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| The law of unintended consequences: Is Jeanne Clery the reason university presidents can't stop rape? |
MILESTONES IN CAMPUS RAPE (The sad story so far…)
- 1957. American Sociological Review publishes Clifford Kirkpatrick and Eugene Kanin’s “Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus.” Their article claims/predicts that college men use secrecy and stigma to pressure women in sexual situations.
- 1986. Jeanne Clery is raped and murdered in her dorm room. She is a freshman at Lehigh University, an idyllic campus she and her parents had fallen in love with. Though Jeanne is initially interested in Tulane, she settles on the Pennsylvania school because it “feels safer.”
- 1987. Mary Koss (the Arizona psych professor who coined the phrase “date rape”) publishes what is still (astoundingly) the only national survey of college men on the topic of sexual assault. She finds to her dismay that, while 7.7% (later updated to 11%) of male students volunteer anonymously that they have engaged in or attempted forced sex, almost none of them consider it a crime. They don’t think of themselves as sexual offenders, says Koss, because “they faced no negative consequences. No accusation. No shame. No punishment.”
- 1990. Congress passes “The Student Right-To-Know Act.” Also called “The Clery Act,” the legislation links federal college funding to the public reporting of campus crime statistics.
- 2006. Laura Dickenson is murdered at Eastern Michigan University. News of the crime is kept from EMU constituents for two years. In the wake of the cover-up, the board of regents fires the school’s president and vice president for student affairs. The Department of Education fines EMU $357,500 (a record at the time) for violations of the Clery Act.
- 2012. Penn State’s assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is found guilty of 45 counts of sexual abuse. A grand jury investigated the school’s president, vice-president, athletic director, head football coach, (leading all to dismissal or resignation) and several other high-level school officials for perjury in a decades-long cover-up of Sandusky’s misdeeds. The NCAA and Big Ten fined Penn State a total of $73 million. To date, the school has settled civil suits with Sandusky’s victims for another $60 million.
- 2014. President Obama responds to the “epidemic” of campus rape with policy and publicity initiatives. Branding rape an impediment to both genders’ equal access to education, the administration releases a list of 55 colleges which are under investigation for violating Title IX’s anti-discrimination provisions. It is the first time such a list has been made public.
- 2014. Rolling Stone publishes an exposé of gang rape at the University of Virginia. UVA president Teresa Sullivan abruptly cancels a National Press Club address to deal with the fall-out. Magazine editors roll back their support for the article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely. Erdely's compassion for the article's subject, "Jackie," apparently led to imbalanced journalism (she didn't interview the accused rapists or check some basic facts of the incident). Some say Erdely has "wrecked a year of progress for rape victims."
WHY COLLEGES CAN’T FIX IT
It’s hard to hail this march of events as progress. Instead, these seem to be predictable chapters in a story of national impotence. Considering these milestones as a whole, is it obvious to anyone else? College administrators simply cannot fix this problem.
According to recent profiles by the Council of Independent Colleges and the American Council on Education, college presidents are 61-year-old white men. They are full-time faculty members (most often holding the Ed.D.) who became Chief Academic Officers before graduating to the Presidency. Their most time-consuming duties are those they hold in common with private-sector CEOs: fundraising, budgeting, and community relations.
They are not officers of the court. They are not collectors of physical evidence. They are not interrogators. They are neither enforcers of law nor guarantors of public order. In fact, college presidents report that risk management and legal issues are among the duties they’re least prepared to execute.
Yet they are charged with reversing one of this nation’s highest-profile crime waves. Worse, they’re told they must “change the culture.” They must spearhead an initiative to alter the way men and women think about themselves as sexual beings. And they must effect this sea-change in what Mary Koss describes as an environment rich in “situational factors for sexual abuse: a population that is primarily made up of young single people and lots of underage drinking.”
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| Illustration by John Ritter for Rolling Stone |
As if that weren’t enough, consider the financial consequences of getting it wrong. Transparent reporting of rape and other violent crimes can torpedo an institution’s reputation. Imagine a glossy UVA brochure lying casually atop the November 19 issue of Rolling Stone. The juxtaposition is a recipe for decreased enrollment. Opaque or inaccurate reporting — never mind actually mishandling a case’s evidence or testimony — risks criminal prosecution, civil suits, substantive fines, and the loss of federal financial aid. The “damned-if-you-do” stakes are just too incredibly high.
Given their prevailing skill set, college administrators cannot possibly get this right. It is patently unfair (to policy makers, to trustees, to administrators, to accusers and accused, to victims, to advocates, to parents) for anyone to think otherwise.
9-1-1
Colleges should no longer function as quasi-autonomous principalities like Liechtenstein or the Vatican, somehow excused from the full jurisdiction of a municipal police force. If someone gets raped, call the police. Not a campus safety officer. Not a faculty mentor. A real live, honest-to-god, badge-and-revolver cop.
Because rape is a crime. It is a crime. Americans know how to respond to crime. Somebody steals your iPhone. Call the police. You’re rear-ended at a stop light. Call the police. You find a dead body. Call the police.
But when a co-ed tells the R.A. on her floor she’s been raped… suddenly nobody knows what to do. We equivocate about whether such a claim merits our full legal intervention. We suddenly opt out of a chain of jurisprudence in favor of the tender counsel of administrators and safety officers.
By the by, I’m not calling for colleges to rid themselves of their safety personnel (though I wouldn’t be the first to suggest we can use vastly fewer administrators). They’re a useful bunch who bring order. They direct traffic for large sporting events. They offer late-night escorts to the dorm. They’re schooled in first aid. Their mere presence deters violence and property crime.
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| Ever wonder how this law enforcement professional might handle a rape case? |
They remind us of an “aw-shucks” Mayberry time when wise benevolence protected the future reputations of alums from the indiscretions of their own youth. Retired constables stood between adolescent stupidity and the cold, inflexible hammer of the law. “Gee, Officer Krupke, nothing to see here. Just some high-spirited pledges sneaking around with a rival team’s mascot.”
I don’t begrudge us our nostalgia. And I’m not naïve about the current state of American police. It’s tempting to cite corruption, militarization, and diversity issues as reasons to keep a criminal investigation largely “in house.” But municipal cops have one thing working very strongly in their favor. They’re generally not conflicted by some duty to uphold the good name of the college. Cops don’t have to raise funds for the new athletic center.
A FUTURE OF BRAVE MISERY
College administrators cannot move the nation from its current silence and shame to a future in which we consistently treat rape as crime. At best, the CEOs of higher education (and those they hire) are tortured to inertia by a conflict of interests. It's unreasonable to expect that colleges will vigilantly police themselves, transparently report their failings, and fix the problem of sexual assault. Freedoms are seldom advanced by the empowered status quo. Instead, civil liberties are purchased with an ancient currency: years of brave misery suffered by unjustly stigmatized victims.
College administrators cannot move the nation from its current silence and shame to a future in which we consistently treat rape as crime. At best, the CEOs of higher education (and those they hire) are tortured to inertia by a conflict of interests. It's unreasonable to expect that colleges will vigilantly police themselves, transparently report their failings, and fix the problem of sexual assault. Freedoms are seldom advanced by the empowered status quo. Instead, civil liberties are purchased with an ancient currency: years of brave misery suffered by unjustly stigmatized victims.
