I don’t remember reading a specific number but I think everyone acknowledges that it is a very high percentage.
chris17mom, this is from a 2007 NIJ (National Insititute of Justice) survey that dealt with drugs and alcohol and sexual assault. Regardless of the fact that this study is 'oldish" the number is huge…really, really huge.
And here’s a general article.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/binge-drinking-rape-are-related/
Thanks, @alh, for the David Brooks article. This article by Laura Kipnis explains the ordeal that Brooks refers to.
http://laurakipnis.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/My-Title-IX-Inquisition-The-Chronicle-Review-.pdf
He said that he only fingered her and touched her breasts. He also said that he decided to leave the scene and got up to go before the bikers arrived. He also said that he didn’t run. There is pretty clear evidence based on where he was apprehended and the eye witnesses that the second two assertions are false. Are we giving him 1/3 to be generous or should we imagine that he might also have understated what he was doing before he decided to go home (due to the general lateness)?
@chris17mom: apologies for the late posting but I am only about 100 pages into the study. From what I’ve read so far and according to the study of the lapd and lasd recently posted, most forcible rape and attempted rape did not involve alcohol or other drugs. That said, given the drinking culture at colleges it would not surprise me if that trend were reversed.
You might be right demos - I “assumed” that the poster was interested in what was occurring on college campuses and with young adults since this is a college forum. I would not doubt that the statistics across the age spectrum in a major city might be different.
Yes that makes sense. Something like that happened to me when I was a teenager, and it would not have happened without alcohol. And while I don’t believe that it is ever a girl’s fault for being in that horribly vulnerable position, and I also don’t excuse the boys for making a terrible decision to do something awful while they are drunk, I do think that alcohol makes most people much stupider and more vulnerable to all sorts of bad things happening to them, including terrible car accidents, physical injuries, alcohol poisoning, embarrassing situations, etc. And yes, also being the victim or perpetrator of sexual assault or molestation.
The fact is that these are young people, still learning about how to handle their own sexuality and relationships with the opposite sex. Throwing these kids into a co-ed housing situation (dorms) is already a hotbed for sexual tension, frustrations, confusion, romantic dramas and sex. And adding alcohol into that scenario is like throwing fuel on the fire. Both sexes have feelings towards the others (and towards their own sex sometimes too), and as immature people, they aren’t necessarily able to instantly channel their emerging sexuality into nice, loving, functional relationships. Instead, they may just “hook-up,” having one-night-stands, which are not necessarily respectful or caring encounters, and feelings are often hurt. When these same kids are drunk and groping around in the dark, I can imagine that lines are frequently crossed, and boys and girls both make mistakes.
I feel really awful for any girl who is raped, but I also feel bad for boys who might be labeled sexual predators after one of these fuzzy nebulous encounters. What if both kids are blacked out and have no memory of the event at all? Is it rape then? How do we (or they) even know?
Since I started the college process my son last year, I haven’t understood why drinking at university was so accepted by the culture at large. Nearly every page of the Princeton Review mentions alcohol, with respect to how big of a “party school” each institution is. Apparently alcohol is just completely unavoidable in college. As a non-drinker (well, a very, very occasional drinker, let’s say), I was kind of shocked and scared by this, and was even tempted to send my son to a dry campus, but in the end that was not practical.
In my opinion, as long as you have young students of both sexes living in close proximity and drinking huge amounts of alcohol, you are going to have a lot of sexual improprieties of all kinds, initiated by both boys and girls. Some events are far worse and much more clear-cut than others, and I know there are some real predators out there, but I’d be willing to bet that the majority of these rapes involve alcohol and partying, confusion, mistakes and regret; and that the number of cold-blooded rapists lurking in bushes to grab a girl is a small percentage of the total. I think we need to have compassion for all our young people, and teach them how to respect themselves, their bodies, and other people and other peoples’ bodies.
The Brooks and Kipnis links are great reads, and remind me of a recent story with my DD. She recently had a class where some of the class didn’t like what the prof was saying and organized a drive to get him fired. DD said “he didn’t say anything bad at all”, and that they were simply discussing legitimate psychology issues in a psychology class. The Dean ended up telling the complaining kids to get lost, but what happens to a teacher like that if the students take a Title IX complaint route?
I agree. And it is really only the colleges themselves who can control this. They have the power to crack down on underage drinking on their campuses, or decide to turn a blind eye which which appears to be de rigueur these days.
I think the “Dear Colleague” letter is basically the DOE sticking it to college administrators and saying you created this mayhem so you can adjudicate the fall out and help clean up the mess.
I’ve tried to read articles about the booze question. The numbers aren’t consistent, but I’d say that the consensus seems to be that slightly fewer than half of the young women who were sexually assaulted were drunk and roughly two thirds of the male perpetrators were. (There isn’t enough data about male rape to estimate–at least none that I’ve seen.)
Now, if you change that to if they’d had ANYTHING alcoholic to drink, the numbers are higher.
