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.

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.

And Brenda, while I agree that this was a better-than-average article, trotting out that 1 in 4 nonsense is pointless at best.

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.