I just heard today about some meeting in the near future called " 1 in 4." This name relates to the so-called statistic of women who are raped at college. I find this somewhat hard to believe; by that count, 5 or 6 of the girls on my hall will be sexually assaulted by 2007. If this were REALLY true, wouldn't the college be taking more steps than some dinky Soviet-era re-education program? Such as de-commissioning the co-ed dorms, transferring the guys to Siberia and re-naming the school "Queen Mary's School for Girls?" This "1 in 4" has got to be the worst idea ever. Guys who are--how to put this--inclined to rape women will, in all probablilty, not be saying as they come out of the meeting, "Gee, I came here with the intent of having my way with women, but I guess that was a bad idea. Now I'm going to become a monk instead." For the guys who, like 99.9% of the male population at a normal college, are NOT inclined to be rapists, it's a waste of time they could be studying, eating, sleeping, or joking around. Instead of those things, they are getting the living daylights scared out of them as they wonder what it is that constitutes rape. From what I've learned, rape can be anything from the actually act of sexual assault to an angry woman pressing false charges because she felt "uncomfortable." My take on it is, any man who is forced to go to such a meeting should have his therapy bills paid for by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Saying that every man is a potential rapist and needs to be re-educated is akin to saying that every woman is a potential "rapee," for lack of a better word. It's demeaning, insulting, and casts a cloud over an entire group for no damn reason. Sadly, Academia has long since given way to such mindless exercises; it will probably be a long time before programs like "1 in 4" are seen in a realistic light and left by the wayside where they belong.