Posted on 12/23/2014 4:46:01 AM PST by Kaslin
The total discrediting of Rolling Stone's story on rape at the University of Virginia has shined a light on one of the least palatable features of American life: the so-called epidemic of rape on campus.
Authorities from Barack Obama on down have cited the phony statistic that one in five college women is raped. Phony because it's based on a 2007 survey conducted in two Midwestern schools not of a random sample, but of a small number of self-selected respondents and includes unwanted touching and kissing as "sexual assault."
A Department of Justice survey released this month presents a different picture. Between 1995 and 2013, it reports, an average of 0.61 percent of female students were raped or sexually assaulted every year -- 2.4 percent over four years, not 20 percent. Moreover, DOJ reports, that rate has been declining significantly in recent years, in line with a national decline in violent rape.
In other words, there is no suddenly raging epidemic of rape on campus. Nevertheless, colleges and universities have been scampering to comply with mandates by the Obama Department of Education to set up procedures in which campus administrators, untrained legally, act as investigators, prosecutors, judges, juries and executioners.
Accused students are not allowed to have lawyers or to confront witnesses, and legal rules of evidence do not apply. The California Legislature has passed a "yes means yes" law requiring express consent at each stage of sexual encounters, with similar effects.
These kangaroo courts can and do expel male students, putting a blot on their records for life. No wonder dozens of them are suing universities and getting big dollar settlements. No wonder 28 current and retired Harvard Law professors signed a letter calling such processes "deeply unfair and undemocratic."
Some day, I suspect, this frenzy will be seen as akin to the hysteria over satanic abuse in day care centers in the 1980s. Many people went to jail over utterly fraudulent charges, based on bogus psychological research. Or as akin to the Salem witch trials.
It's not surprising, however, that these abusive frenzies have taken hold at the nation's colleges and universities. Increasingly, they are our society's least free, least fair and least honest institutions.
Consider campus speech codes. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- FIRE -- reports that 58 percent of the 427 colleges and universities it monitors have speech codes banning and penalizing speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
The good news is that the number of speech codes is declining, partly in response to FIRE's advocacy and lawsuits. The bad news is that the Obama Education Department continues to use threats to cut off funding to get universities to ban "sexual harassment," defined as "any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature." As FIRE notes, "This is an overbroad definition that is not in accordance with the First Amendment."
The rationale for speech codes? Usually it is so that students, especially racial minorities and women, should not encounter anything offensive on campus. Thoughts that someone doesn't want to hear, administrators evidently believe, should not be allowed to be expressed. The authors of the First Amendment had a different idea.
A third way in which universities and colleges are corrupted is in the widespread resort to racial quotas and preferences -- literally, racial discrimination -- in admissions to selective institutions.
Of course, administrators do not admit they are discriminating by race. That would, among other things, violate the letter of the Civil Rights Act. But everyone knows they are using "holistic" standards to admit more blacks and Hispanics (and thus fewer Asians and whites) than they would under the criteria they admit to using. They evidently feel that "diversity" justifies discriminating by race and lying about it.
Kangaroo courts, speech codes, racial discrimination: I suspect that some older readers cannot believe that such practices have become standard operating procedure at American colleges and universities -- indeed, the major focus of many of the administrators who now outnumber teachers on the nation's campuses.
Historically, universities and colleges saw themselves as havens of free speech and fair play, insulated from the larger society to protect those things from interference. Now they insulate themselves in order to violate due process, suppress speech and discriminate by race.
There's still some good scholarship and teaching on campus. But it exists, uneasily, amid a culture of lying and intellectual corruption.
I was subject to a kangaroo court when I was a freshman at Florida State. The charge was for hacking because I logged into an unsecured switch interface and changed the login banner to read “This switch is not properly configured or secured and may be susceptible to breach.” They took that to mean I was threatening them and proceeded to put me in front of a panel of “educators” who knew nothing about IT security. It was a “preponderance of evidence” court vs. “innocent until proven guilty.”
