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<p>Oh, please. Give me an eyeroll. “Arrogant”=school I or my kid couldn’t get into.</p>
<p>These are schools where the students are activists and organized to make a complaint about how the school handles complaints, not schools where the sexual assault problem is worse than at other places. </p>
<p>Honestly, if you think that there is more sexual assault at Swarthmore and Sarah Lawrence than at most schools, I have a bridge to sell you. </p>
<p>@romanigypsyeyes </p>
<p>I find it very believable that 25% or more (a LOT more) have to fend off drunken attempts at sex. These would be sexual assaults, which are defined as contact that stops short of rape, and include unwanted touching, etc. Using that definition, it’s hard attending any parties where binge drinking is taking place, and not, at some point, having to fend off someone. Nothing good happens at these parties. I just don’t believe 1 in 5 have been raped. </p>
<p>I’ve had some drunken guy repeatedly grab my ass at a rock concert, uninvited and unwanted. I do not consider myself to have been “sexually assaulted.” But if I answered a questionnaire and provided that information, in at least some studies, I would be classified as a victim of sexual assault by those coding the results. </p>
<p>Even though this kind of thing means the results of some of these studies are invalid, IMHO, it is more than clear that sexual assault is a genuine problem, especially on college campuses. I’m glad that people are at last making a concerted effort to address it. </p>
<p>I think it seems like a completely random list of schools, and I would bet any school could have found its way on the list- it’s a major problem on most campuses.</p>
<p>I just find it odd that my school- whose latest sexual assault controversy was a football player being kicked out prematurely, only to be reinstated once it was found that the whole case was a lie by the complainant- is on the list.</p>
<p>The United States Department of Justice would disagree with you, Consolation. They define sexual assault as:</p>
<p>Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient. Falling under the definition of sexual assault are sexual activities as forced sexual intercourse, forcible sodomy, child molestation, incest, fondling, and attempted rape.</p>
<p>Someone repeatedly grabbing your bottom at a rock concert would be "fondling’ under that definition. </p>
<p>That said, I really think this should be a legal issue, not a campus issue. </p>
<p>Consolation, even if YOU don’t consider your experience as sexual assault, doesn’t mean it isn’t… that it shouldn’t be reported and that it’s somehow not a big deal. That sort of contact is an inappropriate violation. It’s one person ignoring the rights and boundaries of another person. The fact that so many women are subjected to that behavior is not OK even if penetration doesn’t happen. Drawing the a line between rape and any physical/sexual contact sends the message that only rape is the problem and that getting your butt fondled in a concert is just part of being a girl and not a big deal.</p>
<p>Women deserve to feel safe on campus. I had a stalker in college 20+years ago. He never touched me and so the school (that happens to be on that list) wouldn’t do anything even when I had a stack of evidence and witnesses. Suggested I use the buddy system and try to ignore him. However, he made sure I knew he COULD whenever he wanted. It was scary and I ended up transferring out. Thank goodness this was before facebook and cell phones and all the ways a person can be tracked down today. It’s not 1 in 5 men who are aggressors. It’s a handful of guys causing problems for multiple women. 1 in 5 college women being targeted with unwanted sexual behavior? Not a surprise at all. </p>
<p>But I think I DO have the right to define whether or not I feel like a victim. Like Consolation, I once had the experience of a man - a stranger, in my case - starting to fondle me. This was not in the context of a romantic situation; it was a deliberate, out-of-the-blue grope during casual conversation. I shouted “stop!”, he did so, and I immediately left the area. </p>
<p>Technically, I suppose that does make me one of the one in five, or four, or whatever the current statistic is. But including me in the same category that would include a rape victim is so ludicrous as to have no meaning. The incident was not traumatic for me. It had no impact in my life. My response was to shake my head and say “wow, what a pig.” </p>
<p>Obviously it is a problem that a certain subset of men feel entitled to touch women’s bodies without their permission.It is also pretty clear that we need to do a much better job teaching men and women about what constitutes consent. But if most of the sexual assaults that number is citing are of the “a guy grabbed my rear” variety, that is a different and far less serious problem that if most of them are actual rapes. </p>
