I’m not sure about it always having been a problem…I would possit it started becoming a bigger problem in the early 80s with the advent of coed dorms which made access to rooms with closed doors easier and the raising of the drinking age which drove drinking into hiding (flasks instead of kegs, etc.) and off campuses. Prior to that dorms had hours, open door policies and desk monitors at the entrances. Cars were not as prevalent on campuses and many colleges had a no cars rule for freshmen who are the most vulnerable. Campus activities had alcohol allowed and easier “policing” by faculty, administrators and student groups. Sexual assault is a crime of opportunity…if you remove the opportunities you can diminish the crime rate. The “change” to assault being defined as just about any interaction between men and women including conversational and social messaging is a thornier issue and one that is not so easily addressed. If you take a position that men and women are equal that gets to the heart of who initiates, who is the aggressor , what if both parties are inebriated and how do you measure that quantitatively, are all attempts to communicate harassment etc but even those issues can in many cases short of stalkers be exacerbated by alcohol and diminished capacity for reasonable thought.
@momofthreeboys I agree, to an extent.
Raising the drinking age probably made things worse. Although you are right in saying that many more dorms now are coed, the “hours, open door policies and desk monitors at the entrances” likely did not prevent sexual assault, and instead aided it. Instead of coming back to their rooms, those living in dorms were incentivized to take their sexual activities to other, often more dangerous, locations. Let’s be honest - this is not the first generation to be sexually active in college. It still happened back then - more hush hush, and actually more dangerous.
Let’s not confuse equality with which sex commits the most assaults, and the most violent crimes.
Why so much hyperbole? Assault is not being defined as just about any interaction between men and women including conversational and social messenging. If theis were true, we would all be guilty of assault.
We diminish the meaning of assault when we engage in this kind of hyperbole.
We should also remember that a vast majority of people who drink, including binge drinkers, including male binge drinkers, never commit a sexual assault.
Collegeandi -
- InTouch is one step above the Natl Enquirer. Find a better source.
- As has been explained, you can’t just “write a judge” and ask that a sentence be changed. This is not American Idol where it’s up for popular vote.
Actually, that claim is contested. Reliable historical rates of binge drinking aren’t easy to find, particularly when you go back a few decades. I will note, though, that the stereotype of the binge-drinking, generally partying female college student was alive and well in comic strips and humor writing of the 1920s.
I can’t recall who it was that said that each successive generation thinks it has discovered sex.
Most likely, the amount of drinking, binge drinking, sex and sexual assault is about the same now (or perhaps a bit lower) than it was in past decades. Today’s “exploding epidemics” are most likely increased attention being devoted steady state (or slightly declining) problems.
But if you can do some things that would actually be effective to reduce the level of harm, we should give them a try.
But we shouldn’t pour resources into things that show no evidence of harm reduction. Cough cough Dear Colleague cough cough.
^ someone observant, @albert69 .
Now you kids, get off my lawn.
I stand corrected, this link parses out specifically college students:
http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arcr352/201-218.htm
I usually read original sources.
Romani, your link is 400+ pages and I don’t feel like reading what you linked right now. 
I talked to several young people recently and most of them drink, but they don’t use drugs. They have tried pot but they no longer smoke pot.
There were a lot of people using drugs when I was in my 20’s. Along with pot, there was lots of coke. Some took acid. Anyway, I get the feeling drug use is down over the last few decades. Is drug use down?
Opiate abuse and deaths are way, way up, but I believe overall drug use is down.
That’s why I quoted 
Drug use is in there, too, but I haven’t read it in a while (and yes, I have read the whole thing- back in my former life as an adolescent health person). I find the ctrl + F feature to be very useful 
I will note that it’s dangerous to generalize from one’s own acquaintances at a certain age at a certain time to all people of that age at that time—observation bias and all that, you know.
^ Pretty sure that was dstark’s point.
What OHMomof2 said.
Romani, control + F is not going to work for me. I am using an ipad.
@dstark: Ah, bitten hard by [Poe’s Law](Poe's law - Wikipedia)! :))
@dfbdfb, I have to admit I had to look up Poe’s law. I like it.
Just for the record, I always agree with your post #233 because its true.
Drinking doesn’t necessarily cause rape, but it certainly doesn’t help. As far as I’m concerned, drinking is never a good idea that’s why I don’t do it. Still, I’ve never heard of a beer raping anyone or being arrested for it. Sober people rape women just as much as drunks, if not more.