitation” like you said (at least not that I can find). I would also like to point out that I would not lump all of those numbers together as being very similar. Princeton at 28% for vaginal and oral rapes is 3 times the 9% combined MIT total for the exact same offenses.