Rape on Campus | Introduction
In 1990, a feminist group from Antioch College demanded that the administration of the college institute a sexual consent policy binding upon all Antioch students. The group, Womyn of Antioch, sought the policy out of frustration after two rapes were reported that year on campus, neither of which was prosecuted. To demonstrate their resolve, they threatened the college with “radical, physical actions” if their demands were not met. The campus furor instigated by the Womyn of Antioch resulted in a formal “Sexual Consent Policy,” issued in 1992.
Drawn up by a committee of students, faculty, and administrators, the policy was primarily designed to prevent and—when that failed—deal with sexual offenses on campus. The process by which the plan would realize its purpose was quite straightforward. One party involved in an intimate encounter would be required to obtain the consent of the other party before the encounter could advance further. Should consent be given and the encounter escalate in intimacy, consent would be required at every level of intimacy. The need for graduated consent is clearly and unequivocally mandated on page one of the policy:
If the level of sexual intimacy increases during an interaction (i.e., if two people move from kissing while fully clothed—which is one level—to undressing for direct physical contact, which is another level), the people involved need to express their clear verbal consent before moving to that new level. If one person wants to initiate moving to a higher level of sexual intimacy in an interaction, that person is responsible for getting the verbal consent of the other person( s) involved before moving to that level.
The principle behind the Antioch policy is simple both in theory and practice. If someone consents to an intimate act at any and every level of intimacy, he or she cannot claim rape after the fact. However, if someone refuses to consent, then any intimate act following the refusal can be labeled as forcible sex and dealt with accordingly.
As word of the policy escaped the campus of the small (650 students) liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the unexpected occurred. Journalists of all political persuasions, both wags and the more serious minded, set upon the Antioch plan with a relish usually reserved for reports of wayward royalty. What ordinarily would have remained a local affair became, with almost comedic effect, a national media event. Ignoring the purpose of the plan, most commentators chose to focus instead upon the process, namely, the need for consent. Typical of the comments was an article by Jeffrey Hart that appeared in the conservative publication Human Events. Homing in on the specificity of the Antioch rules, Hart wrote that “if you undo a button without verbal permission, then the director of the Sexual Prevention and Survivor Advocacy Program has got you in his or her claws.” Not to be outdone by written derision, the New Yorker ridiculed the Antioch plan with a cartoon in which Dracula intones to his young victim: “And now may I bite your neck?”
However, not all reactions to the Antioch Sexual Consent Policy were negative. In a campus publication, Alan E. Guskin, the president of Antioch, while acknowledging that “there has been criticism and much fun poked at Antioch’s policy,” quoted a letter that appeared in the November 29, 1993, issue of the New Yorker. In it, the writer praises the policy as a “subtle and imaginative mandate” providing undergraduates with an opportunity “to discover that wordplay and foreplay can be happily entwined.” Others agree with Eric Fassin, a professor at New York University, who argues that the Antioch rules “help dispel the illusion that sexuality is a state of nature individuals must experience outside the social contract, and that eroticism cannot exist within the conventions of language.”
In reality, the Antioch Policy and the turbulence fomented in its wake are a reaction to and an indication of what is perceived by many as a growing blight on America’s campuses: an unconscionable number of sexual assaults on female students. In 1982, Ms. magazine obtained a $267,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a nationwide survey to determine the degree to which sexual assaults on college campuses do occur. Ms. commissioned Mary Koss, a psychiatry professor at the University of Arizona, to conduct the survey, named the Campus Project on Sexual Assault. After a comprehensive three-year study, which included a “Sexual Experiences Survey” administered to 8,159 college students throughout the United States, Koss announced that “25 percent of women in college have been the victims of rape or attempted rape.” In their book Sexual Assault on Campus, Carol Bohmer and Andrea Parrot claim that the 25 percent figure declared in the Koss study still prevails. They argue that “data from recent studies done nationally reveal that between 20 and 25 percent of college women have experienced forced sex (including rape, oral sex, anal sex, and other forms of penetration) at some time during their college careers.” Although it is a decade old, the Koss study is still widely heralded as illustrative of the extent of the campus rape problem.
The results of the Koss study have been challenged by many. It is widely argued that Mary Koss and her supporters redefined sexual deviancy to include categories of behavior that had not previously been characterized as forcible rape. As a result, the statistics revealing a high percentage of sexual assaults on campus may be, at best, unreliable and inaccurate. Charles Krauthammer, a contributing editor of the New Republic, argues this point in the March/April 1994 issue of Current. He writes:
Rape has been expanded by Koss and other researchers to include behavior that you and I would not recognize as rape. And not just you and I—the supposed victims themselves do not recognize it as rape. In the Koss study, 73 percent of the women she labeled as rape victims did not consider themselves to have been raped. Fully 42 percent had further sexual relations with the so-called rapist.
Despite the polemics, there is one aspect of the campus rape issue upon which most would probably agree: Whatever the number of rapes, the majority of perpetrators go untried and unpunished. Although it is widely recognized that sexual assaults on college campuses do occur with some frequency, the numbers of reported cases of rape remain small; and of those brought to the attention of campus authorities, the number that eventuate in judicial proceedings is far smaller still. There are many reasons for this. Historically, campus authorities have been reticent to take action, convinced that it might give rise to bad publicity directed at the college and ultimately reflect poorly upon the authorities themselves. Moreover, large numbers of victims tend to remain silent, fearing that they themselves may be accused of provoking the rape. Additional victim fears include the possibility of reprisals by the accused and of being stigmatized by the entire college community. Finally, the majority of victims are not willing to undergo the trauma and publicity of a rape hearing on campus when experience whispers that assailants often get off without even a mild rebuke.
The extent of the problem of sexual assault, both on campus and in the nation at large, is evidenced by the growing media attention focusing upon sexual crimes, as well as the large number of colleges and universities that have begun instituting programs and policies to prevent and prosecute campus rape. At Issue: Rape on Campus offers the reader a spectrum of opinions drawn from within and without academia dealing with the issue of campus rape and the broader issue of rape in society.
