<p>Well said.</p>
<p>This is on thread:</p>
<p>I think we can stop the guess work - at least for the time being. Amherst’s admission rate has gone up this year - about three quarters of a percent over last year.
<a href=“2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;
<p>This is uber thread:
Boysintheband wrote:
</p>
<p>I’m not sure what your connection is with the school, but your characterization that Amherst women have sex in order to “look cool” whereas Amherst men have sex because they get drunk, is odious and perhaps says more about the state of play between the sexes at Amherst than you intended.</p>
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<p>Mini can probably defend her position better than I can, but I don’t think she meant that Amherst men were jumping out from behind trees and dragging sober women, like cave men, behind bushes to be raped. Just to be clear about certain “incontrovertible” facts regarding basic human physiology: a woman <em>can</em> be raped even while completely passed out in a dormitory. A man, even when drunk, can still commit rape.</p>
<p>“If a rape occurs, you go to the police and report a crime. Don’t look for some sugarcoated procedure run by a college to make it easy or anonymous for you. It’s serious business.”</p>
<p>I agree. For a rape to occur, there has to be a rapist. Rapists are criminals. According to Amherst, 5% of Amherst women experienced at least one rape last year. That is a statistically significantly higher rate than other NESCAC schools (higher than Williams, thought not by much, which had 44 women raped, and expelled five criminals.) I do NOT believe most Amherst men are rapists, and I don’t believe that most Amherst women are liars. I do believe (as the national data seem to indicate) that a majority of rapists do so more than once, and that there is a small but statistically significant criminal element on the Amherst campus (as there is at Williams). </p>
<p>And, yes, rapes should be reported to the police, if only because it provides leverage for the student to actually access services from the college.</p>
<p>there is Swarthmore, which Mini is loathe to criticize for anything. Hard to know how many, as Mini likes to put it, rapists are running rampant, without consequences, on the Swarthmore campus in light of this:</p>
<p>[Swarthmore</a> College Allegedly Underreported Sexual Assaults, Dissuaded Victims From Coming Forward | ThinkProgress](<a href=“http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/29/1933521/swarthmore-college-rape-complaint/]Swarthmore”>http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/29/1933521/swarthmore-college-rape-complaint/)</p>
<p>If this had happened at Amherst or Williams, Mini would have posted about 50 times about how this “proved” Swarthmore was a magnet for sexual abuse and how the administration didn’t care. It seems like we don’t know how bad the problem is there, due to underreporting. To the extent there may be fewer instances of reported rape at Swarthmore (and there may or may not be), how could those numbers even be trusted? Note the conspicuous radio silence, however, because in Mini’s mind, Swarthmore can do no wrong, and anything negative regarding the culture at Williams or Amherst just confirms his pre-existing views of those institutions. </p>
<p>[By the way, I don’t think that sexual assault is an epidemic at Swarthmore or Amherst, at least not any more than it is at any college or university … this is a college problem, not necessarily an Amherst, or Williams, or Swarthmore, or University of North Carolina problem … the issue of sexual assault at colleges and universities is not institution-specific. Unfortunately, the sexual abuse and assault of women is an enormous society-wide issue – just look at the percentage of women, nationally, who are victimized – which is exacerbated by large numbers of barely-supervised young people drinking a lot of alcohol, anywhere. The vast, overwhelming majority of college men would not commit such a crime. But some non-negligible percentage of men, period, will on virtually any college or university campus, or in any other setting. Rather than trying to unfairly demonize one institution as a haven for rapists, we should be focused on how to address this problem, globally, on EVERY campus].</p>
<p>A quick Google search for “Dartmouth sexual assaults” is also eye-opening: [Dartmouth</a> College Threatens To Discipline Students For Protesting Sexual Assault | ThinkProgress](<a href=“http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/27/1930821/dartmouth-board-of-trustees-chair-equates-protests-with-rape-threats/?mobile=nc]Dartmouth”>http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/04/27/1930821/dartmouth-board-of-trustees-chair-equates-protests-with-rape-threats/?mobile=nc)</p>
<p>It seems that addressing sexual assault has become a major topic for discussion over the past year, at a number of colleges. We can talk about whether it’s specific to colleges in the rural Northeast because there isn’t anything to do other than drink (but it clearly isn’t) and we can talk about whether something about Amherst or Dartmouth or UNC has created an epidemic of rape, but then we would be ignoring the larger fact that many people don’t seem to want to admit: Rape happens on college campuses everywhere. </p>
<p>After Angie Epifano wrote her piece for The Amherst Student, I read comments by people proclaiming there was no way their daughter would ever be allowed to step foot on the Amherst campus, and comments by people proclaiming that the administrators had to be fired. I don’t think that any of these frames will ever help this problem. Sure, anger is well-justified, but let’s direct this anger toward the situation, not toward institutions and especially not individuals. There’s only ever room to focus on either blaming or understanding how common structural and situational factors are contributing to the incidence of rape.</p>
<p>Wow. Keil. Perhaps this should be reposted on the “Amherst, Williams and Dartmouth” thread. I’ve always felt that one of the principal differences between Dartmouth and the rest of the little Ivies was that it’s size has often stifled the ability of marginalized groups to be heard - or, at least feel that they have.</p>
<p>That’s interesting, but I’d never even thought of the role of school size in campus activism. I guess I would presume a constant proportion of student activists to the population, barring other differences between the schools (regarding location, SES and ethnic composition, etc.). But I think your point is about how difficult it is to sway hundreds of students versus thousands. Anyone have other thoughts on this?</p>
<p>Rape is more a function of attitude than alcohol. When traveling the the Far East some years ago I could stroll the streets of Bejing at 3 am, whereas in Tokyo I really couldn’t. A rape culture was rampant, whereas China has a Ero tolerance policy and sent groups to shame offenders in jail.</p>
<p>I have worked to write legislation in my locality when I worked in a rape/domestic violence/incest crisis center and I could provide testimony that shows that community attitudes (how these crimes are prosecuted and how other men view them) directly impacts their incidence.</p>
<p>It doesn’t have to be either attitude or alcohol. As I see it, a high enough number of sexual assault incidents occurring in settings with alcohol can reinforce devil-may-care attitudes about rape. In other words, people associate sexuality with alcohol so perhaps the coincidence of sexual assault with partying would not be surprising. Both attitudes and alcohol contribute to conditions for rape - and they are probably also mutually reinforcing.</p>
<p>But point taken: When college administrators say they have zero tolerance for rape, there really needs to be zero tolerance. (But let’s first get to the point where rape has more serious consequences than theft of personal property…) I haven’t been to China, but I don’t doubt that rape is less common. On the other hand, it seems that, even if there is a lower prevalence of rape, the government’s prejudice against women may be incompatible with tough rape laws: <a href=“Rape Case Is a Rarity in Chinese Justice System - The New York Times”>Rape Case Is a Rarity in Chinese Justice System - The New York Times;