WHEN NOT HAVING ENOUGH ACTUAL RAPES IS PROBLEMATIC: Sex assault activists upset reality doesn’t conform to their beliefs.
Activists on at least two college campuses are upset that their universities aren’t showing the “epidemic” levels of sexual assault the activists believe exist.
At the University of Albany, the director of the school’s Advocacy Center for Sexual Assault, Carol Stenger, bemoaned the idea of schools wanting zero reports of sexual assault. Shouldn’t schools want zero reports? At least if it means there weren’t any sexual assaults? Well, that’s not what Stenger wants.
“But how could we have a zero? There are 17,000 students here. We know the national statistics. It’s happening everywhere,” Stenger said. “If we increase that reporting, that means more people are getting assistance. And assistance is the fastest way to healing.”
On one level I can see Stenger’s point: More reports could mean more people feel comfortable coming forward.
And there weren’t zero reports at Albany in the previous school year. There weren’t the thousands of reports that Stenger seems to want in order to fall in line with debunked national statistics (the claim that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college), either.
In the past year, Albany had 28 reports of sexual assault, twice as many as it had before Stenger opened her advocacy center. To get the number in line with the national statistics Stenger mentions that there would need to be more than 1,700 reports (population of 17,280, about half being women, and a fifth of them allegedly being sexually assaulted). Oh, and all 1,700 of those reports would have to be true.
For the record, those 28 reports don’t break down to what alarmist national statistics say they should.
“Nine of them were from students who asked the university not to take action. Six resulted in disciplinary proceedings that led to two student expulsions and one persona non grata order against a nonstudent,” the Times Union reported. “Six were from third parties (when reached, the alleged victims either denied any violence occurred or declined to speak). Four involved assailants whose identities were unknown. Three were outside the university’s jurisdiction.”
What’s missing here is police involvement in what are, last time I checked, still crimes.
Remember, this is all about shaming men and empowering campus activists and educrats. It has nothing to do with actually protecting students:
A more alarming issue going on at Albany beyond the school’s desire for more reports is that the person responsible for carrying out an allegedly fair adjudication process, Title IX coordinator Chantelle Cleary, is also an advocate for accusers.
“Her duties include compliance, prevention and education around sexual assault, but her biggest task is investigating reports of assault and completing reports that help the university make a finding of responsibility,” wrote the Times Union. (Emphasis added.)
So, her job is to find students responsible? Not find the truth? Even the Education Department thinks that’s a conflict of interest. She’s supposed to investigate, not advocate. If this is the way she operates, then accused students at Albany should immediately hire a lawyer, because they probably aren’t getting a fair investigation or hearing.
That’s my advice to any accused student at any school. But doesn’t a pervasive system of male-targeting and denials of due process constitute a hostile educational environment based on sex? I think that it does.