The alcohol and “rape” culture on America’s college campuses

Drunk college partyBack in the 1990s, someone I knew was accused of sexual harassment within an academic setting. He was white and the accuser was a person of color, as was her supervisor. There was a witness — an intern, also a person of color — who later admitted that she knew the charges were false, but supported them anyway, because her supervisors threatened her career if she didn’t. When all the dust had settled, the intern later said of her lies,”I cared more about my career than about yours.” I knew the accused well and, even without the intern’s confession, I knew that the whole thing was a set-up.

Looking back, that false accusation truly marked the beginning of my journey across the Rubicon from Democrat to conservative. I’d certainly held conservative values before then, but I never thought about them in the context of politics or societal issues. They just were the mental backdrop to my life. The false accusation, however, made me aware that something terribly toxic was taking place in American academia. After all, it had all the core elements we see now: An academic victim culture leveling a false sexual abuse attack against a straight white male.

That toxic core has become infinitely worse in the 20 or so years since that long-ago false accusation. Victim culture has gone from a sneaky, malevolent underbelly to the dominant culture. The hostility towards heterosexuals, whites, and most especially white, male heterosexuals is on steroids. Add in the modern trends of microaggressions, triggers, Black Lives (and no one else’s) Matter, gender identity insanity, and an alleged “rape culture,” and you have the modern university reaching its Leftist apex. And make no mistake — you’re funding this insanity. As long as the federal government and the states pour money into higher education, you are a part of this madness.

Donald Trump’s presidency could be a great one if, in addition to appointing true conservative thinkers to the Supreme Court, he also removed all federal funds and federal mandates from American college campuses. Within one year, the administrative ranks would probably be cut down by about 80%, leaving only administrators focused on educating students, rather than ideologues focused on indoctrinating students. Tuition would drop; actual education would rise.

But there’s one thing no American president can fix. Instead, it’s something that the young people need to fix on their own, and that is the drinking culture on college campuses. I’ve already blogged at length about Brock Turner, and the fact that I think it was a perversion of justice to convict him for rape when the alleged victim was so drunk she didn’t remember any interactions with him at all, and most certainly couldn’t remember whether she gave, or later withdrew, consent. The issue in the Turner case wasn’t rape, it was alcohol abuse.

The Brock Turner case is just the tip of the alcohol abuse iceberg. At American Conservative, there’s a letter from a police detective explaining that Brock Turner moments are endemic on college campuses because the culture demands that students, including women who are always biological lightweights when it comes to alcohol, must consume amounts of alcohol that frequently shade into brain-damaging or life-threatening toxicity:

People who are removed from the social scene of young adults today can’t really comprehend how out of control alcohol abuse is among college students and other young people looking to party. I went to a “party school” myself and there was a lot of drinking in the mid- nineties. Thursday night was the big party night and I had a lot of classes on Friday mornings that were mostly empty.

But these kids today don’t want to just drink to get buzzed and have a good time. They drink with the goal of a black out. It starts with the “pregame.” Prior to going out to hit the bars with your fraternity bros or sorority sisters, you meet at someone’s house and have a couple of drinks there before you even leave. The idea is that you get a little buzzed before you leave, so you won’t spend as much money on overpriced drinks at the bars.

Of course, it doesn’t actually work out that way. They have two beers at home and then three, five, seven more at the bars. Plus the two shots that somebody bought them.

So by last call, they’ve had anywhere from five to God only knows how many drinks in about a four hour period. In a 115 pound sorority sister, that’s a hell of a lot of alcohol.

Oh, and did I mention how many of them are on medications that are contraindicated for alcohol? Given our pill-popping culture in general, I’ll just round up and say that all of them are. Especially mood altering medications and most especially Ambien.

Ambien, my God, the Ambien. Maybe it’s a regional thing, but sometimes it seems like they get it given to them like candy around here. Ambien, of course, intensifies the effects of alcohol, yet these kids pop their daily prescribed dose before or during the pregame, effectively “roofieing” themselves before they even leave the house.

And I’m still mostly talking about the women here. The men, the accused suspects, are usually drinking even more then the girls do. Judgement gets impaired all around.

In addition to drunkenness, these college girls are apparently willingly engaging in everything short of full sexual intercourse:

What gets reported is “Well, me and my girlfriends met at Lisa’s apartment to pre- game. I had a beer and a shot there. Then we went to This Bar and That Bar and I had three shots at the first place and an Appletini at the second place plus this guy gave me half his beer. So, we were dancing and then Lisa and Cindy left. So the guy who gave me half his beer said we should go to This Other Bar to meet his friend and we did. And I had two shots and then he bought me this mixed drink… I don’t remember what it was called or what was in it. And then I had another beer and we danced and I remember we were making out at one point in the bathroom and I gave him a blow job. Then I remember we left This Other bar-”

Needle scratch. Wait a minute. You gave him oral sex?

“Well, yeah…”

And there’s your other big piece of the reported sexual assault puzzle: Hook up culture. Everything up to PIV (penis in vagina) is on the table when you’re hitting the bar scene. It’s almost a given.

Add together alcohol abuse and sexual license, and you will inevitably end up with the following scenario: The girl gets incoherently drunk, remembers or doesn’t remembering sleeping with a guy, and is later told by her friends or roommates that he raped her. That scenario is exactly what happened with Lena Dunham’s so-called “rape”: She was drunk and drugged to the point of incoherence, agreed to everything the guy suggested, never uttered a verbal or non-verbal “Stop” and then, when regret kicked in, accepted her roommate’s suggestion that she must have been “raped” — despite admitting that she consented every step of the way.

Lena now feels like she’s a victim of the white male hegemony, rather than a victim of the campus drinking culture. The irony is that, while young women cannot control an alleged male hegemony, they can control their own drinking, something that would markedly diminish their sense of victimhood.

We live in an obscenely sexualized culture. Some years ago in Marin, at a very posh local public middle school, two 13-year-old girls were found in the boys’ bathroom during a dance, giving blowjobs to a line-up of boys. I’m sure those girls are not the only tweens who think it’s acceptable or required to engage in extreme foreplay with guys as part of ordinary social interaction.

As I said, federal money won’t affect this culture although, if colleges put more of the onus on the young women to behave soberly than they do now, that might tone it down. What really needs to happen, though, is that young women — who are taught that they are being constantly raped — have to say that they are less likely to suffer from these omnipresent rapes (which cover everything from a rub across the shoulders to drunken consensual intercourse) if they stay sober. For now, though, I suggest that boys at college act like girls did in the 19th century:  Never go anywhere without a chaperone.

If you know of someone in college or heading to college, whether it’s a boy or a girl, please forward them a copy of the American Conservative article. You might save a girl a lifetime of regret (because she views herself as a victim even if she willingly engaged in sexual activity) and a boy a life destroyed (because these accusations stick no matter how flimsy or nonexistent the underlying facts).