More than 100 college presidents have signed on to a statement calling for a nationwide discussion of whether we should lower the legal drinking age. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last two weeks and need some background information, this editorial covers the basics (and makes clear what camp I’m joining). Important note: As always, this post offers only my views and not SAFER’s views on this topic. We have not discussed the Amythyst Initiative as a group, and have NOT issued any position on the subject.

Although as a former undergrad, a current grad student, and now an adjunct faculty member, as well as an occasional drinker and frequenter of New York City’s many fine drinking establishments, I have a lot of thoughts about college drinking, this is a blog about sexual assault, and I do strive to stay on topic. Conveniently enough, however, some of the best reasons to talk about lowering the drinking age are directly related to sexual assault.

As far as I can tell, aside from a few people afflicted by deeply puritanical impulses that see any kind of fun as morally bankrupt, the general justification for the regulation of alcohol is the desire to avoid or minimize people doing stupid things when they are overly intoxicated. This would lead to the logical conclusion that everyone would focus on minimizing dangerous behaviors, like driving drunk or committing rapes, that are linked with drinking. In my observations of journalists, administrators, and policy people talking about alcohol, sexual assault and college campuses, however, there often seems to be a strange inversion of concern, where tracking, decreasing, and punishing alcohol usage seems to take priority over doing the same for sexual assault. I think the legal drinking age being 21, not 18, is directly responsible for this confusion of priorities (although of course there are a number of other factors that contribute). The argument that the drinking age is the solution to criminal behavior while drinking – the argument that is being advanced by MADD and other proponents of maintaining the drinking age – keeps prevention efforts fixated on maintaining that line. And after a while, that line begins to seem more important than the original dangers that caused that line to be drawn.

An excellent case in point was this story from the University of Portland. A student who reported her sexual assault was told that if she wished to go forward with the college disciplinary process, she would also face discipline for underage drinking! Wish I could say this was an anomaly, but when we hear from survivors about a negative experience with trying to report their sexual assault to their college administration, it almost always involves accusations about the assaulted student’s drinking. If we care about drinking only in so far as it increases the risk of people being hurt, a response to an injury that says the injury deserves additional punishment because it was connected to drinking confuses the, now failed, prevention mechanism for the original crimes that mechanism was intended to prevent. A number of schools have instituted amnesty policies, but others have refused on the grounds that it encourages or enables under-aged student drinking. (A quick summary of amnesty policy pros and cons by a doctor who researches student drinking.) My question is, what’s really the problem, drinking or committing rape? Those who argue against amnesty policies and cling tightly to the age line seem to me to have lost sight of the real problem.

Continue reading →

I’m a little late on this, but while I was away, I missed a most excellent post by brownfemipower. An excerpt:

What will stop violence against women?
What will stop rape?
What will make sex work a choice (clarification: for ALL of the women who are working as sex workers) and not a forced requirement?
What will make sure all children are fed three square meals a day?
What will replace the garbage women are eating with freshly grown produce?
What will dismantle the rape fields migrant women work in?
What will give women workers the power to demand sexism, violence, and pink collar ceilings end?

Sure, an individual can beg and plead and spend more money and get a fancy degree and go into debt and demand and get more power and break through the glass ceiling. And in doing that, that individual may very well convince a man here or there to stop being a dickhead.

But since we are so fond of pointing to how smart the second wavers were I think it’s extraordinarily important to recognize *why* those women were so fucking successful.

They had a movement.

They had a movement of women who got out into the streets and didn’t just demand change, but demanded change with a nice big ass fist of power behind it to back up their demands.

This social justice thing? It’s all about power. And it’s about time those of us who want a better world start thinking about how to get some.

The headline says it all: In India, New Opportunities for Women Draw Anger and Abuse From Men.

You know what’s great about this article? It draws a straight line between rape and women’s threats to male power, making no detours to “western ways” “modern clothing” “provocative behavior” “unsupervised women” or any other attempt to blame women in India for the increase in reported sexual assaults. Also great? Women in India are fighting back and the article draws attention to the work of an activist group as well as the strategies of individuals.

In the weirdly paradoxical way that I’ve gotten use to since writing this blog, the fact that more sexual assaults are being reported in India is actually good news. Women only report when they have some ability to protect themselves from possible repercussions of reporting and some belief that reporting will make a difference. No reports don’t mean no sexual assaults, they just mean no one to safely report to. Just like you want to steer clear of a college that reports zero sexual assaults, you want to steer clear of a country that does as well.

That women gaining access to jobs and therefore more control over their own lives should be seen as a threat by many men is not surprising (it’s no different here), even though it is both tragic and absurd. That the same newspaper that published an editorial about the stupidity of the female sex a mere six months ago would publish such a clear-sighted article about the link between threats to male power and rape is surprising, and I thank the Washington Post (or at least reporter Emily Wax) for that.

(Thanks to Jeff for the tip!)

Apparently there is a new move, notably in Washington and Alabama, to keep registered sex offenders from living in neighborhoods near colleges or universities. As I’ve said about this issue before, I both understand the impetus and worry that overly broad registration requirements and overly restrictive housing limitations are both exaggerating the dangers posed by registered sex offenders and increasing the dangers.

The most dangerous predators for college students, in terms of numbers of sexual assaults committed, are other college students. Most of them are not and never will be registered sex offenders (in part for class reasons and in part because they are more likely to use alcohol to distract from their crime and in part because many of the few cases that are reported are handled by the college, which can’t list people on the registry).

Moreover, the sex offenders registry covers a huge variety of crimes. Some of the convictions are questionable (consensual sex between a freshman and a senior in high school prosecuted as statutory rape for instance), some of the crimes are irrelevant to the proposed regulations (keeping pedophiles away from elementary schools makes sense, keeping them away from college campuses does not), and some of the people on the registry have learned the error of their ways and deserve to make a fresh start (if we don’t believe that, the whole registry begs the question of why they were then let out of jail in the first place). For everyone on the registry, the increasing limits on where they can live pushes more and more of them into a transient existence – sleeping on the streets, unable to hold down a job – and that puts them under higher stress, makes them harder for parole officers to supervise, and increases the risk that they will assault or rape someone again.

Just after reading this article, another came up on our alert (our alert is a very grim read almost all of the time) about a convicted sex offender pleading guilty to the rape and murder of a college student. It’s the story that everyone fears, and I think it’s a good example of why politicians blustering about keeping sex offenders from living near campuses aren’t actually making anyone safer. The attacker, Jerry Inman, wasn’t living near campus, he was wandering around “looking for some place to rob.” He was broke, had no job or other strong community connection to tether him to any place (he appears from the catalog of his crimes to have been wandering aimlessly around the southeast before the murder), and had decided that going back to jail was the best thing for him. What would have kept Tiffany Souers alive would have been better (or any) counseling while Inman was in prison, stronger attempts to anchor him in the community or a profession upon his release, better parolee supervision, and mandatory psychiatric examinations of convicts scheduled for release. But actually trying to address the problem, rather than just force it to move to the next county or state over isn’t unfortunately the way of most politicians.

All of the above said, I do think that colleges and universities should keep an eye out for convicted sex offenders moving to the neighborhood who have a history of preying on college-age women and should be careful about admitting convicted sex offenders whose offenses involved sexual assaults on college-aged women. There should not be any blanket laws or policies, rather universities, in consultation with the local police, should consider the specifics of each individual situation. Registered sex offenders are not the biggest threat around most college campuses – administrations shouldn’t ignore them, but they shouldn’t use them as scapegoats or smokescreens for the real problems on campus either.