Campus Rape Rate Below National Average?

jessciavealitzek

It should be needless to say that rape and unwanted sexual contact is just evil. Given the Federal data compiled by the Washington Post, reported sexual offense rates at colleges and universities in general appear to be somewhat below the national average of reported rapes and sexual assaults. The Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that the rate of rapes and sexual assaults nationally has dropped since 1994 from 5 per 1,000 women to 2.1 per 1,000 women in 2010.

The Federal data cited by the Post is reported as per 1,000 students (not just women) so it should be about doubled for comparison purposes, but by eyeball it seems in general that the college rates are below the BJS rate. There, however, are significant outliers like Reed College (9.62 per 1,000 students), Vassar (4.16) and Amherst (9.36).

Go here to see your Alma Mater's stats.

Comments

[Old Man With Candy]

0.29 and 0.15 for my two alma maters. FTW!

[Auric Demonocles]

Old Man With Candy is bragging about how much his school rapes? Not surprised.

[Old Man With Candy]

Way below national average. Needs moar Warty, apparently.

Since I'm an official OMWC, it would be best to look at the stats for nearby middle schools.

[Bean Counter]

Don't you mean "elementary schools"?

[Old Man With Candy]

Even Reason commenters have their limits; I would not want to microagress them with triggers. But say, I seem to have lost my puppy. Could you please hop in the van and help me find him?

[Swiss Servator, CH verlort :(]

Say, that mattress back there sure looks tear stained!

[Old Man With Candy]

"Hey, what would you do if you and I were driving past a pre-school, the blinds were open, and you saw a little boy weeping while a male teacher was blowing him?"

"I'd go in there and kick that teacher's ass."

"OK, then what if you looked down and saw that I had an erection?"

[Andrew S.]

I've had just enough of your Vassar bashing, young lady.

0.00 and 0.29 for my alma maters.

[110 Lean]

0.25 for mine.

[MegaloMonocle]

I would say rape is evil, but "unwanted sexual contact"? Not so much. Let's not define evil down to drunkenly grabbing a titty at a dive bar.

[Auric Demonocles]

There are varying degrees of evil.

[Idle Hands]

You see shades of gray I see black and white.

[Libertarian]

50 shades.

[Mr. Soul]

and varying degrees of innocence.

[Sunmonocle Backwards Tophat]

Shouldn't it be "unconsented sexual contact"? If someone consents to something but doesn't want to do it, their consent wasn't necessarily coerced. And "want" has no time limit, so regret comes into play.

And someone should tell poster girl that most criticism of her persecutionmongering stems from the fact that many of her "rapists" don't know they're raping. Can you think of any other serious crime where the accused can have so little idea they did anything wrong? Drug distribution is an acceptable answer.

[SugarFree]

I don't where they controlled for "on-campus by another student" and "rape committed on campus by a townie."

[Lord Humungus]

Good point. My ol' Alma Mater was fringed by ghetto to the east and north. Lots of muggings of college kids who went to the wrong side of town.

[SugarFree]

Same issue here.

[Auric Demonocles]

2.1 per 1,000 women in 2010.

This is the far cry from the "Look to your left and to your right. One of the three of you will be involved in a sexually assault by the time you graduate." I got in freshmen orientation in the mid 2000s.

[Raven Nation]

Good grief! They actually used that line?

That's from Paper Chase, right?

[Auric Demonocles]

Yes.

I don't know. I've never heard of that, let alone seen it. Maybe?

[Raven Nation]

I was close. From Wikipedia:

The school maintained a relatively uncompetitive admissions process, but "weeded out" a large number of first year students. This gave rise to the urban legend of a dean at the school telling incoming students, "Look to your left, look to your right, because one of you won't be here by the end of the year."[19] Scott Turow's memoir One L and John Jay Osborn's novel The Paper Chase describe such an environment.

[Rich]

What does "being involved in a sexual assault" entail mean? Does it include watching porn?

[Sevo]

http://instantrimshot.com/

[Sevo]

"Look to your left and to your right. It better be a damn long line to see one of you who will be involved in a sexually assault by the time you graduate."

[Lord Humungus]

When I went to college, it was a wasteland of rape. Why my GF could hardly make it to class without getting raped 3-4X. And that's when she drove. Walking meant dodging one rape van after another.

[Old Man With Candy]

Please pass along my apologies to her. She just looked young.

[Brett L]

I've seen the company you kept in the wasteland. This doesn't sruprise me.

