The Associated Press

Harvard students demonstrate in 1999 following a sexual assault case on campus.

Featured Topic | Posted 1 year 49 weeks ago

Are campus rape statistics inflated?

Rape is the touchiest of topics, but it's a topic that is predominant on many university campuses. Rapes on America's college campuses are among the least reported crimes. According to some experts, as many as 85 percent of college rapes and assaults go unreported.

Eighty percent would be an enormous figure, but it's a difficult estimate to confirm. Could college rapes be overstated? Could the numbers be inflated for ideological reasons? Is it possible to diagnose a problem without accurate data? Or is the horrific nature of the crime of rape impossible to quantify?

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Ben likes: The campus rape myth

Heather Mac Donald/City Journal

Federal law requires colleges to publish reported crimes affecting their students. The numbers of reported sexual assaults -- the law does not require their confirmation -- usually run under half a dozen a year on private campuses, and maybe two to three times that at large public universities. So what reality does lie behind the rape hype? I believe that it's the booze-fueled hookup culture of one-night, or sometimes just partial-night, stands. Students in the '60s demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora's box of boorish, promiscuous behavior that gets cruder each year.

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Joel likes: Predators

David Lisak/New England Journal of Higher Education

Sexual violence remains as much a dirty secret on our campuses as it is in the larger society. It flourishes because to confront it, an institution must be willing to shine a bright light on aspects of itself that are both ugly and painful. One of the most important steps that must be taken is a comprehensive, led-from-the-top campaign to change the community climate such that victims of sexual violence feel comfortable to report attacks to authorities.

Paradoxically then, the first indication that an institution is courageously moving to end sexual violence is almost inevitably an increase in the official tally of that violence. This is not the kind of publicity that most college administrators strive to create.

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