The Campus-Rape Frenzy

American universities are no longer havens of free speech and fair play.

The total discrediting of Rolling Stone’s story on rape at the University of Virginia has shined a light on one of the least palatable features of American life: the so-called epidemic of rape on campus.

Authorities from Barack Obama on down have cited the phony statistic that one in five college women is raped. Phony because it’s based on a 2007 survey conducted in two midwestern schools not of a random sample, but of a small number of self-selected respondents and includes unwanted touching and kissing as “sexual assault.”

A Department of Justice survey released this month presents a different picture. Between 1995 and 2013, it reports, an average of 0.61 percent of female students were raped or sexually assaulted every year — 2.4 percent over four years, not 20 percent. Moreover, the DOJ reports, that rate has been declining significantly in recent years, in line with a national decline in violent rape.

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