Rape Cases Influencing Admissions?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Virginia
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<p>While the admonitions to be “careful” and to be “smart” are no doubt good ones, they tend to perpetuate the idea that rape is something the victim might have prevented by being more careful and smarter, and thus they blame the victims to a degree. Men and boys should not rape, and they should not be encouraged to think that somehow a woman is asking for it if she walks alone, or if she drinks, or if she is in any way perceived as vulnerable due to her dress or behavior. If a woman drinks too much and passes out, she is not fair game, and her actions do not excuse attack. If the college’s culture encourages the idea that she is, it is complicit in violence. </p>

<p>I do not think that UVA is very different from other schools that cherish a reputation for partying, but that does not lessen its responsibility to respond more justly to accusations of rape. Surely rape is no harder to prove than most kinds of cheating, yet at UVA cheating is swiftly and soundly punished, with far less concern for the miscreant. </p>

<p>I would not encourage my daughter to apply to UVA, although I did my graduate work there and have very fond memories of the school. </p>

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<p>“While the admonitions to be “careful” and to be “smart” are no doubt good ones, they tend to perpetuate the idea that rape is something the victim might have prevented by being more careful and smarter.”</p>

<p>Other than to quibble with your word choice and say “avoided” instead of “prevented”, the above is perfectly fine. Many rapes can be avoided by people being careful and smart; the incidence of rape can be reduced. Many crimes, not just some rapes, are crimes of opportunity; such crimes can be avoided by removing the opportunity to commit them in the first place.</p>

<p>Avoiding and correcting circumstances that lead opportunistic criminals to commit such crimes is an essential part of fighting those crimes.</p>

<p>“Surely rape is no harder to prove than most kinds of cheating, yet at UVA cheating is swiftly and soundly punished, with far less concern for the miscreant.”</p>

<p>Rape surely is, in most cases, much harder to prove than most kinds of cheating. There is a lot of him understanding she was into it, her saying she was not, with no witnesses. The question isn’t usually whether sex happened, but whether it was nonconsensual. Rape is a felony crime; it must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Cheating is simply an Honor Code violation, you could get kicked out of the university but can otherwise go on with your life normally. Cheating does not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and does not involve trying to determine the accused’s state of mind of the time; either the evidence shows it happened, or the evidence does not show that. What is the University required to do, by Federal law, with a rape accusation? It’s not a matter of self-governance, at all.</p>

<p>There just aren’t very many cases of a stranger with a knife jumping out of the bushes, or someone so inebriated that he or she is legally incapable of understanding what he or she is doing and consenting to (and yes, men get raped, too). Those cases are relatively rare. Everyone knows “no means no.” What does it mean if someone doesn’t actually use the word “no”? </p>

<p>In the real world, rape cases typically involve people who are not strangers, and who are at least somewhat ambiguous in communicating refusal. Most cases on a college campus involve young people who, frankly, do not have very much experience with sex or with alcohol (often present to some degree, removing inhibitions, and dulling perception and understanding and memory).</p>

<p>I did encourage D1 to apply to UVA, and I’m happy she has done so, and I would be happy for her to choose to attend there. I have warned her to avoid putting herself in danger situations, and to watch out for and take care of her friends, not out of concern for who would be blamed but to avoid it ever happening in the first place. In the aftermath of and response to the RS fiasco, I think UVA will now probably be one of the safest campuses she could be on; in fact, I think it was probably one of the safest campuses she could have been on even before the RS matter.</p>

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<p>Butter – good luck with your app to UVA. I have a HS aged daughter who plans to apply to UVA too and I’ll be totally fine with that. Keep this in mind. </p>

<p>According the U.S. Department of Justice statistics, college age women enrolled in college are at a LOWER risk of being sexually assaulted than college age women not enrolled in college. Your risk of being attacked goes DOWN, not up, when you step on campus. It is more dangerous for you to stay at home. </p>

<p>After this Rolling Stone thing, one could reasonably expect UVA to be more safe than many other campuses. Campus rape is surely a problem. But the data says that, overall, campuses are safer than the rest of the world.</p>

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<p>After this Rolling Stone thing UVA will be safer than any other college because they are focusing on the issue even though the RS article turned out to be NOT TRUE… So even though they didn’t have the gang rape culture RS wanted everyone to believe they are going to make the campus safer anyway.</p>

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Happy New Year everyone,

I went to W&M for undergrad and UVa for graduate school. My husband graduated #1 from the medical school, Bowman Scholar, class of 1986; we lived in Charlottesville for 5 years. I love the town and the ‘university’ (lower-case ‘u’…I respect VCU, ODU, NSU, Radford, CNU, GMU, VSU, Virginia Tech, VMI, and JMU etc as fellow Virginia Universities). My son is a current Echols scholar at UVa. I am invested in this school. I do think it is safe for you to send your sons and daughters. It is a fantastic school with terrific academics! Charlottesville is a classic, college town.

It does, however, promote a social image of swaggering, Alpha-male, drunken white privilege. UVa may be safer due to the negative exposure, for now, but they thrive on promoting their party bona fides, especially as they apply to white Southern males. My daughter refused to apply because of this. We live in an urban area, and are unfamiliar with the metric of rich suburban white coolness. Our family values diverse multiculturalism, which UVa does not provide; there is no trace of global, or urban, culture, and this aesthetic is not promoted.

If your child wants a sophisticated urban culture, with multiple cultural voices, UVa is not a good match. My son says it’s ‘all Crate-and Barrel…all the time’, reflecting the large number of students accepted from suburban Northern Virginia.
Happy 2015; have a safe new year.

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Ulcerita,
My D is a second year student at UVA. She is in a well-respected/ popular sorority. Her sisters as well as her hall-mates first year are/ were black, Asian, Hispanic, Indian- you name it. I graduated in 1989. I can tell you that from my point of view, the face of UVA has changed dramatically. I haven’t heard her speak too much about students from other countries, save one Chinese national and one from Britain, but UVA is definitely not an all-white southern school. My son’s best friends from high school are there as first-years now. Their parents were born in Saudi Arabia and India. They seem to fit right in and be happy as can be, enjoying being involved in music groups, first year council, an outdoor adventure type thing, and at least one intends to rush.
The RS article has been clearly demonstrated to be, if not entirely the figment of imagination, at least in large part of severely dubious truthfulness. The police department has said they have no evidence of wrong-doing by Phi Psi brothers and the fraternity is fully reinstated. Certainly, there are drunk students and most likely, some sexual encounters which can be considered rape, and likely still more that are the result of impaired judgement on the students’ parts, but if you can find me a university other than maybe BYU where sex and alcohol are not factors in student life, I will be surprised.
My daughter is as safe at UVA as her decisions can allow her to be. She does not walk alone at night, does not drink to excess, and watches her surroundings. She texts her room-mates when she is heading home at night. The student body took the Hannah Graham tragedy very much to heart. Note: it did not happen on Grounds, nor on the Corner nor in the Greek neighborhoods where students spend their free time.
I would send D to UVA again, without batting an eye. Excellent school, incredible atmosphere, great classmates and professors, beautiful campus (Grounds), ideal college town, and perhaps, an environment which can provide a stepping stone toward real life after graduation. I’m not convinced that learning to be aware of one’s surroundings is a bad thing, personally.