Just before this post we posted another story about a NY political candidate who (as a ploy to get elected) has suggested a bill to prevent people who are required to register as a sex offender from attending college classes in person. (see: https://floridaactioncommittee.org/ny-candidate-seeks-to-end-in-person-college-for-people-required-to-register-as-sex-offenders/)
- 13% of all students experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation (among all graduate and undergraduate students).
- Among graduate and professional students, 9.7% of females and 2.5% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.
- Among undergraduate students, 26.4% of females and 6.8% of males experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation.
Those are scary statistics, but the actual numbers are even scarier. 9.2 million female undergraduate students were enrolled US colleges or universities in 2020. If 26.4% of them were sexually assaulted; that equates to 2,428,800!!! That’s a horrific number and something absolutely needs to be done about this, but will Candidate Catalfamo’s bill solve or significantly remediate this problem? Of the 2.4MM female victims of campus sexual assault, how many were committed by someone on the registry? Was it over a million or was it 5? That makes a really huge difference in determining whether this “solution” would cut this problem in half or only offer a 0.00000001% solution to the problem at best.
A 2019 study (Quade, Amanda Ellen, “Certainty Versus Suspicion: Incapacitated Sexual Assault on Campus” (2019). Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies. 6737) broke down the distinction between forcible sexual assault (use of threat, force or a weapon to gain control over a victim) and incapacitated sexual assault (sexual assault which takes place when a victim is drugged, drunk, or unable to provide consent or stop what is happening to them). The cases of incapacitated sexual assault were extremely high (49%), but what is similarly scary is that 7.8% of college students studied reported knowing or being suspicious of someone putting drugs into their drink
in order to perpetuate the sexual assault. (Swan, S. C., Lasky, N. V., Fisher, B. S., Woodbrown, V. D., Bonsu, J. E., Schramm, A.T., Warren, P. R., Coker, A. L., & Williams, C. M. (2016). Just a dare or unaware? Outcomes and motives of drugged (“drink spiking”) among students at three college campuses. Psychology of Violence 7(2), 253-264.)
With excessive alcohol or drug use involved in more than half of all campus sexual assaults, we have identified an exponentially greater contributing factor to this problem than a person with a past sexual offense on campus, which is not even a statistically significant contributing factor. Why is Candidate Catalfamo’s bill not focused on preventing people with a history of a drug or alcohol offense from being on campus?
It might not have the same cachet or be as headline grabbing, but Candidate Catalfamo can get behind something that will actually help our children instead of this smoke and mirrors. He can focus on reducing underage drinking by increasing supervision at campus events, sponsor a bill to fund support for victims of sexual assault, encouraging them to come forward and eliminate the stigma around reporting (victims who were drinking at the time of a sexual assault report high levels of distress, self-blame, and negative reactions from others). Or, as we always encourage, he can invest in educational programs to bring awareness to the problem, the ramifications (both the the victim and the perpetrator) and prevention plans (such as setting up a buddy system) that are far more effective than a useless bill that will do absolutely nothing other than prevent someone trying to improve their life from getting an education.
Ok, so we can’t get a higher education inorder to get gainful employment or more successful employent. That is even if some of us can even get employment in the first place. We can’t live in areas where public transportation is available etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. So why can’t we get a disability for being a RSO?
Alcohol, like violence, is one of them “accepted vices,” so expect a minimum amount of action done. They’ll forego cracking down on underage drinking, teaching self-autonomy or the hazards of drug uses and combinations and focus on that tiny number of sexual assault cases and of that, just the ones committed by registrants, then propose even more restrictive measures.
Sorry but RAINN is using intentionally misleading numbers to frighten people into believing there is some kind of unique crisis. This is recycled hogwash from the campus rape scares from a decade ago using the same flawed reasoning.
If women ages 18-24 are 3x more likely to be raped on campus but 4x more likely to be raped if not a student then obuously being a student on campus is safer.
Drunk sex is considered rape in all these studies, meaning the results are poisoned by a fatal flaw in the study design.
Obviously self reporting has flaws, especially when discussing unreported actions. How do we know it was a crime? I’ve already shown in previous research that the NCVS is open to broad interpretation. Campus feminists believe flirting, staring too long, or making an unwanted advance equates to a “sexual assault.” RAINN’s cited studies in turn relied on the flawed NCVS as the blueprint for similat studies.
I believe RAINN does this on purpose to inflate numbers.
Derek – it doesn’t matter if it’s 25% or 15% (well, yes, I mean it matters. It would be tragic to have even more assaults than actual but that’s not the point here). The point is that of the 10, 15, 25 whatever percent…. 0.0000001 are being committed by someone on the registry.
It’s like that other dumb idea that came up after the Stanford guy was seen in a bar, to not allow registrants in Bars. We know that sometimes people can commit a sexual assault against an intoxicated women they hook up with in a bar. Perhaps (just throwing a number out there) 5% of all women were sexually assaulted by someone they met in a bar. But are the perpetrators overwhelmingly people on the registry? In other words, would banning registrants bring that number down to 1% or would it bring that number down to 4.99999999% and the 99.00000001 of registrants who go to a bar are not sexually assaulting anyone?