This issue needs less political correctness and more common sense/sincerity to ensure safety of our girls and our boys. We can’t eradicate it but can make it nearly impossible with preventive and punitive steps.
if we are talking about alcohol and rape, the thing is, even if you could eliminate college drinking completely, you will still have rape. Someone will still be more vulnerable compared to someone else. The root cause isn’t the alcohol, IMO, when it comes to rape.
If we are talking about other negative consequences associated with college drinking, that’s different.
Once colleges start firing coaches whose athletes engage in drinking/drugs/sexual misconduct/moral misconduct then coaches will make sure that their players aren’t engaging in these practices. These coaches have a lot of power over these players, it can be used for good. If athletes aren’t getting involved in these activities then culture would change.
@mom2twogirls
You are right. We can’t eradicated rape by banning alcohol at colleges but we can decrease chances drastically.
“Stanford rapists’ dad clearly thinks it wasn’t that wrong, he got into trouble for drinking too much and not having good judgement when doing so. This was the thinking of his model growing up, one assumes.”
You know, I think this is a ridiculous accusation. There’s nothing to suggest the father slapped the son on the back and said go get drunk and have your way with any girl you like. There’s no reason to suggest they weren’t a “nice” family, blah blah blah. The father’s letter expresses how his heart bled for her son and begged for clemency. It had some unfortunately-chosen language, but enough on demonizing them or making up stuff.
And if my son were facing jail you’re darn right I would say whatever I thought would tug at a judge’s heartstrings.
@JasmineArmani wrote
Of course alcohol binge-drinking is part of the problem. Clouded mental faculties from binge-drinking leads to poor decision making all around.
Your statement *“Why don’t you guys focus on teaching boys not to rape?” * is as naive as telling people not to steal. Would you get drunk and leave your car parked in a bad neighbourhood and leave your wallet on the dashboard? Although you are NOT “asking” to be robbed, there is such a thing as stupidly.
Sure, adults can drink all they want, but that doesn’t absolve them from the laws of physics nor from the laws of stupidity.
In what fraction of the reported rapes on campus was the woman significantly impaired by alcohol she choose to consume? I don’t for a minute excuse rape, and I do think that more education and discussion about it should happen, but I also think that the “don’t blame the victim” mantra has drawn attention away from the fact that women do need to take common sense precautions against rape, just as anyone should not leave valuables unattended or unlocked. We don’t live in a perfect world and there will always be criminals around to take advantage of the vulnerable. I don’t think this is necessarily a zero sum game, I think that many of these rapes are crimes of opportunity and their numbers would drop drastically if the opportunities were not so easy to find. And, as pointed out by others, drinking to the point of unconsciousness can lead to death through alcohol poisoning, falls, or other accidents.
I’m not trying to be politically correct when I say educating boys about what rape is and how awful it is, is something that can reduce rapes.
Whenever someone brings up the pay gap and the 77 cents per dollar “statistic”, I ask why there isn’t a single large company that hires only women, saving 23% on labor costs relative to men, and using that to either rake in profits or lower costs enough to put its competitors out of business?
I have never gotten a good answer to that question.
I think that’s a ridiculous characterization of what I said. It’s simply not what I wrote. That was:
Stanford rapists’ dad clearly thinks it wasn’t that wrong, he got into trouble for drinking too much and not having good judgement when doing so.
Perhaps my meaning was lost to you somehow but what I am saying here is that the dad has said is the kid was wrong for getting drunk and that led to making a bad decision (presumably the rape, a decision he characterizes as bad or unfortunate but not entirely his son’s fault because he - and she - were drunk) .
I hope that’s clearer.
This raises the question of whether you can effectively ban alcohol at colleges. If there was a way to do it successfully, it might eliminate a lot of problems. But I don’t think it’s possible. If you forbid alcohol, students will still drink but they will do it in secret. And then if something goes wrong – for example, if someone is injured or if a sexual assault takes place – students will avoid reporting it and getting the help they need for fear of the punishment associated with alcohol consumption.
Of course, this would not apply to the Stanford case because the woman (1) was not a Stanford student, and (2) was not underage. But what if she had been a student on that campus and a couple of years younger? Would you want her to be afraid to report the crime or get medical help because she might be expelled from college or arrested because she herself had been drinking?
Of course the girl is an adult entitled to drink and for that matter entitled to get blackout drunk. I don’t think anyone on this forum is saying that alcohol mitigates the offense/crime. But can’t we also recognize there is a multifaceted problem going on here? When I was a college student and young adult (back in the stone age) “Take Back the Night” was a big anti-sexual assault theme. Things like self-defense classes, rape whistles, carrying mace, traveling with a buddy, were considered empowering, not victim blaming. At the 5C’s last Spring, Campus Security sent out an email warning that there had been several reports of roofies. The email gave tips on watching your drink and warning signs that you may have consumed one. A bunch of people complained bitterly that the email was victim blaming and should’ve focused on condemning the roofie dealers. That boggled my mind.
Of course alcohol could be effectively banned at any college if underage students were immediately dismissed if they possessed alcohol or were drunk. This would work. It would also cause a huge drop in applications to that school, unless all schools did it the same year.
I actually am not a fan of the leaving valuables in the car comparison but Isee where it’s coming from. I thought of my own. I once knew someone who used to walk through busy parking lots and not stop, ever, to watch for moving cars. Her philosophy was that pedestrians have the right of way and cars are supposed to stop for her. Mine is that I am going to watch occupied cars very carefully to make sure they aren’t moving and to know they see me before I walk in front of them because the reality is that not everyone cares that pedestrians have the right of way and I don’t want to be hit by a car. Them getting into trouble after the fact won’t bring me back to life if they run me over.
Undoubtedly a person who doesn’t believe in natural selection or evolution.
Grandma and grandpa drank a lot, did some drugs and engaged in plenty of random sex in college. Trust me–I was there. The new Puritanism will work as well as the old one did.
I don’t see anyone here espousing Puritanian, just Pragmatism. In fact, quite a number of posters have advocated lowering the drinking age.
I think that’s coming. We haven’t really discussed the “sexual irresponsibility” part of the thread title yet.
If you knew about an infamous “greasy spoon” in town that had been cited for multiple health-code violations throughout the years, would you eat the food there?
I don’t get it why people are still surprised in 2016 that bad crap goes on at alcohol-fueled frat parties.
It depends on what one means by sexual irresponsibility. It could mean failing to obtain explicit, effective and on-going consent, spreading STD’s, etc. To me, those are examples of sexual irresponsibility. If Brock Turner and his dad had said he was going around speaking about the dangers of alcohol abuse and sexual irresponsibility, including failure to obtain consent, it would’ve been a better argument for mitigation. The fact that he said alcohol abuse and promiscuity was what was so reprehensible, since as the victim so eloquently said, you can’t have promiscuity where there’s no consent.