{"id":26904,"date":"2014-07-19T10:04:02","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T15:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26904"},"modified":"2014-07-19T10:04:02","modified_gmt":"2014-07-19T15:04:02","slug":"california-moves-to-pressure-universities-over-sexual-assault-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/19\/california-moves-to-pressure-universities-over-sexual-assault-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"California moves to pressure universities over sexual assault numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Boychuk<\/a> explains how California legislators are using their financial muscle to force colleges and universities to crack down on the epidemic of sexual assault in the state’s institutions of higher education. As we’re often told, women in university are at great risk of sexual assault — figures from one in four to one in five are often quoted — yet the universities are not punishing anywhere near that proportion of male students. To lawmakers, this is proof positive that university administrations are not taking the dangers seriously enough and they’re going to use all the tools at hand to force that to change.<\/p>\n

[…] at a June hearing of the California State Assembly Higher Education and Joint Legislative Audit committees, chairman Das Williams couldn\u2019t understand why the number of students disciplined for sexual misconduct was so low. A University of California at Berkeley administrator, for example, reported just 10 suspensions or expulsions out of 43 cases involving non-consensual sex over the last six years. How could that possibly be?<\/p>\n

Williams, a Santa Barbara Democrat, concluded that the number of suspensions and expulsions of these alleged perpetrators of sexual violence had to increase. The consequences for student assailants are \u201cnot significant enough to act as a deterrent,\u201d he warned \u2014 failing to consider that perhaps the problem of campus sexual violence isn\u2019t as widespread as he\u2019d been led to believe. In any event, Williams\u2019s point was unmistakable: California\u2019s universities had better start punishing more alleged offenders, or there will be consequences for the universities<\/em>. And if administrators need a lower standard of proof to boost punishments, he and his colleagues would be more than happy to give it to them.<\/p>\n

Williams is promising a slate of bills early next year that would mandate training for all university employees to respond to, and intervene to prevent, sexual assault, and, more significantly, to beef up punishments for alleged assailants. \u201cRape is a very difficult thing to prosecute,\u201d he told<\/a> the Sacramento Bee<\/em>. Because most college disciplinary boards already use the lower \u201cpreponderance of evidence\u201d standard \u2014 as opposed to the more rigorous \u201creasonable doubt\u201d standard that criminal courts apply \u2014 \u201cthere is a real role that schools can play that law enforcement can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reigning assumption in Sacramento \u2014 and Washington, D.C., for that matter \u2014 is that universities aren\u2019t taking the problem of campus sexual assault seriously enough. A state audit released in June drew precisely that conclusion, and recommended that California\u2019s state universities \u201cdo more to appropriately educate students on sexual harassment and sexual violence.\u201d Every campus has a rape crisis center of some kind, with counselors on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every campus police department offers rape defense programs. \u201cTake Back the Night<\/a>\u201d programs are ubiquitous. Is more training and \u201ceducation\u201d \u2014 meaning more bureaucracy \u2014 really the answer? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can certainly understand the concern: with so many young women suffering (although not necessarily reporting the criminal acts), the universities must be literal predator paradises, as the sexual assault rate in the general population is so much lower than on campus (Heather Mac Donald noted that the sexual assault rate in New Orleans in 2012 was only .0234 percent, making it a far safer place for women than any Californian university).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Boychuk explains how California legislators are using their financial muscle to force colleges and universities to crack down on the epidemic of sexual assault in the state’s institutions of higher education. As we’re often told, women in university are at great risk of sexual assault — figures from one in four to one in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,13],"tags":[35,343,764,43],"class_list":["post-26904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-usa","tag-california","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-university","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6ZW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26905,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions\/26905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}