by Jillian Hewitt
Following a year-long investigation, the Center for Public Integrity and National Public Radio recently published a series of articles (complimented by on-air stories) about sexual assault on college campuses. Given the recent dialogue at Princeton about sexual assault, I wanted to bring this particular issue to light because I think it gives us some much-needed perspective regarding assumptions about men who commit sexual assault on campus.
Based on some of the recent discussion in the Prince, one might get the impression that every innocent guy who has sex with a girl who isn’t sober might be a rapist. Moreover, as the CPI/NPR article notes, the perception of rapists on campus is that they are regular guys who “made a one-time, bad decision.” However, to maintain these assumptions is to trivialize the issue—it’s difficult to take date rape seriously if our vision of a date rapist is so radically different from our vision of a “worse” kind of rapist.
In fact, the Center found that most college rapists who have not been convicted (or even charged, in most cases) closely resemble those rapists who are in prison for their crimes. A psychologist, David Lisak, spent twenty years surveying college men, asking questions like “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with an adult when they didn’t want to because you used physical force (twisting their arm, holding them down, etc.) if they didn’t cooperate?” or “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your advances?” 1 in 16 respondents said yes to these or similar questions, and 9 in 10 rapes on college campuses are committed by repeat predators.
So here’s what we’ve got—rape is happening on campuses. The men who are committing the rapes are doing so over and over again, in many cases. When the rapes are reported to the universities’ discipline committees, the offenders usually go (relatively) unpunished. For instance, CPI found that only 10-25% of those found guilty of sexual assault by disciplinary committees were expelled from school.
This might be because—as opposed to in the criminal justice system—infractions are often viewed by University disciplinary boards as “teachable moments.” That is, the offenders are viewed as those good guys who made a one-time mistake, and thus as deserving of a second chance. However, most of the evidence points to the contrary—that offenders are repeat predators who may not regret their actions. I’m not suggesting that university discipline committees should assume that every student accused of sexual assault is a repeat-rapist; rather, I am emphasizing the importance of approaching sexual assault on campus with an attitude that is as free of assumptions as possible, whether they be about the victim or the accused.
image from Captain Midnight‘s flickr
Jillian, thank you so much for this wonderful contribution to the dialogue.
People often wonder how it is even possible that 1/4 college women are victims of attempted assault by the time they graduate. They think the statistic is “too high” to be true.
The problem is exactly what you so clearly articulated: assuming that a rapist has made a one-time mistake. It’s not simply that 1/4 of the male population attempts to assault 1/4 of the female population; data suggests that most offenders repeat their crimes over time. That means that offenders on campus–yes, students among us–perpetrate not just once every few months, but potentially as often as every weekend, or with every opportunity that arises, be it in a romantic relationship, or with or without the aid of alcohol (and always with the aid of our society’s victim-blaming, body-shaming, “mistake”-forgiving rhetoric). That’s a lot of victims over four years at an undergraduate institution.
Serious question, why don’t women report these incidents to the police? They’re apparently willing to report it to the university. Is it because they know there is a more serious inquiry and a more serious consequence if they get the government involved? that there are consequences for false accusers?
And Brenda, while I agree that this was a better-than-average article, trotting out that 1 in 4 nonsense is pointless at best.
Thanks for putting the misguided discourse on ambiguity in context.
Thanks for the comments guys…
As to why women don’t report these incidents to police but seem willing to report them to their Universities, I think we might be overestimating the number of women who report them to Universities as well. That being said, I can think of a couple reasons that going to the school’s disciplinary board might seem a less daunting/painful process than going go the police. This, however, is my own personal speculation.
At least at our school, we have an organization that exists primarily for the purposes of providing victims with someone to talk to (SHARE). Providing an outlet who is trusting, open, and who is usually about the same age as the victim might make that victim feel more comfortable with going to the University because the organization (SHARE) itself is a part of the University. In this way, going to the disciplinary board of Princeton might feel more “personal” and less daunting than going to the police. The victim might feel more a part of a campus community that she or he feels a part of the broader community. She or he might, reasonably, feel that their experience will be dealt with with more sensitivity or with a less degree of visibility, which the victim might be wary of. Again this is all personal speculation, but I absolutely do not think it has anything to do with the victim feeling that he or she would be able to more easily get away with a false accusation.
I grant that it is more comfortable for people who think they have been raped/assaulted to talk to the university instead of the police. But when they do this, they can’t really complain when the verdict and punishment are not what they feel the alleged perp deserved, because the university is not the justice system. The university may have a broader view of reasonable doubt than a jury would, especially given their incentive to make their campus look like a safe place. University officials are not trained in evidence collection, judging or other such things, as public officials are. Even if the university “convicts”, the harshest penalty they can give is expulsion, which is well short of what an actual rapist deserves. So while I can see why women would be drawn to SHARE, which I would hazard is somewhat less skeptical about their testimony and somewhat more supportive than the police are, if they want a chance at justice they need to go to the justice system.
This seems fairly obvious to me, and since you point out some legitimate flaws in the way the university handles these things, I would imagine that you agree.
The other explanation I can think of for why women would go to the university and not the police is that they themselves have two conceptions of rape, such that something might qualify as “college rape” (e.g. drunk sex) without qualifying as “rape rape” (e.g. forcible penetration). Thus one might think the university was the “court” one might appeal to in the former case, while the police and the actual court system would be the resort in the latter. Since most rapes on college campuses are “college rape” in the sense I’ve indicated, it would then make sense for most women who think themselves victims to go to the university, as indeed they do.
This theory, whatever you think of its plausibility, has obviously not been proven and may not be provable at all. And yet it still might be true.