Wednesday, April 30, 2014

How about a ‘renewed call’ for the White House to stop spreading false information about campus sexual assault?

How about a ‘renewed call’ for the White House to stop spreading false information about campus sexual assault? | AEIdeas:
"In a January 2014 report titled “Rape and Sexual Assault: A Renewed Call to Action” (which led to the creation of the Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault headed by Biden), the White House Council on Women and Girls made the following two statements:
1. Sexual assault is a particular problem on college campuses:1 in 5 women has been sexually assaulted while in college.
2. Reporting rates for campus sexual assault are also very low: on average only 12% of student victims report the assault to law enforcement. But there’s a big problem here.

Taken together, those two claims above from the White House, if both are accurate, mean that nowhere near 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted while in college.

As I reported in January on CD after the release of the White House’s “renewed call to action” report:
The problem is that the two sets of numbers the White House uses don’t work together. 

If you look at virtually any university in America and take the number of reported sexual assaults, and use that number in conjunction with the White House’s under-reporting percentage, you don’t get one-in-five. Nowhere near.
Do the math yourself."

No comments: