The Independent Women’s Forum hosted a panel discussion at the Fund for American Studies to discuss the issue. The group included a former philosophy professor, a journalist, a former State Department official, and a lawyer...True sexual assault and rape are bad enough, aren't they? There should be no reason to try to make them seem worse than they already are.
Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former professor of philosophy, discussed the problems with the statistic that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted on campus that is often promoted by campus feminists. Sommers said the definition of sexual assault used to gather that statistic was far too broad. For example, any sexual experience that occurred while under the influence of alcohol or drugs was counted as a sexual assault.
Sommers said the promotion of false statistics only works against the problem. True cases of rape are diminished when sexual assault is defined so broadly.
Also, universities themselves should not be in the business of investigating actual crimes. No one at a university is trained to do that even moderately well. Law enforcement officers are the correct people to turn to in order to determine if a crime has potentially been committed, and courts of law are the best places to adjudicate guilt or innocence. Get that? Courts of law, not kangaroo courts a la Duke Lacrosse.
Update: Do we really have a campus sexual assault epidemic?
Update #2: A false woman-on-woman assault?
I just read that Duke has just done it again. An Australian senior was expelled and denied his degree because of alleged sexual assault - which was investigated by the local police, who found no grounds for charging him with anything. I hope he sues.
ReplyDeleteAFAIK, none of the Duke faculty who signed the infamous "Gang of 88" letter in the lacrosse case have suffered any adverse consequences. They should have been fired, en masse, for blatantly violating the rights of a student.