Allison Evans Crim 012H April 5, 2011 As I read Dr.

Sommers article, I found myself wondering if there is really a rape crisis on college campuses or is it more of a rape scare? But before I evaluate rape on campuses, I first have to evaluate what exactly we do or should consider rape. In the beginning of Sommers article she looked at Koss study where he claimed that one in four women in America have been or will be raped in their lifetime. But by going back through his survey questions we can see how he came up with such a high statistic. When analyzing his questions we see that he classified anything that was not completely consensual as rape. He even included a man giving a drink to a woman with sex later rape. If we go by this definition rape then I think, especially on college campuses, the one in four ratio is way under, but just because your date makes a pitcher of margaritas and encourages you to drink with him and you accept a drink(Sommers) doesnt mean it will be rape later in the night. So what is rape? Were you raped? is sort of an ambiguous question. As stated in Sommers article, there are a lot of Americans that are wronged every day and dont even know it, but wouldnt you think you would know if you were raped? The question, were you raped? almost depends on the individual person perception of what happened and their definition of rape. Although rape is one of the most unreported crimes, it is also one of the most ambiguous crimes as well. No one goes and asks, was your watch stolen? because it would be a simple question about theft and the

person would reply either yes or no, but when it comes to were you raped? a person can answer Im not sure. There is clearly a law written about what constitutes rape, but its societies lack of knowledge where problems occur. As if the general public had a hard enough time deciding what is rape and what is not we then put this problem in a setting with most of the population being young adults and add alcohol. I honestly think many girls are raped at colleges but let it just go with, well I was drunk, so its my fault too. I do think, especially the women, put themselves in risky situations by drinking excessively and wearing suggestive clothing out, but I also believe No means No. Do I think any girls should be able to go out, get drunk, and claim rape in the morning because she was drunk? No. But I also think men need to be held accountable too; by that I mean if you are taking home a girl from the bar that is clearly severely inebriated, sex, in my opinion, is not consensual. There needs to be a standard. A person cannot operate a moving vehicle after a certain amount of alcohol, therefore how can you claim that the same person is in a state of mind to consent to anything?