Trigger Warning: If you are upset by the accurate reporting of facts, statistics and data about campus sexual assault please stop reading now.
In a January 2014 report titled “Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action” (which led to the creation of the “Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault” headed by Vice-President Joe Biden), the White House made the following two statements:
White House Statement 1. Sexual assault is a particular problem on college campuses: 1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted while in college.
White House Statement 2. Reporting rates for campus sexual assault are also very low: on average only 12% of student victims report the assault to law enforcement.
There’s a huge, irreconcilable statistical problem here, and I’ve reported on that irreconcilable issue on CD here, here, here and here. Using actual reported crime statistics on sexual offenses at almost any US college and applying the White House claim that only 12% of campus sexual assaults actually get reported, we have to conclude that nowhere near 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while in college. Alternatively, if the “1 in 5 women” claim is true, the percentage of sexual assaults that get reported to the campus police would have to be much, much lower than 12%. In other words, the statistical claims about campus sexual assault that the White House uses don’t work together and they therefore both can’t be simultaneously correct. That is, either the claim that 1-in-5 college women are sexually assaulted claim is way too high or the 12% reporting rate is way too high.
Universities are now releasing their campus crime statistic reports for 2014, so here’s an updated analysis of sexual assaults between 2011-2014 at: a) Michigan State University (MSU), and b) the Ohio State University (OSU), summarized in the tables above (see crime reports here for MSU and OSU). Over the most recent four-year period from 2011 to 2014, there were 91 reports of “forcible sexual offenses” according to MSU’s Department of Public Safety, which included incidents that allegedly took place on campus, in university residence halls, on non-campus properties including fraternity and sorority houses, and on public property adjacent to or accessible from the campus. Over the same period, there were 110 reported forcible sexual offenses at OSU.
Using the White House claim that only 12% of campus sexual assaults get reported, there would have been 667 unreported forcible sexual offenses at MSU and 807 unreported offenses at OSU during the 2011-2014 period, bringing the total number of sexual assaults (reported + unreported) to 758 for MSU (91 reported + 667 unreported) and 917 for OSU (110 reported + 807 unreported).
The MSU campus in East Lansing has a total student population of 50,085 and 51.5% of the students, or 25,794, are female. Dividing the 758 estimated sexual assaults over the most recent four-year period (91 reported and 667 unreported) into the 25,794 MSU female students would mean that only 2.94% of female MSU students, or about 1 in 34, was sexually assaulted while in college over the last four years.
The Columbus campus of OSU has a total female student population of 28,658. Dividing the 917 estimated sexual assaults over a four-year period into the 28,658 OSU female students would mean that only 3.2% of OSU women, or about 1 in 31.25, would be sexually assaulted while in college.
Certainly those estimates of college campus sexual assaults are still too high, but not even close to the White House claim that one in five (and 20% of) female students are sexually assaulted while in college.
Further, the calculations above make the assumptions that: a) 100% of the 104 forcible sexual offenses at OSU from 2009-2012 were male on female incidents (and none were female on male, male on male, or female on female), b) none of the 104 reported offenses were filed falsely or later retracted (see recent example here of a campus sexual assault that was falsely reported and later retracted), c) all of the reported cases involved MSU and OSU students and none were reported by OSU faculty or staff. If any of those three assumptions don’t hold perfectly, the 2.9% and 3.2% figures at MSU and OSU above would be even lower, and the 1-in-34 ratio at MSU and 1-in-31.25 ratio at OSU would be even greater.
From a political standpoint, using the totally implausible statistic that “1 in 5 women” are sexually assaulted while in college certainly gets a lot of attention. The “1 in 34 women” statistic found at MSU and the “1 in 31.25 women” ratio at OSU over the most recent four years, though not as attention-grabbing as “1 in 5,” are probably pretty representative of college campuses around the country and much closer to the truth than what the White House is claiming. And for the “1 in 5 women” claim to be true, it would imply an unbelievably low reporting rate of less than 2% for campus sexual assaults. That would be more than 50 actual sexual offenses that take place on campus for every one that gets reported, which is an under-reporting rate so low that it must be insulting to women. Women and men attending college today, their parents, their college administrators and professors, and society in general, are all much better served by the truth about college sexual assault than by Team Obama’s misleading, exaggerated, and false claims about “1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college.”
Another reality check: For the “1 in 5 women” claim to be true at MSU and OSU, that would mean that approximately 1,254 campus sexual assaults on female students take place every single year at MSU (20% of 25,085 over four years, divided by 4 years) and 1,432 sexual assaults at OSU (20% of 28,658, divided by 4 years), which would mean that there would have to be more than three cases of campus sexual assault every single day of the year (3.44 at MSU and 3.92 at OSU), or about one every 6-7 hours! If MSU and OSU really were such crime-infested campuses with sexual assaults taking place every 6-7 hours, which would be a violent crime rate worse than the most crime-ridden neighborhoods of cities like Detroit, why would any sane parent even consider sending their daughter to MSU and OSU?
Bottom Line: Women and men attending college today, their parents, their college administrators and professors, and society in general, are all much better served by the truth about college sexual assault than by Team Obama’s misleading, exaggerated, and false claims that “1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college.”
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1KNaM3N
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