Combating campus sexual assaults

College freshmen are completing their first month on campus. According to the website The Other Freshman 15, “The first 15 weeks of college can be the riskiest for sexual assault. … One out of five students experience rape or sexual assault while they are in college, and in the great majority of cases (75-80 percent), the victim knows the attacker.”

The Washington Post recently carried a front-page story about campus sexual assaults. As the father of former college students, two of whom are daughters, I was stunned by the presumptions in the story. It was written in a way that assumed all female college students will have sex and get blind drunk at parties where they will be assaulted by young males.

In the news stories and in comments by President Obama and public officials, there are only scattered references to individual responsibility. In the Post story some parents advise their daughters to take self-defense classes and be careful. But this deals with effect, not cause. The conversation about sexual behavior should start with young women and men long before they step foot onto a college campus. Young women should be taught to respect themselves and to conduct themselves honorably. Young men should be taught to be gentlemen and respectful of women.

Unfortunately, culture has robbed women of what we used to call modesty and men of their obligation to respect, even protect, women. These were the values I was taught, but today the media drown us in sex and sexual violence.

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