Is Marquette Finally Going to Tell the Truth About Campus Date Rape?

Sent out last fall by Marquette: a “Teal Poster” about sexual violence.

It touts the following statistics:

Believe...
“1 in 5 women and 1 in 70 men will experience rape in their lifetime.”
(National Crime Victims Survey, 2007)
“7 out of 10 rape survivors knew their attacker.”
(National Crime Victims Survey, 2007)
“People between the ages of 18 to 24 experience the highest prevalence of stalking, sexual assault an dating violence.”
U.S. Department of Justice (Revised, 2012)
“1 in 4 Stalking victims are cyberstalked”
U.S. Bureau of Justice, 2009

What is missing? Bogus statistics about the incidence of campus date rape.

We have found that our students have been told that 20% of college women are victims of date rape. And indeed, one “training” module that was mandated for all University employees last fall used a somewhat scarier statistic, claiming that 25% of college women are victims of “some sort of sexual assault.”

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We called Susannah Bartlow, director of the Gender and Sexuality Resource Center, which was responsible for the poster. We wanted to ask her whether Marquette is backing off inflated claims about date rape.  We left voice mail, but she never got back to us.

Instead, Brian Dorrington, head public relations guy at Marquette, responded.

(It’s significant that nobody in the Provost’s office will talk to us, but rather gives Dorrington the task of framing an evasive response.)

Dorrington said:

Hi John,

Susannah Bartlow shared your inquiry with me and I’m writing to provide context. This year’s sexual violence prevention poster offers new information and statistics to expand the knowledge base of our university community on this important topic. The information from both posters is accurate and includes widely accepted statistics. We have worked diligently to educate our entire campus community about preventing sexual misconduct. This includes sexual violence prevention and bystander intervention during the past four years and mandatory training for all first-year students.

Dorrington, of course, has completely and entirely avoided our query, which was whether Marquette is backing off of the bogus statistics it has been giving students.  Perhaps he did not understand our query, or perhaps he simply was unwilling to admit that Marquette is backing off something it has been (falsely) telling students.

That colleges (following feminist activists) have been trafficking in bogus, grossly inflated statistics about date rape is not new information.

The first widely noticed article questioning inflated date rape statistics appeared in 1991, written by Berkeley professor Neil Gilbert.

And of course, we have repeatedly blogged on the issue.

Why Inflate the Problem?

The chronic inflation of the problem of sexual assault on campus is the result of the confluence of two forces.

The first is feminism, which casts men as the evil oppressor class. What better metaphor for male evil than the notion that lots of men are raping women. Indeed, why not go beyond that and say that all men are responsible for the prevalence of rape, or that a “rape culture” encompasses all men?

Thus, a certain R. Clifton Spargo from the English Department, in a campus program on sexual violence. . .

. . . rejected the notion that rape is “merely aberrant, deviant behavior,” and told the male members of the audience “you are living in the rape culture.” Where? “On Campus. In the bars.”

The other force is the interests of campus bureaucrats. Hyping “sexual violence” is a justification for programs, and initiatives, workshops, and indoctrination sessions. All which have the effect of inflating the budgets and staffs of campus bureaucrats.

There are a few things that students should be told about rape. The “Teal Poster” is pretty good in this regard. Women should be told that, if a victim of rape, they should not shower, not change their clothes, but go immediately to an Emergency Room. Women should be told to be careful about ever taking a drink if it might possibly contain a date rape drug.

And women ought to be strongly encouraged to report rape. The entire student body should encourage women to report rape and support those who do. This is more likely to happen if Marquette can (honestly) tell students that reports of rape will be dealt with in a sensitive and professional manner.

But it doesn’t help when Marquette makes stupid statements about rape.

This page, for example, says that a women has not consented to sex if she is “Giving in or going along with someone to gain approval.” A lot of women have sex to gain approval. A guy who makes his “approval” continent on getting sex is not a gentleman, but he’s not a rapist either (at least if that’s all he does).

Another stupid statement coming from Marquette was in the “training” module required of all employees and faculty. It flatly asserts that rape is “not about sex, it’s about power.” If that’s true, why is it “sexual assault” rather than “power assault?”

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Another stupid statement is found in the “Teal Poster.” It tells students:

Consent. If you want to have sexual contact with someone, it is your responsibility to make sure they consent...enthusiastically!

No, grudging consent will do. A guy who gets only grudging consent from his date really ought to back off. But he’s not rapist if he fails to.

Making stupid statements about rape encourages students to blow off the “training” that Marquette offers as politically correct indoctrination, rather than good advice and information.

