Late last week, College Humor (partnered with the Obama administration) released a video asking: What if bears killed one in five people? It was supposed to be a humorous attempt at getting people to consider just how dire it is that “one in five women will be sexually assaulted by the time they finish college.”
Except there’s no evidence that one in five women are sexually assaulted during college. That statistic has been debunked again and again and again. Only the most incredulous (or calculating) media outlets still print it as a fact without noting what it actually refers to or that it has been disputed.
The statistic comes from surveys of college students who are asked whether they have ever experienced a broad range of sexual activity. The students are also asked if they have ever engaged in said activity while drunk or on drugs. Based on answers students give to these questions, biased researchers hoping to prove “rape culture” exists determine that these students have been sexually assaulted.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2575923
They never ask the students whether they have been sexually assaulted (that would decimate the scare statistic) and they ignore the fact that the vast majority of students in those same surveys say they didn’t report the incident because it wasn’t serious. Essentially, researchers with an agenda are identifying students are victims even if those students don’t see themselves as victims.
And thus we have the one-in-five statistic.
But what if it were true, as the video implies? Then the response from the Obama administration and activists would be wholly inadequate.
Using the bear analogy, if people were being killed by bears at such a high rate, how would we respond? I’ll tell you how, we, as a society, wouldn’t respond. We certainly wouldn’t be asking our condo boards, homeowner’s associations or the Housing Department to take care of the problem simply because the problem was occurring in our homes or on our property.
No, we’d be calling animal control, the people trained and dedicated to the problem. And you can bet we’d be telling people how to protect themselves from bear attacks.
But when it comes to campus sexual assault, things are different. College bureaucrats and the Education Department are tasked with solving the problem and adjudicating felonies — not the police, who are trained to do so.
And no one is allowed to tell potential victims how to protect themselves, because doing so is “victim-blaming.”
So to reimagine the College Humor video, five men are sitting around drinking beers on a Saturday night. One of them opens the door to the main house and finds a bear.
“Dude, there’s a bear in your other room,” he says.
“Quick, call Ronda!” one guy responds.
“Who’s Ronda?” asks another.
“She runs the homeowner’s association.”
“Why the heck would we call her? Shouldn’t we call the police or animal control?”
“They don’t do anything, call Ronda. She took a seminar on bear behavior and she has a whistle. She’s prepared.”
“Um, okay … Well, do you at least have a table or chair we can use to block the door? The bear is trying to break through.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa man, are you accusing me of causing my own bear attack?”
“No, I’m just, I mean, we should try to stop the bear while we wait for … Ronda.”
“Dude, I’m not going to barricade my own door, that’s not the world I want to live in.”
[Bear kills them all. Ronda’s whistle does nothing. The bear moves on to the next house.]
