Andrew Kaczynski hits the web Wednesday with a clip from the previous day's edition of Fox News' "The Five," in which former Walter Mondale campaign manager and swear-jar donor Bob Beckel opines, “When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?" This all came during a discussion over whether students should be allowed to concealed-carry whilst on campus, which came to a brief caesura when the rest of the "Five" panel paused to make their best WTF faces at Beckel.
Lest you thought the day would never come that I'd find common cause with Eric Bolling and Dana Perino, mark your calendars, because today is that day! And to answer the question, "When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus?" I'm going to go with: How about two days ago? Via Ricardo Navarro, of KION News in Santa Cruz, Calif.:
Santa Cruz Police are investigating a reported rape that occurred Sunday in broad daylight shortly after noon on the campus of UC Santa Cruz.
Also, two days ago, in the NOLA Defender:
A Loyola student was raped by an acquaintance in the university parking garage Friday morning around 4:12 a.m., according to the Loyola University Police Department. Loyola University spokeswoman Meredith Hartley said the university is working with the New Orleans police department in the investigation. She said the rapist was a known acquaintance of the victim.
Here's a story from one week ago:
A former University of Montana quarterback is on trial, accused of raping a fellow student.
The case has rocked the college program and calls into question how they handle reports of sexual assaults.Wednesday, the 21-year-old victim testified that Jordan Johnson forced her to have sex after she invited him to her room to watch a movie.
Here's a Feb. 4 story concerning the controversial decision of Curry College officials to delay informing their campus community of an alleged gang rape that took place on the Milton, Mass., campus:
Curry College administrators waited nearly a week -- until arrests were made -- to notify the campus community of an alleged "group rape" of a student in a school dormitory last month.
The Milton college is now reviewing campus-notification procedures as well as policies for event security and campus visitors after what court documents characterized as a "group rape of a highly intoxicated college student" on Jan. 20.
The victim told the college about the attack on Jan. 22. Three men were arrested on Jan. 25, and a notice to the campus was sent out on Jan. 28.
[...]
Curry College spokeswoman Frances Jackson said the past policy has been to notify the full campus in situations where an assailant is unknown, which was not the case in this instance. Jackson said the administration now is reviewing policies of other educational institutions in similar situations.
There's also a Feb. 4 story of the ongoing police investigation of a particularly chilling rape, caught on video, near Brooklyn College; a Jan. 31 story about Amherst College officials under fire for their actions in the wake of a reported on-campus rape; and also on Jan. 31 a story about a police investigation of a rape that allegedly took place in a Penn State dormitory.
That's what you can find in the past three weeks with five minutes of Googling on the matter of "When was the last time you heard about a rape on campus." But is it really necessary? If on-campus rape had become a thing of the past, as Beckel's glib comment clearly suggests, it would be a phenomenon of world-historical proportions. In actuality, the problem is a persistent one, and as our own William McGuinness reports, colleges actually need to radically rethink their policies on the matter.
None of this may adequately answer the question about whether or not it's prudent for college students to be carrying guns around campus. I am basically in favor of anything that stops a rapist, but the extent to which women gain from guns has been vastly overstated. (As Ruth Marcus noted a few weeks ago, contemporary studies have found that "women are far more likely to be the victims of gun violence than to benefit from using a gun in self-defense." Also, rapists are just as capable of using guns.)
That said, when Bolling corrects Beckel by informing him that on-campus rapes are "rampant," he is absolutely correct, and the evidence backs him up completely.
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