Massachusetts

No easy cure for dysfunctional campus sexual culture

No easy cure for dysfunctional campus sexual culture

Carrie Lukas

Dorm rooms, shower baskets, Frisbees flying through a sun-streaked courtyards — these are traditional iconic images of a college school year's kickoff. Today's college students, however, might also add "sensitivity seminars" and warnings about the prevalence of sexual assault as one of the rites of passage for the start of college.

There's a good reason for all the discussion about sexual assault on college campus: It happens too often. Americans often hear the statistic "one-in-four," suggesting that fully one-quarter of college women will be victims of rape, sexual assault or attempted assault while in college. Fortunately, an examination of the survey data behind this statistic reveals that it overstates the prevalence of the heinous crimes that come to mind when one hears the terms rape or sexual assault.

Sex on campus: obtaining consent in the hookup culture
rape

Sex on campus: obtaining consent in the hookup culture

Robert N. Driscoll

As a lawyer, I have followed closely the campus sexual assault "epidemic" that has gathered much attention in recent years and find the abandonment of any concept of due process by campus tribunals appalling.  As detailed here, here, and here, universities living in mortal fear of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights have clearly stacked the deck against the accused, resulting in severe consequences for some young men (because, let's face it, the accused are almost always men) who engaged in what appeared to them to be consensual sexual activity.

But as a father of two teenage daughters, both of whom will go to college in the next few years, "due process" would be the furthest thing from my mind if I learned that either of my children had been mistreated sexually, whether or not the events constituted a crime.  In fact, if one of my daughters were to be victimized, I might seek a form of justice quite different from the kind that the gender equity activists have in mind.

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