[some guy]

...reported sexual offense rates at colleges and universities in general appear to be somewhat below the national average of reported rapes and sexual assaults.

But a lot of the victims at college are cute, young, middle-upper class, "educated", white girls. Hence the outcry.

[Sevo]

And if the oh, so caring admin dept doesn't jump up and down, why an endowment might slip by.

[Swiss Servator, CH verlort :(]

That is what John once labeled concern for "top shelf white girls"

[kinnath]

0.41

[Warty]

I note that Penn State is the rapiest.

[Auric Demonocles]

A reasonable guess, but that distinction seems to go to Gallaudet University, whoever the hell they are.

[Raven Nation]

I think that's the university for the hearing challenged in NYC.

[JW]

IT'S IN DC.

[Closed captioned for the hearing impaired]

[Raven Nation]

+1 Service for the differently abled.

[Auric Demonocles]

But look at that Penn State trend:

2010: 4

2011: 24

2012: 56

[Warty]

R=P*e^S, where R is the rape rate and S and P are the Sandusky and Paterno constants.

[Auric Demonocles]

It's not a function of time?

[Warty]

Good point. S and P should be functions of time, not constants.

[Andrew S.]

GALLAUDET IS A COLLEGE FOR THE DEAF.

IT'S IN WASHINGTON DC.

DID YOU HEAR ME? I SAID WASHINGTON DC.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

I think I see the problem - the sign for "no" is a finger gesture which, to a drunk guy,* might look like a sex act.

*OK, a *very* drunk guy

http://www.lifeprint.com/asl10.....s/n/no.htm

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Why do rapists at Gallaudet only use one hand to hold down their victims?

So they can moan with the other hand!

[EDG reppin' LBC]

That was pretty rude.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Yeah, I'm sorry.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Rude. But funny.

[GILMORE]

That was pretty classic

[Scruffy Nerfherder]

Gallaudet can party down like nobody else.

[kinnath]

Grinnell College; private non-profit liberal arts college; expensive with the vast majority of students from out of state: 10.75

[Brendan]

Lots of money, sense of entitlement, regionalism, and minimal chance of gainful employment for years.

Put together that sounds like the perfect storm to encourage rapists.
-By not sleeping with me, you're denying me my sexual rights.

-I (think I) can afford to make this go away if one of these idiot cops in this backwards place decide I did something wrong.

-If somehow my right to choose who I have sex with are violated and I get a record, what's it going to do, hurt my chances at working as a street mime or coffee pourer?

[kinnath]

Or it could be that wealthy white women studying liberal arts are way more likely to file a complaint after indiscriminate sex.

[califernian]

^THIS

[Apple]

My Alma Mater, a small , very progressive liberal arts school in a red state - 2.88

The state university, a huge party school - 0.18

Something doesn't seem quite right.

[Brendan]

Literally can swing either way.

By not having sex with me, you're attacking my rights and I don't have to put up with that, OR by asking me twice to have sex, you're forcing me to have sex with you.

[JW]

There's a distinct New England tilt to the rapiest schools.

[Zeb]

Or at least the schools with the highest rates of reported rapes. I suspect that a lot of the differences have to do with the propensity of students to report certain kinds of things as sexual assaults.

[JW]

Which makes Weslyan make complete sense. I have no doubt that "rape" is a very fluid term there.

[Brendan]

True, threatening to end a relationship if the person doesn't have sex falls under some people's definition of rape (or at least attempted rape).

[Sevo]

"There's a distinct New England tilt to the rapiest schools."

You been through a winter up there?

[wareagle]

I'd say it seems exactly right. Girls at the state school who got drunk and buyer's remorse are less likely to attempt to criminalize the incident.

[Bill Dalasio]

Pretty much what kinnath said. Your alma mater probably has a lot more students who would call a drunken hookup rape than the state university.

[JW]

.24. Clearly, not enough males at my school were taught to rape.

[Mensan]

Only 0.07 for FSU. For comparison, when I was there '07-'10, there were usually one to three armed robberies and/or batteries on campus per week. And a university employee was raped in one of the libraries late one night. That led to TSA style checkpoints and swiping of a university ID to enter and exit the libraries.

The crime problems on the FSU campus however rarely originated with the student body. Rather, the students were normally the victims and the assailants were usually residents of the campus-adjacent Frenchtown neighborhood, which is widely regarded as Tallahassee's "ghetto."

