Discussion for article #235091
As a graduate of the University of Virginia, I too can say with confidence that there are plenty of true stories of rape that could be told. That’s one reason why Erderly’s story was received as totally plausible. Because it was and is. I will say that the number of people involved struck me as somewhat implausible, but I mean, how many people does it take for it to be really ugly and criminal? One is enough.
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But Erdely is not an advocate. She’s a journalist—one who is advocating for social change, but a journalist nonetheless.
Such a good point. I think the blurring of this line is one of the worrying trends of our time. Journalists should not be campaigning for any social change. Social change can result from the public being well informed and by facts coming to light. They should report “without fear of favor” as the Time’s slogan puts it.
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Well, if it makes anyone feel better, Rolling Stone is going to get the bejeezus sued out of them from the fraternity cited in the article.
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Can’t imagine how that would make anyone feel better.
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Lawsuits, by themselves, mean nothing. Anyone can sue anyone.
If RS lawyers think they’re stuck for libel, they’ll arrange a settlement.
You can be sure there’s a libel insurance policy in the background.
Lawyers for the insurance co would lead the way most likely.
Why is the Rotunda green?
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I don’t doubt that rape occurs on college campuses. Is it epidemic? I doubt that very, very much.
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About 25% of women are sexually assaulted while they are in college. If you have four daughters, at least one of them will be raped during their college career. Any reasonable person would consider that an epidemic, and reprehensible.
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Depends on what you mean by “epidemic.” More frequently than elsewhere? I’m prepared to believe that.
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Thoughtful article–thanks for this, TPM.
It is “negative progress”, or, as most people might say, taking a step back.
The damage done by the shoddy reporting in the original article will not be undone any time soon.
And part of that damage will be the persistence of the belief that sexual assault just doesn’t happen all that often, and certainly never to nice, good, girls who behave appropriately.
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Deleted comment.
Don’t know for sure but maybe because its balls have been squeezed – as should be.
Why do you doubt it?
When I was a student at Florida State in the 70s, we held the dubious honor hightest rape rate in the nation, with an average of one rape per day. I’d count that rate as an epidemic.
BTW, the local sheriff’s response was “what do you expect when girls wear hot pants?”.
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If “about 25% of women are sexually assaulted while they are in college”, then far fewer than 1 in 4 is actually raped. Sexual assault includes attempted rape, threats of rape, unwanted sexual touching, etc. Grabbing someone’s butt without consent (for example) is sexual assault, but it is not rape.
You do no one any service by conflating sexual assault and rape.
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One of the ironies of this entire story. Rape is actually a bigger problem for non-students. Maybe poor women don’t matter as much.
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To match the pink humanoid?
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That 25% stat has been debunked but just refuses to die. It was arrived at by performing some math on a sample result of 2.8% on actual responses. If you are going quote stats you should report them in their raw form and not extrapolate them to arrive at a number that supports a contention. Basically any number can be arrived at this way.
To put this in perspective, in the same year as the UVA story, the campus board that deals with sexual assault received reports of 38 incidents for the year, which include verbal assaults, unwanted touching, etc. The number of female students at UVA is around 11,000 so the incident rate is about 1/3 of 1%. That is a long way from 25%.
I believe that it is proper to bring attention to a matter, but it must be done in an honest way. Inflating the numbers only serves to create a climate of hysteria. It should not matter whether it is 1 or 38 or 2300, all incidents need to be dealt with appropriately.
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