<p>Exactly, apprenticeprof. </p>
<p>It wasn’t traumatic for me. It had no impact on my life. No, of course that does not mean that I am saying that guys should feel they have the right to lay hands on me or anyone else in an explicitly sexual manner–or vice versa, for that matter. But I have to object to being lumped with people who actually were involved in an assault against my will, so to speak. I’m sorry that you had such an awful experience, turtletime, and that your school was unwilling to help you. That’s terrible. But that isn’t anything like what apprenticeprof and I experienced.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I think that the reality is probably that even if you remove the low-impact fondling incidents like ours, there are plenty of “real” assaults because so many go unreported.</p>
<p>The larger point IMHO is not quibbling about these statistics and how they are compiled. 1 in 10 or 1 in 50 is a sufficiently large number for me to get riled up about it as a pervasive problem that needs to be addressed.</p>
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<p>Yes. Police and courts exist for this purpose. Although they can and do make errors, can one really expect college and university administrations to be any more “accurate” in their investigations and verdicts on such matters than police and courts who are trained for dealing with such crimes and allegations? And, for more serious matters like rape, a court can do things that college and university administrations cannot do, such as sentencing a guilty person to prison.</p>
<p>Students should be aware of whether the “campus safety and security” departments on their campuses are real police or not. Crimes should be reported to real police.</p>
<p>Perhaps parts of the problem are that (a) college and university administrations do not want the real police involved (generally with respect to crimes on campus, not specifically to sexual assaults), increasing the on-campus crime statistics, (b) some students have a pre-existing distrust of police, including left-leaning protester types and those who grew up in places where the police are ineffective, corrupt, and/or racist, and (c) if the relations between the campus that the surrounding city are poor, that can also affect how the city police react and how campus people (students and administration) view the police.</p>
<p>I agree that these should be legal issues. Get the Police (and professional investigators) involved. </p>
<p>This article may be of interest. It lays out the reasons behind the increase in Title IX complaints.</p>
<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/Promise-Unfulfilled-/146299/”>http://chronicle.com/article/Promise-Unfulfilled-/146299/</a></p>
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<p>Soon we will all learn the difference between a “resolution agreement” and a “letter of findings”. ~X( </p>
<p>I think it is too easy to say “just let the police handle it,” though. The standard of proof to declare someone a felon and send him to prison should be higher than the standard to expel him from school, which should in turn require a higher standard of proof than that needed to change his dorm assignment or make him attend mandatory counseling sessions. </p>
<p>Calling for the expulsion of any student accused of rape, given the “he said/she said” nature of many accusations and the sometimes murky consent issues that come into play, is overkill. But asking universities to have a functional internal process for dealing with such complaints independently of any criminal proceeding seems a minimal expectation. . </p>
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<p>I imagine if ANYTHING negative happens to 1 in 4 people… what would the public reaction be?</p>
<p>why are we not seeing that reaction to this “stat”?</p>
<p>… b/c it isn’t accurate.</p>
<p>As others suggest, it always creates confusion when things that are not the same are treated as if they are the same. In this case, a vague statistic diverts people from the real issues.</p>
<p>First let me say that I am one of 4 sisters and all of us have been sexually assaulted, but none raped. Not just from statistics, but from experience I know that women live with sexual assault, a significant portion on dates. </p>
<p>Many women are sexually assaulted, but are so part of "rape culture"that they do not see it as assault. Many women are trained to think it is normal to be groped by strangers or bruised on dates. They think this is just part of being a woman. It takes major effort to learn to think of the situation differently. Imagine the response of a man whose bottom was grabbed repeated at a concert by some inappropriate drunk or bruised on a date. </p>
<p>Not all women feel this way. Some will feel assaulted. Both of my daughters would consider themselves assaulted. The older would respond actively and (probably) effectively. My younger is shy and gentle. She is just the type who perverts would seek out. I hate rape culture. </p>
