We’ve all heard the statistics. 11.2% of all college students experience it. For undergrads, 23% of females and 5% of males experience it. College women between the ages of 18 and 24 are three times more likely to experience it than the average woman, and of these female student victims, only 1 in 5 report it (RAINN). Campus sexual assault is, thanks to the media, something we have all become painfully and unfortunately more familiar with than we would like to be. We hear the more publicized cases, where girls are unwillingly stripped of their clothes and left crying in fetal position in the top floor bedroom of a frat house The perpetrator was a straight-A student, a seemingly nice, upper-class boy who got a scholarship to the university, who was planning on pledging a fraternity, who could never do something like this. The narrative …show more content…
You’ll be told more often than not that, “She should not have been drinking so much,” or “If she can’t remember parts of it, why should we trust her judgment at all?” or, even more frequently, “He’s a good kid, a good student, an athlete. He doesn’t fit the bill for ‘rapist’.” I will later go into further detail on why that latter statement is a widely popular misconception, but first we will address the former two statements. Two of the most important things to point out in regards to campus sexual assault are A), the difference between incapacitated rape and forced rape and B), the importance of steering away from discussing the “dangers” of alcohol and substance abuse in relation to sexual assault. These points are both highlighted in Heather McCauley’s editorial, “College Sexual Assault: A Call for Trauma-Informed Prevention.” She first defines forced rape as, true to the name, forcible sexual assault while the victim is sober, and incapacitated rape as rape involving a victim’s intoxication level in any form, whether it be