[EDG reppin' LBC]

0.07 for me too.

[Brett L]

I was there at the same time, but the only thing I took at the main campus were chemistry classes, in the old building.

[The Last American Hero]

What the hell's going on at Amherst? At first I thought their avg was high because it's a tiny school, but the raw number of assaults are comparable to the Big Ten schools, which are about 20-25 times larger.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

Nobody's going to link to this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rS6mZUo3fg

[wareagle]

.04...I can envision a couple of the more strident feminist professors looking for ways to call BS on such a small number. Apparently not much patriarchy in rural east AL.

[GILMORE]

"There, however, are significant outliers like Reed College (9.62 per 1,000 students), Vassar (4.16) and Amherst (9.36)"

Is Ron making a not-so-subtle point here about how some of the most prominently liberal schools in America happen to be veritable petri-dishes of 'Rape Culture'?

The "top 20" places likely to report sexual misconduct? Its like PATRIARCHY'S GREATEST HITS!?! Don't worry - Bryn Maywr and Sarah Lawrence were *still* in the top 50.

School / Offenses reported per 1,000

Gallaudet University 11.39
Grinnell College 10.75
Reed College 9.62
Amherst College 9.36
Hampshire College 8.9
Swarthmore College 7.73
Connecticut College 6.21
Westminster College 5.49
Randolph-Macon College 5.34
Wittenberg University 5.28
Williams College 5.18
Bard College 5.12
Bates College 4.56
Catawba College 4.49
Willamette University 4.44
Ohio Wesleyan 4.4
Ursinus College 4.17
Vassar College 4.16
Franklin and Marshall 3.81
Hamilton College 3.72
Wheaton College 3.71

[GILMORE]

Somehow, large schools (25-30,000) like U.Wisconsin (where everyone is pretty much drunk all the time), and Colorado Springs (where everyone is pretty much drunk and high all the time) and Southern Nevada (where most of the student body is on parole) manage to stay under the "1 per 1000" mark ...

..wheras your cloistered liberal arts schools in New England (which are basically idyllic progressive communes where everyone's ovarian cycles are in perfect synch) appear to be some kind of Battle Royale / Bad Boys prison camps where a person is likely to be viciously molested *in the middle of a seminar on the feminist psychoanalytics of Carol Gilligan*...

Naturally = the accepted wisdom here will be 'everyone else is under-reporting'.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Based on that list it would seem that "rape culture" is synonymous with "Deaf culture".

I now call forth a tide of tasteless jokes about how "No doesn't mean No if he can't hear you" or "You can't sign no if you're hands are tied up".

[GILMORE]

true story =

i have a thing for playing pool in shitty bars. One of the shitty bars i used to like to go to for pickup games was "The 119" (now defunct?) - something of an oddity of being a 'dive bar' right in union square; most notable for being where college kids(used to?) get wasted right before going to Irving Plaza to see whatever live-music thing was hip. It was genuinely grimy in a way you can only appreciate for whom it *keeps out* = zero b&t crowd, no yuppies, no guidos, etc.

Anyway, one night i'm in there, and its weirdly *simultaneously crowded and silent*.

I'm playing pool and don't pay attention to anyone. I get a beer and everyone around me is texting furiously. I start bitching at my pool buddy = "look at these fucking people, they don't even talk anymore... its like, 'hey lets go out together and then text people and ignore each other! fucking lame. and i go to the bathroom and have to tap like *20* people on the shoulder to get the fuck out of the way...

...its about a half-hour later a guy hits me up for a light *by gesturing* when it hits me = OMG, there's 100 deaf people in here. And they're all texting each other because its too dark.

The upside was that I beat like 2 other people to this realization, and then played a little, "Ok, guys = guess what's wrong with this picture"-trivia game to see if they'd put 2+2 together as well.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Funny.

[Swiss Servator, CH verlort :(]

0.22 and 0.50 for mine....hmmm. Apparently that drive to get a STEVE SMITH Chair in Rape Studies failed.

[Bill Dalasio]

My college was all guys, but they scored 1.85. Now I'm disturbed.

[GILMORE]

+1 pretty mouth

[OldMexican]

I thought there was an epidemic of sexual assault and rape in all campuses in the United States. At least, the feminists told me so, so it must be true.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

Lower the drinking age to 18. College kids are going to get drunk anyway, and they'll be much safer doing it legally in a campus bar than pounding Jello shots in a frat house.