I realized after I posted and was away from any computer that I did not phrase my post well. My point was simply that I didn't read Kevin to be drawing an analogy between the frequency of school shootings or terrorist attacks and the frequency of all kinds of rape or sexual assault. I took him to be drawing an analogy with the frequency of rape and sexual assault that is the result of conspiracy between and participation of numerous fraternity members and that is explicitly or implicitly tolerated if not encouraged by the chapter as a whole.

Please identify one, just one, person on this thread who has suggested that there ever is any kind of rape we don't really need to worry about.

It is unclear whether honorgal is ranking rape.

Well, I'm looking at the whole quote, including the sentence it was responding to:

There's nothing there limiting the comparison to premeditated and chapter-sanctioned gang rape -- and I doubt many victims care whether the act was premeditated/sanctioned or not, anyway. Fraternity houses ARE consistently places where women are at risk of rape. So are parties in dorms. It's smart for women to view them as potentially dangerous and take certain precautions (buddy system, not putting down their drinks, etc.). That's nothing like a school shooting.

Why are they not giving $77, 777.77???????? This bothers me.

As for that T-D article, I really really really hope that RS isn't pulling a Janet Cooke, although with the levels they've sunk to in their journalism overall, I wouldn't put it past them. They're desperate to remain relevant. And yes, it DOES matter if the story is real, regardless of what the school's culture is.

... And here is an advantage of joining a sorority: A sister has your back.

I once had to withdraw cash from an ATM in a somewhat sketchy part of town. My sorority sister "D", who grew up in a sketchy town, walked with me to the ATM. I'd have been ok on my own, but I was more than glad for her company.

I can see both of your points. However, reading what you quoted in the context of everything that honorgirl and Kevin have said in this thread—including their suggestions that the totality of instances of rape and sexual assualt may be over-reported and honorgirl's response to DBB a few posts up— as well as in other threads on this and related topics, those aren't the conclusions I come to about Kevin's analogy or about whether honorgirl has suggested that there is a category a rape or sexual assault we don't need to worry about. Even if there some "ranking" of rape going on that treats some kinds of rape as worse than others, that doesn't lead to a conclusion that some kinds rank too low to worry about. The law treats some forms of rape and sexual assault as worse than others based on things like the age of the victim, use of weapons or whether the perpetrator is aided and abetted by others.

If I was a representative of my national HQ who was sent to a chapter to investigate a rape charge, I would find it VERY relevant to my rec to HQ as to whether the rape was a case of date rape between an individual member/per and his victim or whether it was a chapter-sanctioned gang rape. In one instance, perhaps the sanction is to put the chapter on probation, educate them and expel the perp while cooperating with law enforcement vs. shutting the chapter down for several years, expelling all members involved and possibly recolonizing once all of the former members were no longer matriculates at the university in question.

There's a HUGE difference from a prevention standpoint. Is one "worse" than the other? That's entirely subjective.

No.. not "consistently." The vast majority of fraternity houses are totally safe places for women so are dorms. This UVA situation is obviously intolerable and horrible. It is not the norm by a long shot.

Maybe other schools are different, but at least in my school, parties in Dorms had three characteristics that made them safer.
1) The parties couldn't be as loud.
2) Alcohol in the Fraternity houses (even though they were owned by the school) was relatively winked at, in the Dorms it wasn't. (yes, a soda could be hit with a roofie, but the roofie's effects would be more noticed if the early effects couldn't be attributed to Alcohol.
3) While a gang rape could happen in a dorm room away from the party, the chances of the men raping knowing where a room where sounds wouldn't be heard (Say a room immediately under the speakers) is, IMO, less likely to be true.

Note, *none* of these are directly tied to being a Greek Letter Organization, they would be equally true if the <Fill in the Blank> Sports team has a house they live in.

naraht, you're right.

Agreed, but I'm looking at this from the perspective of young women at the school, not HQs.

Yes, consistent RISK. No place in the world is "totally safe" unless you're looking at events retrospectively. We can look back and say that there were zero rapes. But you don't know that 100% of your brothers would never rape anybody in the future. Maybe they're a lot lower risk than guys at some house that celebrates misogyny, but there's risk. Women live in a world with this risk. That's what I'm focused on.

No, of course it doesn't lead to that conclusion. But some people would rather just throw the outrage card instead of have a reasoned discussion.

It's objectively clear that the RS article describing a pre-planned seven person gang rape has lead to a understandably different reaction from a whole host of people (including, but not limited to, reactions in this thread and reactions at UVA) than the article detailing what the Swathmore co-ed went through.

We could find numerous examples of various criminal or unsavory behavior classifications where one fact pattern is more horrific than another. That's one reason why some of our laws have mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

I don't see an "outrage card" in this thread.

With the historical and contemporary tendency for people in the USA and other societies to ignore and sometimes even condone marital rape and relationship rape, it isn't outlandish for people to be cautious of any appearance of ranking rape and varying societal and legal responses to rape. Many alleged victims are silenced because they didn't scream enough, didn't resist enough, aren't bruised and bloody enough, or their relationship with the alleged offender is too close to claim the person didn't deserve sex.

The consequences for being convicted of rape are too severe to let anything more than beyond a reasonable doubt be the standard for conviction. Victims' rights have to be balanced with the rights of the accused.

NO. How many Greek parties did you attend as an undergrad?

There is risk in dorms, fraternity houses, off campus houses, on campus houses, apartments, trailers, bars, restaurants, hotel rooms. (I feel like I'm doing the rape version of Green Eggs and Ham) Women - AND men - need to be on their guard any time they are not 100% aware. And that includes being in an emotionally fragile state without drinking a drop of alcohol.

To say that there's a higher risk in one place than another creates a false sense of security when you are NOT in that place, and that's when bad things happen.

References to this study have been making the rounds in the news in the wake of the UVA article. It studied only one campus, so it's impossible to extrapolate those results to the Greek population at large, but its results are worrisome regardless. According to the author of that study, other studies have found similar results. (Another previous study found less of a link, but that study is almost 20 years old at this point, and things may have changed.)

The plus side of that first study is that it suggests that when fraternities are exposed to proper rape intervention programming, the rates of sexual assault decrease to be comparable with the rates of non-Greek students--so it seems fairly obvious that rape intervention/bystander intervention should be included in fraternities' new member ed programs as soon as possible (and it probably wouldn't hurt to add them to sororities', either). That's an easy, not-incredibly-expensive way to be proactive about the problem.

Colorado has NPC sororities, but the only school-sanctioned fraternities there are cultural, right? They banned the IFC system around ten years ago (although it still continues to exist off-campus, obviously). If it was a legal problem, I imagine it would have come up at some point in the last ten years. Maybe the existence of cultural fraternities is enough to cover their asses legally? Don't know. Anybody who does, please weigh in.

The UVA article included references to a study that suggested that the vast majority of those "murky" date-rape situations don't actually exist as such; in reality, they involve serial predators who prey on incapacitated women and then, if caught, paint the situation as a he said/she said misunderstanding in order to escape prosecution.

Fair enough. I think that this is a topic, like so many others, where the individual lenses through which we view the discussion have the positive potential to add depth and a greater perspective, but also have the negative potential to inhibit understanding because we're not quite talking about the same thing, or we assume that others are starting from the same point we are. At worst, it leads to people talking past each other and to frustration that a reasonable discussion can't be had.

For me with the lens I bring to it, if I suggest that some rapes (or murders or any other crimes) are worse in degree than others, I do not mean to suggest at all that there are any that can be ignored or condoned—more that there is bad and really bad. So it is helpful for me to be reminded that there are understandable reasons why others might see red flags where none were intended by me.