<p>I tend to agree with aprenticeprof’s thoughts and I also agree that a person has a right to define for themselves whether they have been assaulted or not. </p>
<p>mamalion, do not condescend to me. I was not and am not “trained” to think that being groped by strangers or bruised (!) on dates is acceptable or normal. I did not have to make a “major effort” to think of such experiences as wrong and unacceptable. You are trying to teach your grandma to suck eggs when it comes to a feminist perspective. Nevertheless, I found that particular incident to be annoying, not traumatizing. I did not experience it as “assault.” Someone else might have. That’s their experience, which I do not presume to judge. You do not get to redefine my feelings or my experiences.</p>
<p>The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that 13.1% of lesbians, 46.1% of bisexual women, and 17.4% of heterosexual women have been raped.</p>
<p>Those stats didn’t include some of the more vague sexual assaults which may or may not make someone feel assaulted. I’m in agreement that a person has a right to define whether or not they have been assaulted. If we look at it from a purely physical view point- some people may consider being slapped in the face an assault. Some may say “It was just a slap in the face”. </p>
<p>I feel like they are trying to pin a much larger societal issue on campus administrations though. In my experience, the main reason women don’t go to police is because of the “blame the victim” mentality- she was dressed seductively, she was drunk, she’d had many partners before, etc. These are all ways the defense in a criminal rape trial try to sway a jury. And, if there’s not physical evidence, it is he said/she said. </p>
<p>I daresay nobody expects a campus to manage an accused murderer. The legal system is supposed to do that. </p>
<p>So .Consolation, here we have the dilemma of false consciousness. If a woman agrees that suffrage for women is unnecessary and opposes universal suffrage, is she entitled to her opinion and am I an oppressor for calling her position a result of patriarchal oppression? Should I simply accept people are allowed to make any decision they choose regardless of the consequences for them and others? Accepting slavery is okay by me if slaves accept it?</p>
<p>Sexual assault is defined legally to protect all members of society from abuse. Just as women who are beaten by husbands do not get to define domestic violence, women who are sexually assaulted do not get to define assault. Grabbing ass is sexual assault. Some women have been conditioned to tolerate it, maybe even to enjoy it, but that does not mean they have not been assaulted. </p>
<p>Sometimes students think when they have gone to campus “police” that they have gone to the actual police. On some large campuses that is true (campus security is run by the local police force). But at a lot of smaller campuses that is not the case. In the past, I think it was not uncommon for campus security to not report sexual assault to police (although this has improved a lot in recent years, I think). I talked to both my daughters about this before leaving for college, to make sure they know to make sure there is an actual police report in case of a crime (sexual assault, theft, etc.), not just a campus report. But just like colleges are just trying to “keep everyone safe” these days and often look the other way on drinking incidents, I think sexual assault (especially where there is no actual rape or injury requiring medical attention) can be brushed under the rug by campus security. Their job is more about making sure no one ends up in the hospital or dead.</p>
<p>Also… colleges have been notoriously underhanded in manipulating their sexual assault numbers. Until a few years ago, Georgetown only reported rapes if the perpetrator was caught and convicted. So… there was no rape because they didn’t catch the rapist?? There has been a lot of pressure on colleges to improve reporting of statistics, too. Of course they don’t want to, it makes the school look bad.</p>
<p>mamalion. are you seriously equating being annoyed rather than traumatized when someone puts their hand on one’s posterior as equivalent to justifying slavery or denying women’s suffrage? Really?</p>
<p>And you are seriously telling me that I am the equivalent of a subjugated domestic violence victim, a willing slave, or a woman who repudiates the vote because I was not properly traumatized by this minor incident and did not run to the police and seek to have the perp arrested?</p>
<p>Let me make it clear: when I referred to this person as “grabbing my ass,” I was speaking colloquially. In fact, it was more of a discreet fondle. Not acceptable, not tolerated by me, but not “assault” in terms of my experience. Now, if you want to take the position that LEGALLY this type of thing has been defined as “assault,” that is another matter.</p>