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Show 6 | MyWeberMedia.com | Septmeber 6, 2018 DARYN STEED Columnist In the age of #MeToo and Time’s Up, Betsy DeVos is championing the spirit of empowered women by drafting new rules to combat sexual assault on college campuses. Now, you may be asking yourself, how will she do it? Will she target the Greek system, which contributes to 20 percent of all sexual assaults on college campuses? Will she increase requirements on schools to encourage them to actually report cases of sexual assault? Will she try to renovate the current justice system as it pertains to sexual assault, so rich swimmers who rape women behind university dumpsters will spend more than 30 days in jail? Actually, DeVos chose to ignore all of those pressing concerns to help a different group instead: those who have been accused of sexual assault. In case you’ve forgotten, or maybe the thousand mind-boggling decisions made by the Trump administration have fogged up your brain, we’re only one year past DeVos’ announcement that she would end the Obama-era Title IX guidance on campus sexual assault. Men’s rights activists, who might be part of the only activist group more useless than the Amherst Uprising protest against free speech, fought against Title IX because it deprived the accused of “due process.” DeVos agreed, saying the rule was unfair toward those accused of sexual misconduct, seemingly forgetting that only 2 to 5 percent of rapes are falsely reported, the same percentage as any other felony. That was bad enough. Now DeVos wants to institute rules that will protect men from sex discrimination, narrow the definition of what constitutes harassment on campus and address how schools should handle misconduct. For example, under her direction, schools would only be responsible to investigate alleged incidences that took place on their campuses or in their programs, and not incidents that occurred off-campus—incidents such as the previously-mentioned former Stanford student Brock Turner, who raped a woman off-campus. I’ll say it again — only 2 to 5 percent of rapes are falsely reported, and that number is close to the same for every felony. So why are colleges hesitant to report allegations of sexual assault? In 2015, 89 percent of colleges reported zero incidents of rape. The vast majority of sexual assaults on campus go unreported and unpunished. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, 70 to 90 percent of victims don’t report their abuse to the police, and only 30 percent of reported assaults result in an arrest. From those arrested, only 30 percent will ever see jail time. The reasons students don’t report vary. 15 percent believed it wasn’t important enough to report. 14 percent believed police wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything to help them. 5 reported to their university instead of the police. 20 percent were afraid of reprisal. And 25 percent believed it was something they should handle on their own. Men who belong to a fraternity are three times more likely to commit rape in college than non-greek students. Women in sororities are 74 percent more likely to be raped than other college women. One in five women will be sexually assaulted in college. There are a few reasons universities will never do away with Greek life. The first is campus housing. Greek housing is ingrained into so many campuses that removing it would leave thousands of students without a place to live. The second reason is the student social life. Fraternities offer a social outlet that doesn’t require university funding. The third reason, and probably the most illuminating, is that without the Greek system, universities would lose huge alumni donations. Greeks are more professionally successful than non-Greek students and are more likely to donate to their alma mater. This puts pressure on universities to keep Greek systems in place. Never mind the fact that Betsy DeVos is as qualified to be the Secretary of Education as Donald Trump is qualified to be president. Never mind that she wants to privatize public education and require tuition. With her proposed changes, she’s putting more victims at risk. The Me Too movement has drawn a line in the sand, and with these proposed rules, DeVos has clearly taken a side. She wants to protect the two percent of people who are falsely accused of rape, instead of the 98 percent of accusers who tell the truth. She wants to ignore the flashing warning signs against our nation’s Greek culture and make it easier for universities to hide cases of sexual assault. It makes sense, since she works under a man who’s been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. The Trump administration has chosen to ignore the culture surrounding sexual assault in America. Then we wonder how Larry Nassar could have possibly assaulted more than 200 women under the pretense of medical treatment. We wonder how Michigan State University could have been in the dark about these women. We wonder how these girls could slip through the cracks. It’s because they were ignored. It’s because they tried to speak up, and they were silenced. This pattern repeats itself hundreds of thousands of times every year in this country, and Betsy DeVos aims to make it worse. Comment on this column at signpost.mywebermedia.com |