In a column published this weekend, syndicated Washington Post opinion writer and Fox News contributor George Will writes that he’s not buying into this whole campus rape epidemic thing. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977.
Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.
Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.”
Got that? Will believes that rape, or sexual assault surrounded by scare quotes, is not that big of a problem. Indeed, he doesn’t believe that one in five college women are raped because only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Understand that? Neither do we.
An email request for comment from Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt has not been returned.
The column has prompted yet another painful and important hashtag, #SurvivorPrivilege, created by feminist writer Wagatwe Wanjuki. Woman and men are sharing their stories to show exactly what it’s like to earn the “coveted status” of rape victim.
You can also read some great responses here and here.
The comments on this piece are disabled due to its sensitive nature. Please email tips@dcist.com with comment or proposed clarification.