Yes - a “fuzzy encounter” is still rape if one party is blacked out and doesn’t remember. In fact, that can be the crux of what makes it rape. It is very unlikely, though, that a guy will be found to have violated a girl while HE was blacked out. I think if bother people were blacked out it would make for a pretty tame evening unless some joker had a sharpie. Unfortunately, many of thee types of incidences come to light in the aftermath through shared photos and videos that were taken of the victim being violated while she was unconscious. Amy Schumer addresses that in her spot on Friday Night Lights spoof. “What if I only take a video on my phone? Is that OK?” I understand now that many young people seem to not know the boundaries and I guess many adults don’t either. But it is the job of young people to learn the boundaries before they go out and start testing them.
According to the USDOE, the number of officially reported on campus “forcible sex offenses” had increases in 9 of the most recent 12 years, with a total increase by 126% between 2001 and 2013 (no numbers beyond 2013 are available).
According to the USDOJ, the rate or sexual assault among students aged 18-24 had decreases in 7 of most recent 12 years, with a total decrease by 50% between 2001 and 2013 (no numbers beyond 2013 are available).
Both survey methods are showing a trend over what I’d call a long period of time, yet the trends are in opposite directions, so both trends cannot be accurate for the overall population. I do not consider either source a reliable indicator of whether the rate of sexual assault is increasing or decreasing because both methods are including only a small sample of incidents, with a biased selection.
For example, by some estimates as few as 5% of sexual assaults are officially reported. If campuses made steps to increase reporting of incidents and gradually got the number of reported incidents to increase from 5% to 10% between 2001 and 2013, then we’d expect to see the number of reported incidents as listed in the USDOE numbers gradually increase over time, even if the number of actual sexual assaults remained unchanged. Similarly the USDOJ uses unique methods such as phone calls and interviews using the term “rape” that result in a small fraction of the prevalence measured in more anonymous methods, such as written/web surveys. With such a small portion of the incidents included, the USDOJ numbers are also especially sensitive to measuring other trends over time that impact the rate of reporting incidents to USDOJ interviewers, rather than the overall number of sexual assaults. For example, the portion of households removing shared household land lines and instead only using cell phones may have gradually changed over the past 12 years, such that interviewers are more often depending on a household representative to report whether their student at college has been a “rape” victim during the past 12 months rather than the victim (hypothetical example, not certain of methodology details).
If I was really interested in looking into whether the trend was increasing or decreasing, I’d focus on methods that included a larger portion of the incidents. However, I think the more important concern is the number of incidents is at present is too high, regardless of whether the trend is up or down.
I see this complaint mentioned pretty often but I am not sure I understand why people think that. Don’t most (all?) colleges have policies against underage drinking? I know that where my kids go to school the ones who are underage drink in their dorm rooms and keep the door closed when they are pre-gaming for a night out. Would parents prefer unannounced spot checks of rooms at night? I would guess that most underage drinking (outside of pre-gaming) takes place off campus in frat houses, bars (fake IDs) and apartments.
One instance where I can see schools/police turning a blind eye to drinking is at football tailgates, etc. I suppose the authorities could walk around asking for IDs, but I am not sure of the legalities of that.
As a non-drinker who got into way too many stupid situations while drunk in college I am all for reducing the underage drinking epidemic. I am not sure, however, how to go about doing that. Does anyone have any creative suggestions?
I think everyone is in agreement that if alcohol was taken out of the equation there would be a substantial decline in the number of rapes and sexual assaults on college campuses. The harder question to answer is why colleges aren’t taking steps to control underage drinking. Is it because they fear their application numbers will suffer? Is it because it is just too difficult or expensive of an undertaking to police drinking on campus?
How do the colleges benefit from all this underage drinking? There must be some upside or it would not continue, especially in view of the added burden of these Title IX Claims.
My understanding of the term “blacked out” as it applies to alcohol is that the person is conscious and functioning, but has stopped forming memories. So you can’t tell if a person is blacked out until later; it’s a retrospective term. A blacked out person could rape or be raped but they wouldn’t remember it later.
I totally agree
Having policies against underage drinking and enforcing them are 2 different things @TV4caster. I think the colleges do an abysmal job of enforcing these policies. It should not matter where they got drunk, if they are on campus intoxicated and they are underage there should be consequences.
I am well aware that it is “easier said than done” but if reducing alcohol consumption is one “sure” way of bringing down the rape and sexual assault numbers, then that is where I would focus my efforts.
@HarvestMoon1 I hadn’t thought of that aspect of it. I was thinking more of enforcement with regards to during a drinking episode. I hadn’t thought about the punitive or afterwards aspect of drinking. That is a good point. I wonder if that would make a difference. I can personally say that it was getting busted for drinking a couple of times that got me started with thinking that I was drinking too much. I would go so far as to say that it started the process where I gave up drinking 16 years ago this month. Hmmm…maybe they should bust as many as possible when they are on campus (and off campus, with regular officers, like my arrest was).
Edited to add: with me it really was the education about drinking that got me started on my path. So a combination of both education and punishment might be very effective.
I will have to do some searching or maybe @fallenchemist knows if the upperclassman basketball player who provided the daiquiris and fake ID to the HS recruit suffered any consequences. Certainly the ensuing activities would have been unlikely to have happened had the young woman not been provided with alcohol by her team chaperone.
80 or 90 percent of college males drink? Around 50 percent binge drink? 5 to 10 percent of college males commit sexual assaults?
The vast majority of guys who drink do not commit sexual assaults.
I think college students drink too much…Just saying…