Crisis of Sexual Assaults on Campus

Many parents concerned about their daughter’s future are concluding it’s safer for her to clerk in a Baltimore liquor store during a Freddie Gray rally than it is to attend college.

And who can blame them?

“Survey” findings claim that 20 percent of college women suffer a sexual assault. The numbers are used to blame men for creating a “rape culture,” when the truth is universities tolerate a coma culture.

Consider the University of Virginia.

UVA was founded by Thomas Jefferson. Smug boosters never tire of boasting about Jefferson’s Honor Code governing student behavior. The code functions much like Islam in that the rules only apply when you are dealing with other UVA students. And even then the code is soluble in ethanol.

Here are just a few lurid incidents covered by The Washington Post and Vanity Fair.

In August 2010 freshman Emily Renda arrives and six weeks later she’s so drunk at a party Renda thought nothing of accompanying one of the males to his room to “sober up” where she was sexually assaulted.

In 2012 Alex Pinkleton was in her sophomore year and passed out drunk at a party. She remembers “coming to, naked, with a friend’s friend on top of her.”

In September of 2014 18–year–old sophomore Hannah Graham was nearing the end of an all–night binge. As Graham staggered down the street alone, a non–student sexual predator spotted her. She was murdered later that night.

In August 2015 in the wake of UVA’s “annual welcome–back–to–school Block Party” freshman Haley Lind “was found alone in a stranger’s bathroom, she was naked and in a drunken stupor, barely able to stand or speak, a raucous party raging around her.”

Stands to reason, Lind downed a Smirnoff Ice, two shots of tequila and two shots of vodka to warm up for Block Party. There she played a spirited game of beer pong, followed by drinking a special house mixture of god–knows–what squirted into her mouth from an industrial pesticide sprayer.

Now the question becomes what is the common denominator in these sexual assaults, other than the comatose girl?

Easy, alcohol, but instead of recognizing the obvious and announcing UVA has a problem with booze, administrators act like they have a problem with boys. Their campus claims to be saturated in tradition, when it’s really marinated in alcohol.

CBS29 found that six to 10 students in the emergency room for alcohol consumption “is not that unusual.” To put that in perspective a study titled “Epidemiology of alcohol-related emergency department visits” found 10 alcohol ER visits per thousand for the U.S. UVA has about 15,000 students on campus so alcohol ER visits range between 20 and 30 per thousand, double or triple the rate for the entire country!

Nazar Aljassar, in a column headlined “Young, wild and free to party” described administration complicity. He tells students ready to get their coma on that campus cops ignore underage drinking unless it threatens “student safety.” Which must mean don’t hit your head on the curb if you pass out in the street.

The university’s response is a haughty rejoinder that Block Party and other drinkfests are not officially condoned. UVA President Teresa Sullivan admits, “alcohol abuse, including underage drinking, is a challenge facing colleges and universities across the nation.”

And it’s a challenge UVA is doing its best to ignore and it’s not alone.

Homeowners are regularly held responsible for the consequences to the young from what is termed an “attractive nuisance.” Try leaving an unfenced pool, unlocked freezer, or unattended guillotine open to the public and see what happens when someone is hurt.

So why do university administrations get a pass on ignoring rampant underage drinking when the consequences are obvious and dangerous?

Since when is possible contributory negligence part of UVA’s vaunted “Honor Code?”

You don’t read about a rash of sexual assaults at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University —where rumor has it using mouthwash more than once a day is an alcohol infraction.

Liberty is serious about underage drinking and it shows.

Parents will know administrators take their responsibility for student’s safety seriously when these rules are implemented:

1. Alcohol is banned in university and Greek housing.

2. Laws against drinking in public are enforced on campus.

3. Campus police have a no toleration policy for underage drinking.

4. Scholarship athletes prohibited from drinking alcohol on or off campus during the school year.

5. Alcohol infractions result in expulsion.

Mandatory training on sex assault is meaningless when a light alcohol rise washes it away. Parents formerly were confident university administrators were acting in loco parentis.

Now administrations just act loco.

Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher (for the League of American Voters), and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.