Despite Recent Survey, Federal Government Helps Get Students Drunk and Raped

June 15, 2015 - PRLog -- Although a very recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that most campus sexual assaults occur when students are intoxicated, and that students agree with experts that reducing drinking would reduce sexual assaults, the federal government discourages colleges from even suggesting that students moderate their drinking to reduce such incidents.

        Taxpayers would be outraged to learn that the federal government spends tens of millions of their tax dollars telling people how to avoid automobile accidents, but never once warns against excessive drinking - so as not to embarrass drivers who injure themselves in accidents after they drank to excess.

        Well, it doesn't actually do something quite that stupid, but it does do something almost as foolish: spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on programs telling students how to reduce sexual assaults, but never mentioning alcohol, even though excessive drinking is a leading factor in such assaults.

        More specifically, the guide for obtaining government funds to reduce sexual violence on campus says that campus projects aimed at reducing such assaults which focus primarily on alcohol abuse are considered "out of scope," notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, an expert in the field who has twice been termed by his detractors as a “Radical Feminist,” and is frequently cited on this topic.

        And the Office of Violence Against Women [OVW] even goes so far as to censor those who want to speak out about the connection.  As one victim of this censorship reported, "This starts to censor how we can talk about the issue, .  .  .  I don’t think you are doing young women any favors by saying, We’re not going to tell you that this happens - and be careful about it." The reason given for the censorship, she says, were "focusing on how much students drink . . .  leads to blaming victims."

        According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the reason why colleges are so reluctant to warn women about drinking to excess, and about how it greatly magnifies their chances of being assaulted - what it called a "taboo" subject - is that women who become drunk and are sexually assaulted may blame themselves.

        “While statistics show that alcohol and sex can be a dangerous combination - at least half of students involved in alleged sexual assaults were drinking - campus officials are reluctant to put the two in the same sentence.  The discussion of alcohol and sexual violence is the third rail of discourse,'" it reports.

        But the link between drinking and campus rape is even worse.  A recent study by an insurance organization shows, in 92 percent of the claims with losses, the accuser was under the influence of alcohol, and "more than 60 percent of accusers were so intoxicated that they had no clear memory of the assault."

        It’s obvious that being drunk affects a woman's judgment about whether to have sex, as well as about getting into situations in which being assaulted is far more probable, says Banzhaf.  Furthermore, not being able to testify about what happened can make it difficult if not impossible to prosecute such cases.

        And the idea that most women were plied with alcohol without their knowledge may be a myth.  An article in the Journal of American College Health reports that "most sexual assaults happen after women voluntarily consume alcohol; relatively few occur after they have been given alcohol or drugs without their knowledge."  Yet sexual-assault-prevention programs, it says, "seldom emphasize the important link between women’s use of substances …  and becoming a victim of sexual assault."

        "This is a striking example of how women's lives are being ruined, and millions of dollars of taxpayers' money are being wasted, all because of political correctness run amok.  You can't rationally decide how to best spend taxpayers’ money in grants based upon abstract discussions concerned solely with slogans and sound bites about 'responsibility' and 'blame'," he suggests.

        If a college is given a $50,000 educational grant, it will be far more likely that it will actually reduce the number of women being assaulted on campus if it aimed at persuading women not to drink to excess than if it’s aimed at telling men it’s not nice to rape, just as educational programs warning students to lock up their bicycles is much more effective than programs telling prospective bike thieves not to steal.

        Some activists objected to this simple and logical analogy, saying "a woman is not a bicycle."

        If by that they mean only that women shouldn’t be told to never go out drinking - the equivalent of being forced to keep a bicycle locked up at home - they may have a point, says Banzhaf.

        But making practical suggestions that women take reasonable precautions (e.g., not to drink to excess, not to walk in strange dangerous neighborhoods at night, etc.) - the equivalent of not leaving a bicycle in a public area without any lock at all - is simply a suggestion that people should take reasonable and sensible precautions, nothing more.

        Undoubtedly, a parent who leaves a child locked in a car during a hot summer day, only to find her dead from heat stroke upon his return, is not just embarrassed and "blamed" but also heartbroken, but that certainly doesn't mean we should stop warning about the dangers of leaving a child alone in a car.

        By the way, many feminists agree.  “The real feminist message should be that when you lose the ability to be responsible for yourself, you drastically increase the chances that you will attract the kinds of people who, shall we say, don’t have your best interest at heart. That’s not blaming the victim; that’s trying to prevent more victims.,” wrote Emily Yoffe.

        Similarly, Anne Coughlin, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, worries that by hiding from them the importance of drinking only in moderation, we are “infantilizing women.”

        Rather than simply declaring anti-rape educational programs aimed at women and drinking to excess as "out of scope," at the very least OVW should conduct a simple test.  It should be possible to compare anti-rape educational programs warning about drinking to excess with those stressing other themes: e.g., that men should not rape women, that bystanders should try to intervene, etc.