In the end, I had some sanctions passed on me and my record was marked as such, but I was hired by the university IT department months later to work in their security department. Go figure.
The point here is that universities have ALWAYS worked by their own set of rules. They’re big enough that they have their own police departments and court systems. They’re as bloated with bureaucracy as the federal government.
And the “rape” culture? Listen, rape has been going on for millenia. No amount of “awareness” is going to stop it. Some men (AND women) are going to be assholes and think they can force someone into sex. You know what WOULD severely curtail them? Let everyone carry a weapon on university property, concealed or otherwise. An ounce of prevention... oh, but that idea... no, no, no, we can’t have that. Weapons on school grounds would interrupt the learning process.
But rape won’t?
We also know that many cases of “rape” involve alcohol and drugs, which impair the judgment of the women, leading to day-after regret.
Day-after regret is the primary driver of rape accusations, not actual cases of assault.
This is another contrived “problem” that liberals wish to use for expanding the size and scope of the federal government.
Murder would be a problem on campus, but statistically speaking, I would rather have somebody get a faceful of burning mace than succeed in assault, thank you very much. Who knows, the pain of getting maimed or have your eyes and nose in burning pain for an hour might send a message.
If someone wants to fix ‘rape episodes’ on a campus...just get the university out of the business of law enforcement. Get the local cops/city police there, and start turning in real police reports....with local prosecutors involved....real jail time instead of bogus detention or Chancellor-to-student punishments. Let the real system work like it should.
Got underage students drinking booze in the dorm? Call the cops and stage an arrest. Let the cops take them down to the jail...let the kid call dad and let him know he needs real help ASAP.
Once we start letting the real system function like it should....the students will wake up and realize just real life functions if you screw up badly.
Heh. Rule of unintended consequences.
Maybe the kids will have to reduce their sexual activity and actually STUDY.
But then again, if it’s GLTBQ studies or African American studies, or some other basketweaving course, what difference would it make?
No, I don’t want to jail 20-year-olds for drinking beer. Some laws are so dumb that it is better that they not be enforced vigorously.
“If someone wants to fix ‘rape episodes’ on a campus...”
Prior to the sexual revolution the following practices worked very effectively to keep down rape on campus:
1) Single sex dormitories.
2) House mothers in dorms
3) No in-room visitation. Opposite sex members could not go beyond the parlor.
4) Mandatory curfews and lights out.
5) Chaperones at mixed sex social events.
6) Mandatory church services
7) Social disapproval of out of marriage sexual intercourse and births.
8) No federal funding of loans, scholarships and higher education. A college education was a significant personal or family commitment. The focus was study, not social activities.
9) Shared culture based on Christian values.
10) Focus on teaching versus research and publishing. Smaller class sizes. Professors know their students.
There are proven solutions.
Your point is valid, but that's not how statistics work.
By simply adding the annual rate for four years, you're operating under the assumption that a unique rape occurred to one student each time (rather than multiple occurrences with the same student) and that the population over the 4 year period was static. You have incoming freshmen and outgoing seniors each year, so the base population changes.
Sots, you nailed it.
The feminazis have defined rape as anything a female says is rape. The male has no defense. He is automatically wrong no matter what he says or does.
Ya can’t be “cutting edge” if you stick with the tried and true.
Binge drinking + imbalanced sex ratio (60/40 females-to-males on most campuses) = trouble
So simple that even a Liberal could understand it... IF they wanted to!
Strange, practices like this worked for thousands of years. When the liberals started pushing for changes back in the 60’s & 70’s, they were warned about the consequences.
The warning had no effect, because they WANT those consequences.
The same applies to changes in the military.
“Jail” should not be the required punishment for all transgression of law.
Have them pick up trash along the roads, pull kudzu, help out at the ER on a Saturday night so they can see all the broken bodies from drunk driving and cut & smashed faces from drunken brawls.
Having a law and not enforcing it is the surest path to total disregard of ALL laws. If a law is bad then it needs to be changed, not ignored.
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