In the context of campus sexual assault becoming more of an epidemic sweeping colleges across the country, one first-year student asked presidential candidate John Kasich how he as president will help women “feel safer and more secure regarding sexual violence, harassment and rape.”

Kasich turned away, making jokes to the audience about how he needs to leave, almost trivializing the St. Lawrence University student’s question.

He responded by explaining the efforts that Ohio has taken to provide support to victims on college campuses, like access to confidential reporting, rape kits, and the opportunity for victims to “pursue justice after you have had some time to reflect on it all.”

He then hit her with a kicker: don’t go to parties with alcohol.

Let’s unpack this statement. First of all, no woman should feel afraid just by simply going to a party with alcohol. If women do, and if telling women not to go to parties is even in the realm of something someone thinks, shouldn’t that warrant some sort of drastic preventative change?

However, Kasich did not address the root issue of how universities and colleges can solve the issue of sexual assault, rather he perpetuated the idea that it can only be prevented if women do not put themselves in situations where they could be sexually assaulted (which really is a wide variety of situations…so should women stop going to school, too?).

Rather than direct this conversation toward precautionary measures, Kasich tried to fix the issue by naming reactionary measures. The suggestions he stated at the beginning are great, but do not actually fix the issue of women (and men) being sexually assaulted in the first place.

A woman should be able to attend college parties totally naked, dance on tables & drink lots of alcohol w/o being raped or assaulted #Kasich

— James McHale (@JamesMcHaleUK) April 15, 2016

A 2007 study for the National Institute of Justice showed “… the vast majority of incapacitated sexual assault victims (89 percent) reported drinking alcohol, and being drunk (82 percent), prior to their victimization.”

Obviously alcohol does play a role in a lot of sexual assaults, especially on college campuses, but does that mean that one necessarily causes the other? Not quite, according to a report from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Although alcohol consumption and sexual assault frequently co-occur, this phenomenon does not prove that alcohol use causes sexual assault. Thus, in some cases, the desire to commit a sexual assault may actually cause alcohol consumption (e.g., when a man drinks alcohol before committing a sexual assault in order to justify his behavior).

Women should not be afraid to be around people drinking, period. In addition, alcohol doesn’t rape, people rape. And while it may play a factor, it is not an excuse for Kasich’s comments.

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Just a few short months ago there were some very serious rape allegations being thrown around based on a Rolling Stone article about a student at the University of Virginia. It was a very traumatic account of a young woman being raped by several young men at a frat party, and that she didn’t report it until telling the story to a Rolling Stone writer several years later. When the administrators at UVA found out about these allegations they shut down the greek community and launched a full investigation only to discover that the story was falsified. Aside from the false accusation, UVA’s response seemed to be a little too late–only after this story got massive amounts of media attention did the school attempt to do anything.

That is not the case in regard to a student at Stanford University. Every news report I have seen calls this accused rapist a “former student,” but that status came about after the school found out about what he had done. Brock Allen Turner was charged with five felony counts of suspicion of attempted rape and penetration with a foreign object.

According to prosecutors, the attack occurred on January 18 when two young men riding their bikes on campus came across the scene of the crime. Turner was seen on top of an unconscious young woman; when confronted by the bikers he tried to run away, but luckily these guys were able to catch him and hold him until the police arrived.

A spokeswoman for Stanford University, Lisa Lapin, stated that Turner voluntarily withdrew from the university and is never allowed to re-enroll. I have a feeling that the school gave him an option and he took it, maybe to save face especially since he pleaded not guilty to the charges just yesterday morning.

Stanford did the right thing by shutting down what could have been a massively negative mark against the school. The best part in my opinion? The school had a resolution before the news even broke and was able to release a statement to news outlets immediately, letting people know that it knew what was going on and already had a resolution from an academic standpoint. Universities everywhere, take note!

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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For the last couple of years, any discussion on sexual assault has required a discussion of the way colleges handle the issue, and the national consensus has been that they don’t handle it particularly well. There are dozens of universities currently under investigation by the Department of Education for their sexual assault policies. It is within this context that Harvard University, one of those schools under investigation, unveiled its new sexual misconduct policies.

The new policies have received significant backlash from parts of the Harvard community, particularly a group of Harvard Law professors. An open letter was released by the professors decrying the new policies.

They have many complaints with the policies, but overall they argue that the new policies are far too expansive and stack the deck against the accused. They claim that the policies do not allow due process or fairness. They are also concerned that only one office will be evaluating the complaints, and that that office cannot be guaranteed to be impartial because in addition to “trying” the cases, they are the ones who investigate the cases. Mainly they are worried about the fact the policies seemed to them, to be one-sided, saying:

Adopting rules governing sexual conduct between students both of whom are impaired or incapacitated, rules which are starkly one-sided as between complainants and respondents, and entirely inadequate to address the complex issues in these unfortunate situations involving extreme use and abuse of alcohol and drugs by our students.

The law professors also note the fact that many parts of the Harvard community were not consulted in the drafting of the new policies — including the faculty of the law school.

Concern has also been brought up over the fact that the policies changed the burden that needs to be met. There are varying degrees of burdens — “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the one we’re probably all the most familiar with from hearing it in the courtroom. There are lower burdens though, and Harvard’s sexual misconduct policies used to be based on one of them: “clear and persuasive.” The new rules have shifted the policies to an even lower burden: “preponderance of the evidence.” What preponderance means is really just more likely than not — more likely than not that someone broke a particular sexual misconduct policy.

To say I have incredibly mixed feelings about the entire thing would be an understatement. On one hand, I’m the kind of person who likes to believe in justice. Everyone does deserve a fair trial, no matter how heinous the crime or convincing the evidence.

That being said, the way in which sexual assault has been handled at some of our nation’s universities has been reprehensible at best. Policies do need to be changed, we’re all on the same page here. The real question that needs to be answered now is how?

On the other side of the country, California thinks maybe it has the answer. The state just instituted a new series of policies for its public schools that have been summed up under the phrase “yes means yes.” The law states:

Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.

This law has certainly received less backlash than Harvard’s, although some are still worried that it’s too harsh on those accused of sexual misconduct. The disconnect puts us in an interesting position — what’s too far and what’s not far enough? I don’t think there’s a perfect answer to that yet. There’s a whole treasure trove of imperfect answers out there: the policies and actions of the schools that are under investigation.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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