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_Brandon Bartlett is a sophomore political science major at MU. He is an opinion columnist who writes about politics for The Maneater._
Dear Freshmen,
Universities were traditionally a place of higher learning and enlightenment, but now they just seem like a place young people go to party, accrue astronomical amounts of debt and become programmed with leftist talking points. Going to parties isn’t that bad as long as you don’t ruin your academic career in the process. The debt, while stressful, can be paid back eventually if you choose the right career path. The indoctrination of a leftist political agenda, however, can be hard to fight if you don’t pay close attention to what you’re being told. Take everything you are taught with a grain of salt. Some thoughts are based on feelings rather than facts, some words are used to signal virtue rather than properly describe and if there weren’t double standards there would be no standards at all. If you are like me and come from a small, more conservative town, you’re in for a very big change. Don’t take this the wrong way, MU is a great place, but the left-leaning bias is a bit blatant at times.
There are many examples of political opinions and left-leaning biases being pushed on college campuses but the example that first comes to mind is one of the first things I remember being told on campus, which was that one in five women on college campuses are sexually assaulted. I’m sure if you remember Summer Welcome, then you remember hearing this, but I’ve also heard this since I was on campus for Summer Welcome. This statistic was based off of a voluntary, anonymous, web-based survey which was sent to students at two large public universities in 2006. Just from this basic information about the study, one could propose that the statistic might have been built on shaky grounds.
One of the first things I was taught in a basic high school statistics class was that voluntary and anonymous surveys aren’t exactly the most reliable sources. Even if the two voluntary, anonymous surveys were reliable, there are absolutely no grounds to assume that the two surveys are representative of all college campuses. There are many variables which could easily sway a statistic, whether it be religious and/or racial demographics of a campus or whether a campus is located in a large city or college town or many other things. The only thing that these surveys can say they are representative of is the population which they surveyed.
According to Statista, there were 17.76 million people in college in 2006. The study mentioned above included responses from 5,446 women and 1,073 of them “said that they experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college,” according to the Washington Post. Assuming that 50 percent of the 17.76 million students were women, this study is implying that the responses of 5,446 women would be representative of the nearly 9 million. It also does not define what constitutes an “attempted sexual assault.” Would that be when a woman feels like a guy might be trying to get her in a position to take advantage of her or would it be the guy actually trying to do something physical?
A statistic from the Bureau of Justice Statistics states that as of 2003 1.4 per 1000 people age 12 or older were victims of rape/ sexual assault. There are of course factors that would change that number by differentiating between men and women and narrowing in on a smaller age group but I can’t say that I believe that the statistic goes from less than a twentieth of a percent to almost 20 percent.
I don’t want to claim that this is just a politically motivated falsehood, which is perpetuated by everyone who cites the statistic, but I assume that the belief in the false statistic was formed from a belief in rape culture and/or a society which does not punish men who sexually assault or rape women. This survey did nothing to actually show that there is a rape culture on campus, and in response to this idea that we live in a society where men aren’t punished for raping women I would point to the number of men who have been kicked out of positions of power in the last year over sexual assault allegations.
Of course any number of women being sexually assaulted or raped is awful and the disgusting people who perpetrate these acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. However, exaggerating statistics to make it seem as if there is a rape epidemic on college campuses is not helping anyone and on the contrary the rate of rape and sexual assault on 18 to 24 year old, college enrolled females, has dropped from 9 out of 1000 in 1997 to about 4.3 out of 1000 in 2013, according to the Bureau of Justice. This is just one of many examples in which mistruths are perpetuated on college campuses. There are many, many more but those are different subjects for a different day.