{"id":294,"date":"2014-09-05T07:47:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/09\/campus-sexual-assault-ill-believe-its-a-crisis-when.html"},"modified":"2015-03-01T22:21:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-02T04:21:14","slug":"campus-sexual-assault-ill-believe-its-a-crisis-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/09\/campus-sexual-assault-ill-believe-its-a-crisis-when.html","title":{"rendered":"Campus Sexual Assault: I’ll believe it’s a crisis when. . ."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This has been floating around for a while:\u00a0 \u201cColumbia student drags mattress with her everywhere until alleged rapist expelled<\/a>,\u201d in this case, from the Today Show, as shared on facebook.<\/p>\n

OK, so it\u2019s more of a camping-type sleeping pad than a regular mattress, judging from the picture, and she\u2019s a visual arts major, so this is \u201cperformance art\u201d and, hence, her senior thesis.\u00a0 The alleged rapist was found \u201cnot guilty\u201d or whatever the equivalent Campus Tribunal terminology is, and presumably she didn\u2019t go to the actual police, because her accusation is that Colombia didn\u2019t handle her case properly.\u00a0 (Whether she believes that the university didn\u2019t follow reasonable rules of evidence, or didn\u2019t give her claim sufficient credence in a he-said, she-said type of situation, isn\u2019t clear, as there are no details on her allegations.)<\/p>\n

But they trot out the same statistic we\u2019ve seen before:\u00a0 \u201cOne in five women are raped or sexually assaulted in college, according to the Centers for Disease Control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, to be honest, I hadn\u2019t realized that it was CDC that had developed this statistic, so I looked this up:\u00a0 it\u2019s from a datasheet<\/a> which says, \u201cIn a study of undergraduate women, 19% experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college\u201d and quotes a study whose name is instructive:\u00a0 \u201cCollege women\u2019s experiences with physically-forced, alcohol- or drug-enabled, and drug-facilitated sexual assault before and since entering college.\u201d\u00a0 Which indicates that this is the same old bit of, \u201cif you had sex, are a woman, and were drunk at the time, you were sexually asaulted.\u201d<\/p>\n

But think about this for a minute:<\/p>\n

Glen Reynolds likes to say of global warming activists who jet to exotic locales (in private jets, to boot) and have enormous mansions, \u201cI\u2019ll believe it\u2019s a crisis when they act<\/i> like it\u2019s a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

This statistic says that, assuming a 4-year college career (considering that some take more, and some leave college earlier, without graduating), every year, one out of 19 women is assaulted. (I did the math.)\u00a0 If that were really true in a real sense of the word, if every year, on average, every female college student knew at least one friend or acquaintance who was assaulted, then the atmosphere would be quite different.\u00a0 An article like Emily Yoffe\u2019s piece in Slate<\/a> from a year ago, arguing that college women shouldn\u2019t be binge drinking, would be treated as common sense rather than as an insult and abrogation of women\u2019s rights.\u00a0 More significantly, future female college students would be looking, first and foremost, at the safety of their chosen schools, and those with high sexual assault rates would find their enrollment falling.\u00a0 The fact that this isn\u2019t happening is a clear sign that this 1 in 5 figure is bogus \u2014 and that the CDC has no business, as a credible organization, promoting it.<\/p>\n

(UPDATE: \u00a0so this is what an \u201cinstalance\u201d looks like. \u00a0Thanks, Glen, and welcome, everyone!)<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/p>\n

I figured that the original study would be behind a paywall, which it was, but, turns out, this was the subject of a Washington Post fact check<\/a>. \u00a0Even without knowing how they developed their data in any detail, the very nature of their data collection raises serious suspicions:<\/p>\n

In the Winter of 2006, researchers used a Web-based survey to interview undergraduates at two large public universities, one in the Midwest and one in the South. A total of 5,446 undergraduate women, between the ages of 18-25, participated as part of a random sample. The survey was anonymous and took about 15 minutes to complete. (Participants received a $10 Amazon.com certificate for participating.) . . . Moreover, the response rate was relatively low.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, their data is about as reliable as Amazon.com customer reviews \u2014 since those who have experienced an assault of some kind, or who have had a defective product in the Amazon analogy, are far more likely to respond than those who haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Another update: \u00a0Apparently, trying to access the study directly doesn\u2019t work, but the Washington Post link, above, has a link that brings to you a PDF<\/a>. \u00a0So hang tight; I\u2019ll read it after the kids are in bed, or tomorrow at the latest.<\/p>\n

Another update: \u00a0Well, I read the report. \u00a0See here<\/a> for my summary. \u00a0It\u2019s all very murky.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has been floating around for a while:\u00a0 \u201cColumbia student drags mattress with her everywhere until alleged rapist expelled,\u201d in this case, from the Today Show, as shared on facebook. OK, so it\u2019s more of a camping-type sleeping pad than a regular mattress, judging from the picture, and she\u2019s a visual arts major, so this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sexual-assault"],"yoast_head":"\nCampus Sexual Assault: I'll believe it's a crisis when. . .<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This has been floating around for a while:  "Columbia student drags mattress with her everywhere until alleged rapist expelled," in this case, from\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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