Marquette Compromised

Then there is the fact that Marquette is badly compromised in dealing with campus rape, having covered up two serious cases of sexual assault during the 2011 school year. Both were reported by the Chicago Tribune. Here is one report. And here is the other.

Conclusion

If Marquette is backing off of bogus claims about campus date rape, good. But it would be better if the University admitted that the numbers it has been giving students are badly inflated, and that a sober view of the situation requires good data.

Marquette’s Repressive “Harassment” Training Continues to Create Controversy

We broke the story right here:  Marquette’s compulsory training on “harassment” that basically told employees “shut up.”  Don’t express political opinions that politically correct people don’t like (such as opposition to gay marriage).  Don’t display an anti-war poster.  Don’t make ethnic jokes, even to somebody who is not the least bit offended by them.

It has been picked up widely, first by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and further by Minding the Campus, as well as other outlets too numerous to mention here.

Some of the comments on Minding the Campus were withering.  For example, the “training” module condemns as harassment a computer screen saver of a man nude from the waist up (his trousers cover everything from the waist down).  A commenter asked:

What if I have a crucifix with a shirtless Jesus? Is that offensive at Jesuit Marquette, too? Better investigate the chapel on campus!

Another commenter noted (referring to the “affirmative consent” laws that require explicit consent to engage in sex):

So, according to universities, I have to practice recognizing nonverbal cues “indicating that a colleague might not welcome certain conduct” or I could be charged with harassment.

At the same time, according to California, it is supposedly impossible for me to tell whether my sexual partner is okay with what we are doing based on nonverbal cues.

Okay, academia.

The latest round of attention has come from the Catholic News Agency, and has been followed up by the Cardinal Newman Society.

These stories added a sinister twist:  some of the language coming out of the Federal civil rights bureaucracy suggests that opposing gay marriage could indeed be considered harassment by the bureaucrats.

Quoting a spokeswoman for the EEOC:

Christine Nazer, a public affairs specialist for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, told CNA Dec. 4 that courts have found “particular pejorative behavior or remarks about same-sex relationships to be potential harassment (which employers may act to stop even if it has not yet risen to the actionable level of severe or pervasive), or alternatively to be evidence of discriminatory motivation in a termination case.”

Note that the statement merely says that “particular pejorative behavior or remarks” might be punishable. But the instinct of timid conformist bureaucrats is not to protect free speech, and interpret restrictions on speech narrowly. It’s to shut up anything that anybody might object to.

And timid, conformist bureaucrats is exactly what we have at Marquette.

Conform, Don’t Fight

University administrators who have some sense of mission, and some desire to protect the integrity of their institutions can indeed fight repressive government regulations. A long list of Catholic colleges and universities has been fighting the Obamacare contraception mandate. Marquette, shamefully, is not among them.

Likewise, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been challenging guidelines from the Department of Education that make it absurdly easy to convict a student accused of rape.

We can’t imagine Marquette doing anything of the sort.

Feckless Response from Marquette

When Marquette does something stupid, poor Brian Dorrington, chief spokesman for Marquette, has to produce some evasive, mealy-mouthed response to inquiries. Catholic News Agency described his response as follows::

He said the presentation uses “hypothetical scenarios” are “teaching tools [and] do not necessarily equate to university policy.” “They are simply tools to raise awareness of various forms of harassment that could arise,” he said, adding that any specific harassment case “would be reviewed on an individual basis.”

That’s right. Dorrington is saying that the “training” that all Marquette employees and faculty were subjected to does “not necessarily equate to university policy.”

Or to put it more bluntly: “we told people ‘you better shut up,’ but if you fail to shut up, you might or might not be punished.”

Stonewalling

The university official responsible for this fiasco is Rev. Daniel Hendrickson, S.J., Associate Provost for Academic Initiatives. In preparing our initial story we tried to contact him, both e-mailing him and leaving voice mail. We also copied our e-mail to him to Dr. Margaret Callahan, Interim Provost. Hendrickson failed to respond, but instead we got a bland, evasive response from Dorrington.

The issue is this: if the “training” module was actually reviewed by Hendrickson, he showed absurdly bad judgment in approving it. In fact, his approval would show that he cares little for the supposed Catholic mission of the university, or for free expression.

If he failed to review it, it shows extreme negligence on his part, especially when the concept “harassment” is being used to shut up speech that is merely politically incorrect, and to suppress opinions disliked by liberals and leftists.

And Hendrickson, we learn, has been tapped to be the new President of Creighton University.